The album Eno Piano will be released by InFiné on November 10, 2023. Additional tracks will be released in 2024. My new album got started with a question: Is it possible to play Music for Airports on the piano? Brian Eno’s original studio recording contains a lot of piano sounds, but they are manipulated, redistributed, dehumanized, or rehumanized. And then there are long, long sustained tones. The … [Read more...]
Digging to France
When I tell a U.S. colleague about several concerts I'm playing in France he says: "You're Jerry Lewis!" The French, it's true, have a long tradition of appreciating U.S culture, and yes, that silly American comedian/auteur was highly venerated in France, perhaps more so than in the U.S. The French public have had a great love of jazz from America, and American movies. Earlier, there was a taste for ragtime, and minstrelsy. Today, American-style … [Read more...]
Loopy
Walking down the sidewalk, I sometimes fasten on a phrase from a classical piece in my mind's ear. I make it into a loop. Over and over I hear it, hum it, sing it, effectively turning the bit of music by Beethoven, or Mozart, Gershwin, Schoenberg, or Radiohead into minimalism. I go through the phrase dozens of times. I'm stuck on it and in it -- an obsessive, vastly-extendable run-on sentence, an earworm. Did people used to do this? Strolling … [Read more...]