SCATTERED LIGHT by pianist Russell Hirshfield presents a curated program of American music for solo piano, featuring world premieres of commissioned works by Timo Andres and Mary Ellen Childs. The album takes its title from Childs’s Scattered Light, a piece inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s meditation on light that scatters and is lost in water and air, giving the world its depth of blue. Adding to this theme, Andres’s Colorful History is an extended chaconne suffused with historical allusions. Bookended by the moody, emotional landscapes of Tobias Picker, the release explores diverse musical characters through Libby Larsen’s 4 ½ – A Piano Suite and selections from Carter Pann’s The Piano’s 12 Sides.