Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I attempted to sleep in a different room in my home last night. The slight variances in the hum, buzz and whoosh of appliances, wind, passing vehicles and furnace were just different enough to forestall sleep. Much as I was thrown off by the ambient noise, I’m obsessed with the varied sonic textures of three solo piano recordings released in the first couple weeks of 2021.
The splashy sound of Behzod Abduraimov’s Debussy Chopin Mussorgsky resembles a raging torrent on the precipice of a waterfall. The more conventional sound field of Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, a compelling new recital by MinJung Baek, possesses the resonance of a concert hall. The treated instrument played by Raffaele Grimaldi on John Cage: In a Landscape/Dream/Haiku sounds more like a harp than a piano on “Dream.” Elsewhere, the 21-minute EP emphasizes the manipulated components of the apparatus.
Jason Moran further advances pianistic evolution on his forthcoming solo album The Sound Will Tell You by applying “a filter to allow the sound (to) cast a shadow” on some tracks. The wealth of possibilities inherent in the seemingly staid instrument remains staggering. I intend to have sweet dreams about the only live ticket I’m holding: a fourth-row center seat I purchased at a steep discount for a rescheduled Daniil Trifonov concert in 2022.
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I review Blob Castle’s La Tierra Se Está Doblando at the Kansas City jazz blog Plastic Sax.