About The 52
The 52 was a creative challenge in which I released a new single every week for a year. The project launched with the release of She Dreams of Flight in March of 2019, and each subsequent Monday unveiled the next track in the project.
Most of The 52 are original pieces of solo piano music, usually structured compositions but occasionally improvisations. For variety and creative experimentation, some weeks are cover songs, adaptations, multi-instrument works, and collaborations with other artists.
Each piece of The 52 is released with its own unique artwork and the story behind the composition.
Click or tap the artwork to see it in high-resolution, read about each piece, and discover a link to listen on all major platforms.
A reflection on the beauty of human dreaming and the wild joys we all dream for ourselves.
This piece was inspired by YOU, dear listener, and the way your support and encouragement warms my heart.
This is Rachel's interpretation of a well-known and much loved classic, showing her roots in classical music.
A tribute to the incandescently joyful and powerful feminine essence.
Hand-Built Dream was inspired by a visit with my friend and fellow pianist Greg Maroney at his home in rural Pennsylvania. The idyllic, bucolic musical sanctuary he and his partner have created for themselves was such a magical, shining place that I began writing this piece on his Steinway.
Rachel creates a medley of some of the show's best music. She also covers the iconic theme song.
Skyscraper Sunrise is quite unlike anything I’ve written before. The inspiration for the music came while staying with some friends in a Seattle high-rise. Looking out of their vast windows as the sun rose, I saw the sky lightening, shining on metal and glass as rain water sparkled on rooftops and in the streets below. And I saw the constant flow of traffic and people on the move as the city came to life. The contrast between the vast tranquility of the sky and the bustle of human activity inspired me to go to the piano and create this vast, meditative piece.
She Unfolds in Bright Color is a celebration of the vibrant, passionate, creative feminine.
Unconditional is a piece of music inspired by my belief in the human capacity for unconditional love.
"Haere Rā" means "farewell" in Te Reo Maori, the language of the Maori. As an American expat living in New Zealand, I have an intimate relationship with the experience of saying goodbye to people I love. It's a human universal: we all bid farewell to people that matter to us in this life. It's never easy, but it's always important.
In this piece, I envision a wild wind roaming the coastlines of the world. Sometimes warm and gentle, sometimes frigid and fierce, I imagine all the beautiful, mysterious places and things this wind has seen. The many people it has enwrapped, the stories it could tell. This is my first improvised release.
The solo piano piece takes the listener on a journey through the grey mist of loneliness and grief, while the Mike Bloemendal remix adds the sweetness of an embrace that lifts the veil and lends some shine to the solitude.
To Catch a Dream is meant to be uplifting, to capture the spirit behind the restless dreamer that is inside all of us, the part of our humanity that allows us to build castles in the clouds.
This music started running through my head as I was sitting outside in the garden towards the end of summer, listening to the cicadas. I love hearing their little voices, but cicadas live only for a short while when the days are long and warm. On this particular day, I noticed that their song was quieter and had fewer voices than prior days, and a wave of sadness came over me as I realized their time to be gone was nearly here. I sat with that sadness for a while before settling into the realization that all of life is like that, and love as well, and it’s important to sing with all our hearts while we can…just like the cicadas.
“Something to set the tone for a frightful journey”. Lead Me Through Twilight is my second improv, and it’s inspired by a fan suggestion. Quiet, searching, mournful, and a bit spooky…take my hand and I will lead you through the murk of dusk. Hold on tight.
Can you imagine a child’s wonder and awe at experiencing the world? That sparkly, magical feeling of seeing something incredibly beautiful for the first time? In this piece, I wanted to see if I could share that feeling with you through my music.
As a child of the 80’s, I played Tetris on the NES a LOT. And that theme song is one of the stickiest ear worms I’ve ever encountered: it’ll pop up when I’m cleaning house or puttering in my garden and I know that tune will be with me for days. Soooo I decided to write a cover song of it. The Tetris theme song is based on a Russian folk song called Korobeiniki, so this is technically a cover of that original folk song. I think you’ll be able to hear the Russian influences!
