Virg Dzurinko. Watercolor by Anne Watkins © 2008.

A number of listeners were so captivated by pianist Virg (rhymes with urge) Dzurinko’s solo album, Fun City (New Artists Records, 1999), that they wrote to the label asking how they could acquire the sheet music. They wanted to dive into the voluptuous shadows of “Swimming in the Dark,” float in the tender luminosity of “Another City,” with its final poignant dissonance. They wanted to see how she so completely transforms “Darn That Dream” over and over, and what makes her block chords go in two directions at once in “Quitting Time.” They needed to get a look at the map for the prickly “Traffic and Weather Together.”

Imagine their surprise—were Dzurinko to send it to them—when they discover that, except for the title at the top, the sheet music comprises blank page after blank page. That’s because every track—9 standards and 12 originals—is entirely improvised from beginning to end.

What’s telling in the requests for the sheet music is how coherent each of these tracks is in establishing feeling and narrative. For all their illuminated divagations, they sound as if they could have been written out or at least sketched out in advance. They’re complete and beautiful. But until she sat down at the piano, Dzurinko had no more idea than the man in the moon what was going to happen.

But happen it did. Continue reading →