Expressions, Nightscape

[Nightscape]

Here are three little improvisations that I have grouped together under the name "Expressions".

[ted]

These I find most attractive, Jeremy, and the third is a good foil to the other two. I found myself listening in amost the same way as I do when hearing Chinese zither music. Indeed, the pieces have much in common with Sung landscape painting. Economy of material, organic form, deft brush strokes, as it were, sometimes succeed where complexity and intellect fail. In the first two, there is intense sadness, perhaps a recollection of someone or something gone. Then the third reasserts the life force, making a pleasing trio.

I always happily anticipate your variety of chord, not because of variety alone, anybody can play masses of different chords, but because you seem to pick on one or two poignant changes and make them part of the form - again, like the figures in a Sung landscape. My private term for this is a harmonic cell, and you use them very well indeed.

How deeply do you think about your improvisations before putting hands to keys ? What are you aware of before commencement ? I am often aware of many details which I know will come out - it's just the how and when which playing decides. In these first two, it is almost as if certain lyrics, sentences or perhaps just words, were going through your mind and being translated into piano phrases. I thought at several points that a simultaneous, but not coincident, solo voice would not have been amiss.

The only criticism I have does not concern the music. For some reason, although the bass was coming out well, a certain range of treble sounded rather steely and peculiar. Maybe your microphone was in a funny position ?

Excellent work ! These have gone onto my "keep" CD.

[Nightscape]

Thats a very interesting comparison, Ted.  I didn't know that the Chinese had zithers - thought that was just Greek.

Anyways, as far as your question goes, I try to think of a figuration or a melodic fragment or two before I start improvising.  This way, the improvisation has a sense of unity.  The longer the improv, the more of these I have to use.  For example, in the first improv here (labeled expressions2), I decided to use large arpeggiated chords, and also to have the texture quite sparse.  I also made the decision to make it completely "pan-diatonic" (there are no accidentals - it uses only the white keys of the keyboard.)

For that particular improv, I had no melodic idea in mind to start with, but I did for the second and third improvs listed here.  Another decision I wanted to make in the third was to have it contrast with the first two and also to have elements of bitonality in it.

I always try to be flexible though - a melodic idea that I had preconceived often changes over the course of an improvisation.

[quasimodo]

Hey here's something absolutely amazing : I was listening to Chopin's Etude Op.10 N.6 while downloading Expressions 1, then I listened to the latter and, the effect was just great, same rhytmic pattern, same ambiance.

Maybe you are a Chopin's reincarnation.

Great stuff !!