Sandy's Portrait (2013) is part of my ongoing collection of 'Portraits', which started with Eli's Portrait in 2004. In 2013, I was asked by the chairman of the guitar department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Prof. Thomas Patterson, to write a piece in memory of Dr. Sanford Bolton (Sandy) who was a guitar aficionado and strong supporter of the classical guitar program of the University. I had the opportunity of meeting Sandy a year ago before he passed away, and I had a chance to chat with him a little bit, discovering many things about his fascinating life and his love for music and the guitar. Sandy's Portrait is written in three movements and it is based upon the name of the dedicatee. The technique that I use to create a theme based on someone's name is to set the seven notes to a diatonic scale ABCDFG into a diagram and then to overlay this diagram with the 23 letters of the alphabet. So as first step, I submitted Sandy's name to that diagram. Sandy Bolton's name came up with the set of notes EAGDC for Sandy and BAEFAG for Bolton. The second step was to run the set of notes though the different harmonic keys. I chose the key of E major carrying 4 sharps and got a better melodic shape with the altered notes EAG#D#C# for Sandy and BAEF#AG# for Bolton. After the theme was created, I just had to think of a form in which to write the piece. Remembering the conversation with Sandy, I started writing the Passacaglia, which carries Sandy's full name as a theme. After the Passacaglia was finished, I had the impression it needed more material around it to make it more compelling. So, naturally, the idea of a longer piece materialized. I imagined then a set of three pieces that could reflect Sandy's taste for Baroque, Romantic and Latin American music. Afterwards, by simply adding the ancient forms of Prelude and Toccata to the existing Passacaglia, I was able to accomplish my task. The idea of repeating the Passacaglia's theme in the last movement was obvious to me once it carried Sandy's name, but I couldn't leave the opening movement out of the picture. So, I decided to create a quasi 19th century romantic theme as the first movement that would serve as the one piece representing Sandy's taste for strong melodies and that could also be repeated and crossed with the Sandy's theme in the third and final movement. For the last movement, I chose the typical Brazilian rhythm of Baiao with its strong accents and exciting dance gestures. The third movement is, in fact, a free concept of the Toccata form, with a slow middle section inserted, rather unusually, into the very energetic and fast outer sections. This serves to blend the two main themes from the first and second movements of Sandy's Portrait using a system of call and response. 
Sergio Assad