Joyful Play is a transcription of the first movement of Children On the Playground for Solo Violin and Strings written for my 12 year old pianist son Brendon and my pianist wife, Joy.

I compose using Finale, a composers' software to replace manuscript paper and pen which behaves much like a word processor for written music. One of the extra features of these kinds of computer applications is that they can play back the notes utilizing current technologies in synthesis and sampling. Therefore, what was originally composed for strings could be played back as piano. Doing so often completely changes the impact of a piece, but sometimes something worthy emerges from the experiment. This is the case with this work - moving from the freedom of strings to the percussive piano with limitations on hand placement and flexibility.

The challenge of any transcription is making the work not only retain the original work's spirit, but add a new a viable characteristic to it. The staccato nature of "On the Playground" made it a natural piano work, but some of the counterpoint in the original had to be removed to improve playabilty.