Sandpaintings: Piano Book

These 16 pieces offer a rare opportunity to introduce students to a living composer's voice while engaging authentically with Navajo cultural imagery and values. The collection resists exoticization by grounding each piece in specific traditional elements (stones, clouds, lightning, mountains) rather than generalizing, and the intermediate-to-early-advanced level makes the music accessible without sacrificing artistic substance.

Contemplative and grounded, with moments of restless energy. These pieces invite you into the quietness of observation—the patient watching of natural phenomena and the meditative practice of creating sacred art. The piano becomes both storyteller and landscape, translating stone, sky, and storm into sound.

Intermediate to early-advanced pianists seeking repertoire that challenges technical skills while offering meaningful cultural learning. Students and teachers looking to expand their understanding of contemporary piano writing and Diné artistic traditions will find both musical rigor and educational depth here.

• Listen to recordings of traditional Navajo music and study images of actual sandpaintings before learning each piece. Visual and sonic familiarity with the source material will deepen your interpretive choices and help you convey the cultural resonance Chee intends.
• Pay close attention to dynamic shape within individual phrases rather than relying on sudden dynamic changes. Many of these pieces evoke the gradual, deliberate work of creating sandpaintings, where restraint and subtle coloration matter more than dramatic contrasts.
• Explore the pedal carefully in each piece. Chee's harmonic language often depends on the wash of sound created by selective pedal use, so experiment with half-pedal and changing the pedal mid-phrase to maintain clarity while preserving resonance.
• Treat rubato and tempo flexibility as integral to the music's character, not ornamental. Allow space for breathing between sections, especially where the piece mimics natural phenomena like clouds moving or lightning striking.

Program individual pieces alongside other contemporary works that explore cultural themes, or present several pieces from the collection in recital to create a cohesive arc around the traditions inspiring them. This music works equally well as study material in a piano repertoire class focused on 21st-century composers or as performance material for a recital centered on cultural heritage and musical dialogue.

• Interpreting contemporary piano idiom with cultural context
• Pedal control and harmonic resonance in modern classical writing
• Tempo flexibility and phrase-based rubato
• Sight-reading moderately complex rhythmic and harmonic material at the intermediate-advanced level
• Understanding the relationship between visual/spiritual source material and musical expression