During the summer of 2000, just after I graduated from college, I was invited to perform a solo recital at the Festival of the Hamptons on Long Island, NY. The festival's director, Lukas Foss (1922-2009), prefaced the invitation with the condition that I play a piano sonata by Donald Harris (born 1931), his friend and colleague. I did, and then met Harris immediately following the recital. Although I had finally met Harris in person, I had first discovered him through this music, his first professional composition finished in Paris in 1957. This Sonata is Harris' first independently composed work, completed after he left Nadia Boulanger's studio and before he began working with Max Deutsch. In Harris' own words, he loved every note; he caressed every note, and he felt liberated to compose freely in a style of his own choosing after an unremarkable start with Boulanger.