I wrote Survey the Wreckage as a musical vigil for the victims of the Christchurch terror attacks in March 2019. Dwell with me in sadness, mourning, and empathy.
In Some Kind of Heaven, I tried to capture what it’s like to gaze into a loved one’s eyes and see a slice of heaven. Tender, sparkling, and safe. I hope you’ll feel held by this music in the same way you’d be held safely in a lover’s arms.
I wrote Hold Me about our human need for loving touch, and the longing we feel when we’ve gone too long without being held by a loved one.
Embrace the Dance is about fully engaging with the emotional experience of being human. From the joy of welcoming a new life or a new love, to the grief of losing a life or a love, I believe it’s deeply important that we fully engage with all of it. Part of what makes our humanity so beautiful is the depth with which we can feel the ups and downs of life.
Confluence is a solo piano piece about passion. It’s about the fall. It’s about powerful energies swirling together. White-hot intensity, fear, delight, and excitement. Hold on for the ride. Confluence is the first movement of the Ignite Saga, a three-movement work about the experience of falling in love.
As the echoes of passion in Confluence fade, In the Dawnlight shifts to soft, romantic discovery - adoration and gentleness. The beautiful experience of seeing the person you love and being seen by them in turn. In the Dawnlight is the second movement of the Ignite Saga, a three-movement work about the experience of falling in love.
Passion, discovery, and now what? Where will it lead? We can never know what the future holds. Into the Unknown is about the courage it takes to move forward anyway. Into the Unknown is the third movement of the Ignite Saga, a three-movement work about the experience of falling in love.
Just Beyond the Horizon is my first piano+cello piece, and my first time releasing music that I’ve written for something other than solo piano. This music is soulful, sweeping, and epic...take my hand, tap the play button, and come on a journey with me.
Stormstruck rises from hauntingly gentle to become an intense, metal-esque ride by 4 hands and one grand piano. Rachel LaFond and Scott D. Davis team up to attack the piano from a rock perspective, adding a guitar pick and string-muting to forge a rock sound larger than the piano itself.
Evanescent is a rich tapestry of piano+flute composed in collaboration with flutist Al Jewer. It began with a solo piano piece of mine, then Al was inspired to compose and perform an absolutely beautiful, many-layered flute counterpart to the piano. You will hear the silver concert flute, the Native American flute, and even an ethereal ‘flute cloud’ in the middle of the piece: six flutes played at once, mixed to make them sound especially magical and floaty.
Allow yourself to be enticed into the depths by this haunting, soulful solo piano waltz.
Wind your way through this haunting, reflective piece, like smoke twining upwards from a crackling fire. A perfect accompaniment to a twilight day or a moody evening.
Imagine exploring a familiar landscape on a dark, moonless night. The well-worn pathways are harder to see. You might get lost. You might discover something new. Have you ever had this experience in the landscape of your mind? What new understanding might you find in the darkness?
This piece is a tranquil, uplifting meditation about letting go of those things that are not meant for us. There is something freeing in allowing ourselves to see when it is time to stop holding on to something. By gently accepting “what is”, we can be fully present with ourselves and the world around us.
Rain is falling as the sun is shining down, creating a sparkling rainbow effect in the falling droplets. How wondrous to witness this magical, ephemeral phenomenon! The rain may become intense, even stormy, but the clouds are moving so quickly it’s only a moment before the sunshine is glittering through once again.
Sometimes there are moments that you wish you could just freeze in time. If only you could reach out and take hold of those moments and put them in your pocket to cherish forever. But the nature of human experience is that these moments are fleeting: they slip through our fingers even as we experience the joy of them. This piece captures that beautiful duality: the uplifting happiness of these moments and the sadness in knowing they will soon become memories.
Longing but peaceful: this piece takes the listener on a graceful flight over the endless waves. Can you feel the beautiful loneliness, drifting on the wind?
