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Two Recordings: Goldberg, and Andres' Shy and Mighty :: 3.30.2010

I'm very happy to tell you about two exciting recording projects:

The first involves recording the Goldberg Variations of Bach on a 100 year old German salon piano, with some creative preparations to the instrument deployed in the repeat sections. The idea for the project comes from the artist Patrick Bernatchez of Montreal, and we've been working intensively on developing ideas and experimenting with the charming piano we procured... it has a lavishly beautiful tone, and we are having fun making it sound like a harpsichord, an organ, and even like an electric guitar, using a specially built amplification system. Eventually, my recording will be used as part of a complex multi-media art work, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a chance to explore the question: at what point does Bach's music stop being Bach? Bach wrote his keyboard music understanding that it would be realized on many different instruments... the specific sound was necessarily an abstract concern to him, and so the experiment is actually implicit in the music.
Then, next month is an event I'm really looking forward to. My good friend and fellow ivory pounder Timo Andres will give a concert in New York (May 17 at Le Poisson Rouge) to kick off the release of the CD we recorded together last year, which introduces his hour-long "album" for two pianos, called Shy and Mighty. This is very exciting for us both, as the company is none other than Nonesuch Records, and they've done a wonderful job making it sound shy when it needs to be shy and mighty when it needs to be mighty. They've put up a press release for the disc here.

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