I composed Anxiety in gratitude to and admiration of the work of the American artist Rashid Johnson. Rashid Johnson's retrospective Rashid Johnson: A Poem For Deep Thinkers, the featured Guggenheim exhibition of 2025, incorporated a piano and a performance stage. I was extremely fortunate to be able to "activate the art installation" by performing Anxiety on the piano within Sanguine, Rashid Johnson’s installation artwork, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. I premiered Anxiety on November 23, 2025 at the Guggenheim.

Inspired by Johnson's multi-media artwork masterpiece Untitled Anxious Audience (2018), which is part of Johnson's Anxious Audience series, I was struck by the art's emotional intensity and Johnson's harrowing image of 15 human faces characterized by agitated scribble-like markings that incorporate ashes from burnt plant-matter from West-Africa, traditionally used in healing. Rashid Johnson has stated, in an “Interview with Rashid Johnson” by the Harbourfront Centre, Oct 18, 2019, that he created Anxious Audience to reflect the emotional world of anxiety, particularly that of being a Black American man in our flawed society and, especially, of his anxiety as a new father, who must help his innocent child navigate a world that has not evolved beyond racism and other threats. I feel that Rashid Johnson's work is like a lightning rod that bravely illuminates and does not shy away from difficult topics that are crucial to the lives of Black people and to all society members who care. By not averting his gaze from the pain and anxiety, Rashid Johnson shares his personal journey and, I believe, provides us an opportunity to move toward true healing and change.

My piano piece Anxiety uses several musical ideas and motifs to embody the multi-layered emotions elicited in me by Johnson's work. For example, the principle theme of Anxiety utilizes falling seconds, which represent sighs of distress and sorrow, as well as the tense feeling of anxiety that the artwork evokes, in my experience of it. Harmonies in the very low register of the piano (such as in measures 102-118) create a further sense of angst, while minor and major seconds throughout the piece evoke a dissonant sense of unease. Note that the ending of Anxiety is a recapitulation of the opening musical theme, but that it dissipates, without a completion of the melody, paralleling the unanswered questions that Johnson's artwork evokes for me. Such as: For those carrying the weight of our society's shortcomings, prejudices, and entrenched racism, does the exhaustive weight of anxiety ever end?

Notes copyright Theodore Tavi Hein 2026, All Rights Reserved