Morgan Gabriel D’Arcy is a classical pianist, a British Lord and a vampire. He has everything–except Isabeau.

For centuries, he has cherished a dream—a race of immortal crossbreeds possessing vampire strength and human morals. Ambition is not his only motivation. Love is. When Isabeau, his chosen bride, was a child, he appeared to her as an angel and watched over her. As the Angel Gabriel predicted, Isabeau is now a brilliant geneticist. She has come of age, and Morgan is ready to marry her. However, many forces oppose them, not the least of which is Vampyre law. Mating between the human and Vampyre is prohibited–for a very good reason.

An enemy from Morgan’s distant past is stalking him. Paul D’Alembert seeks eye-for-an-eye justice, intending to kill Isabeau as once Morgan killed his beloved. In fact, his enemies are rapidly closing in on them. Will Morgan have time and an opportunity to make his dream come true—to sire a child on Isabeau? Will he outsmart his enemies, protect her and escape death himself? For the first time in eternity, the clock is ticking.

Sinners’ Opera was contracted yesterday by Double Dragon Publishing! This is a special book for me, and I’m delighted to see Morgan “on stage.”

If you'd like to see a man who looks like Morgan, check out the Gevalia coffee ads with Johann.  Yummy!

The New York Times Obituaries 2005:
SULTANOV -- Alexei. The House of Steinway & Sons notes with sadness the passing of the pianist Alexei Sultanov on June 30 in Fort Worth, Texas, at the age of 35.




I first heard this Russian-American classical pianist on KUHF, Houston's PBS station, playing Beethoven's Appassionata. At the end of the breathtaking piece, the DJ related Sultanov's tragic story. Captivated by his music and intrigued by the artist, I researched him on the internet.

Alexai Sultanov was born August 7, 1969. His father, Faizul Sultanov, was a cellist, his mother, Natalia Pogorelova was a violinist, and his grandmother was a well-known Uzbek actress. At the age of six, he began piano lessons in Tashkent with Tamara Popovich. Alexai made his formal debut at age seven.

In 1989, he competed in the Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. At the age of nineteen, he was the youngest in a field of thirty-eight. The prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, created by Fort Worth teachers in honor of Texan Van Cliburn, was first held in 1962 in Fort Worth. Four years earlier, during the height of the Cold War, Van Cliburn had won the International Tchaikovsky Competition held in Russia.

During the performance, a piano string snapped but Alexai finished his volcanic performance of selections from Liszt, Prokofiev and Chopin. But his critics were divided. In a newspaper interview, Denise Mullins, the Cliburn Foundation's artistic administrator, said, "He took things to the absolute edge of the cliff, and it was very exciting to hear. He wasn't afraid to take a chance on stage, and there aren't a lot of pianists who do that."

Sultanov was awarded First Prize--$15,000 in cash, a recital at Carnegie Hall, a recording contract, and sponsored tours in the U.S. and Europe—in one of the wealthiest competitions in the world. His career was launched.

However, his originality and daring expression worked both for him and against him.
(Continued 4/26/07)

A video of Alexei playing the Appassionata is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI4qFLfVmR8.

Do you see any similarity among Black Sabbath, Wagner's Gotterdammerung, West Side Story and the theme song of The Simpsons?

All rely on tritones. This restless, dissonant interval spans three whole tones (for example the diminished fifth or augmented fourth). Dating from the Middle Ages, the tritone was the development of Guido of Arezzo, nicknamed Diabolus in Musica, meaning the Devil in music

A rich myth surrounds the tritone—that the Church attempted to eradicate the sounds from its music because it invoked a sexual response and was genuinely the work of the Devil.

In an article on BBC News, Professor John Deathridge, King Edward professor of music at King's College London, states:

"In medieval theology you have to have some way of presenting the devil. Or if someone in the Roman Catholic Church wanted to portray the crucifixion, it is sometimes used there."

"But there were musical treatises and sets of rules produced that did come to forbid the use of the interval, which was seen as wrong when it came up in choruses of monks.

"There are strict musical rules. You aren't allowed to use this particular dissonance. It simply won't work technically, you are taught not to write that interval. But you can read into that a theological ban in the guise of a technical ban."

In the Romantic period, composers began using the tritone freely, exploiting the evil connotations. Liszt uses it to suggest hell in his Danta Sonata. Tritones were important in the development of jazz tertian harmony.

But to this day, the much maligned tritone suggests an evil, oppressive or scary meaning in music.