Composer Scott Wheeler writes that he has “always used the piano as a sketch pad, a place to explore ideas in two-minute pieces that might turn up in other forms in larger works. Bach, Chopin, Shostakovich and others organized their small keyboard works systematically. Mine have just accumulated over the years, as I suspect is true for Grieg, Scarlatti, and my teacher Virgil Thomson. In fact, Virgil’s particular version of the 'sketchbook' method of writing short pieces was to write musical portraits 'from life,' in the manner of his visual artist friends. I was myself a subject of one of Virgil’s portraits, in 1981”. Portraits and Tributes presents 27 of Wheeler's short works, performed by Donald Berman, a pianist much admired for championing new and little-known music of the 20th and 21st centuries.