I am excited to announce that, after many years in the works, piano album no. 2 will shortly be let loose into the world. It’s called Sun and Moon, Sea and Land and is loosely inspired by Herman Hesse’s 1930 novel Narcissus and Goldmund and that story’s themes of time passing, mortality, beauty and adventure. It’s out on November 29th.
I compose music nearly every day in some form or other, but it took me a long time to write this album and follow up my earlier piano records Shape in the Clouds (now rerecorded as Reshaping the Clouds) and Evening Chorus. This album was the result of a long period of consideration about what I can bring to the world of piano music, and thus reflects some technical, stylistic and compositional shifts that I made in this process. It emerges from a long and educative meander around more lavish orchestrations and subtle electroacoustics before an eventual return to the stark honesty of the solo piano – the fall of the hammers, the squeak of the pedal and even the odd (hopefully subtle!) mistake. I found the process of composing and recording these pieces enriching, liberating and at times cathartic. I hope that whoever out there listens to them finds something of those qualities in the music for themselves, too.
I’ve created CDs for the album which feature beautiful artwork by Yuka Matsuhashi and an elegant design by Sam O’Donovan Jones. Everything is available to preorder on Bandcamp and, from the 29th November, the music will be available on your music store of choice. I’ve also transcribed all the pieces to sheet music which I’ll potentially publish at some point.
