Frank LaRocca

These, the opening lines of Dante's epic, Inferno, describe a man who realizes that somewhere along the path of his life he has taken a wrong turn. This realization comes to him, though, only after he finds himself surrounded by a forbidding darkness, all his familiar signposts gone.

It may surprise people when composers say that they didn't have a clear idea of what they were doing in a piece until they were well into it, or even until after it had been written, but this happens more often than you might think. For me, writing a piece of music is very much a process of discovery. What one discovers, though , can be quite unexspected. During the composition of The Right Road Lost I found myself working with extreme, jarring contrasts and ideas that seemed to express a powerful sense of yearning, a restless questioning. I gradually came to the realization that I was, in fact, composing a kind of diary and that the piece was actually a mirror of my own inner life at that time. From that point forward, I just let the piece take on a life of its own and did not attempt to impose the kind of linear flow on it that I might have in other circumstances and with other pieces. It is therefore somewhat episodic in structure, moving from one scene to another, always searching, always seeking answers yet always finding, instead, more questions.

The Right Road Lost is dedicated to my wife, Lucia, whose name means 'light', and who helped me find my way out those dark woods.