It is still a surprise to discover how few classical musicians are familiar with Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist who ventured into the American South (and elsewhere) to record the soul of a land. Those scratchy recordings captured everyone from Muddy Waters to a whole slew of anonymous blues musicians.
White Lies for Lomax dreams up wisps of distant blues fragments - more fiction than fact, since they are hardly honest recreations of the blues - and lets them slowly accumulate to an assertive climax. This short but dense homage ends with the sounds of a Lomax field recording floating in from an off-stage radio, briefly crossing paths with the cloud-like remnants of the workÕs opening. The seemingly recent phenomenon of sampling - grabbing a sound-bite from a song and incorporating it into something new - is in fact a high-tech version of the very old practice of allusion or parody, and the inclusion of "Dollar Maime" at the end is a nod to that tradition.
In the final minute of this work, an optional off-stage boombox can be used to play the included CD - a field recording of "Dollar Maime" as recorded by Alan Lomax. At the indicated moment (measure ), the pianist simply nods to someone in the wings of the concert hall who begins the CD. No special equipment is necessary, though it is preferable that the playback device be a small portable system offstage rather than house speakers. (The performer will better hear the recording that way.) If it is not possible to secure a boombox, this component of the work can be left out. It makes for a magical final minute, but it is not absolutely necessary.