On second thought at Blackbird Marsh

“Red-winged blackbird” photographed by Sanford Ross Bender in Huntington, Vermont on April 25, 2025
“On second thought at Blackbird Marsh” composed and performed with guitar, slide guitar, and concertina by Sanford Ross Bender on April 30, 2025.

The barest of minimums

“Walking pier” photographed at Harvey’s beach in Old Saybrook, Connecticut on October 20, 2024
:The barest of minimums” composed and performed with guitar and clarinet by Sanford Ross Bender on October 23, 2024

This instrumental may sound plaintive, but the more I listen, start to hear it as the breath of victory that arrives after an exhausting ordeal. It is an “on the road” piece in which the clarinet is only a student rental instrument that I play at a time when coincidentally my recording equipment also happens to not be performing properly. The guitar and clarinet improvise with sympathetic melodies that will never sound the same again; like hearing an invisible owl floating through the mist. SRB