Here's another one of Monet's Waterloo Bridge paintings for visual reference

View the whole series here

The composition is broken up in three parts, taking the listener through the experience of viewing this piece in a gallery. The first part opens the piece with the viewer meandering through the gallery, glancing at pieces around her. When she arrives at the Monet, she stops, and the second part portrays the viewing process, based on my experience when I first analyzed this piece in my art history class last semester. At first glance, I just saw a wash of color. Then the arches became more pronounced, and the entirety of the scene slowly came into view, and I was able to imagine the depths of the water, and the subtle light of the sun rising over the river. Finally, the last part closes the piece with the viewer again wandering through the rest of the gallery.

The piece originally was just the second part standing alone (starting at 3:00), but I was asked to lengthen the piece for the program and so I added the opening and closing segments to give the piece more context. There were definitely a bunch of bumps and mess-ups in the performance, but hey, it was fun to have an excuse to get on the piano and create something with a prompt. Another note-to-self, in addition to doing some more speed sketching in the coming days, I should also do some "speed improvisation" (?) on the piano.