My first piano étude is on its surface and in its technical approach a tribute the great Polish pianist-composer of the 19th century, Frédéric Chopin. I have not been shy to borrow techniques, working them out in my own stylistic idiom, and have even included several shameless references to his own etudes, particularly Op. 10, No. 5 (“Black Key”), and Op. 10, No. 12 (“Revolutionary”). The work is composed in three sections (fast-slow-fast), and is rhythmically and harmonically inflected by various forms of popular music (also quite shamelessly), though not without excursions into dissonance, rhythmic irregularities, modal mixture, and other devices from the tool-belt of the contemporary classical composer. In this sense, I challenged myself in composing this piece to bring together the many musical influences of my own life and synthesize them into a single work, without a sense that these things don't belong together. On a deeper level, the work represents a spiritual journey, beginning in a place of beauty, confidence, and momentum, until eventually it spins out of control and finds itself lost and in a very dark place. After a time of searching through this dark "labyrinth," a low point is reached, wherein which some deep, inner power is stirred, which then rises, breaks out of the abyss, and takes flight toward the work's ultimate fulfillment.