The Gnome Staircase

Solo Piano Composition

In Behind the Chimney, the first track in the conceptual album for in-development musical “The Gnome Staircase”, a mother of a newborn thinks about the life that she wished she could have had, and how she settled for being what everyone else expected of her. She feels lost, because her child has just been stolen by gnomes from behind the chimney.

Now, in The Gnome Staircase, she flings open the portal to the titular staircase, descending in an atonal cacophony with all of the other lost souls who seek answers from the gnomes, or to retrieve what was stolen from them. As she descends, she casts off the masks and roles that she played for others, emerging at the end of the song as the fantasy hero she always wanted to be: dressed in black, with a sword at her side, and a bandana around her head.

This is intended to be a chorus number, setting up the various people who put on new masks as they descend, becoming helpers, hinderers, or even losing themselves and forever becoming gnomes.