What Are You Running From is about the human tendency to turn away from those aspects about ourselves we dislike the most, to run from our own darkness, desperately trying not to see it. Fiercely trying to deny it. The tragedy is this: if we do not pull these fragments of our selves out of the fog, raise them into the light, examine and understand them, we risk letting them run our lives. We risk allowing that darkness to define who we are and how we treat others.
Coventry Carol is a traditional English carol from the 16th century, and is one of my very favorite holiday songs. I’ve always loved its haunting beauty, a mood which is uncommon in holiday music.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is another of my favorite holiday melodies because of its mysterious yet powerful exploration of the minor key. My arrangement expands on these attributes, building naturally from a soft and poignant beginning into something quite passionate and dynamic.
A fresh take on a classic and a major first for me: I’ve set the piano aside to bring you this ethereal a capella arrangement of Silent Night. Instead of the traditional lyrics, I created a wordless three-voice harmony, then recorded myself singing each part. Let me sing you into the holiday spirit!
If you’re an 80s or 90s child, this cover of Backstreet Boys’ iconic megahit ‘I Want it That Way’ will really take you back (see what I did there?). It’s every bit as catchy as a solo piano piece, but I won’t tell if you sing along anyway!
A sparklingly uplifting piece to greet the new year and the new decade, It’s Never Too Late to Start Fresh is perfect background music for a meditation on new resolutions and goals, a vision of a positive and empowered future.
Look up and get lost in the clouds. Far above our heads, they are so distant, yet we see reflections of our own minds in their lines and contours. This solo piano piece is mysterious, drifting, and atmospheric, just like the shapes overhead.
A sweet waltz with a country-western vibe and a charming sway, this piano piece is bound to put a tender smile on your face and a lightness in your heart.
Imagine yourself snug in a mountain cabin at night, fire blazing, gazing out the window as it begins to snow. Perhaps you step outside to feel the flakes on your skin, the cool air wrapping your body. What begins as a soft, gentle fall of flakes thickens in swirls and drifts as the wind picks up. The fierceness of the blizzard sweeps in, and soon you can’t see anything but a swirl of white.
Imagine yourself sitting quietly in a secluded forest glade, watching a small stream flow by, listening to the birdsong, and feeling the sun warm your body. Allowing yourself simply to BE. A Still Place is about those little moments of sweet solitude and peace.
We weave realities for ourselves and sometimes even for others, like a spider weaving a web that can add to the beauty of our world but can also represent dangerous entrapment. We have a powerful ability as humans to weave reality with shadow or with light - sometimes we even use both at the same time.
Just imagine her...dancing across the sky, balancing and leaping over the most beautiful and unsettlingly insubstantial of surfaces, skimming across a plane untouched by other humans... She Dances on Cloudtops is an uplifting and dreamy solo piano piece in 5/4 time, which gives it a unique sense of floaty movement combined with forward drive.
Soft, tender, and deeply personal, To the Moon and Back is an intimate love song I wrote for my life and business partner David. Listen to the inner workings of my heart <3
She attempts to hold together the threads of her being, cradling one side with both hands as the other side unravels and begins to drift away. Perhaps it would be easier to simply surrender to the drift...
It’s gonna take all of us to make a better world. We can do it! May this inspirational solo piano piece be an opportunity to reflect on what part you can play.
A meditation on ferocity, determination, and courage. I imagine how Felix Baumgartner must have felt in the moment before he stepped off a platform at 128k feet to complete the highest skydive in the world. This solo piano piece is about the moment of collecting your thoughts, steeling yourself before something monumental, and preparing yourself for what is to come.
We all know that wonderful woman who sees everyone in the kindest light, who never sees bad intentions, even when they are directed at her. It is so beautiful and inspiring to witness, she is a person you perhaps aspire to be more like. ...and yet this spirit of generosity can open her up to being treated poorly by others: so beautiful, and sometimes quite tragic. This piece is my first blues composition.
When you believe your inner strength is tapped, used up, but you must call on it anyways. Beaten down, but not willing to give up. There have been times during this massive year-long project that I have felt this way. When I had to call on a strength I wasn’t sure would be there. Listen to hear what I found.
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