SKU: PR.RE10129

ISBN 9790013101290.

SKU: PR.UE033039

UPC: 803452060659.

SKU: BU.EBR-532

ISBN 9790560154558. 9.45 x 13 inches.

Solo Piano III complète la trilogie des albums Solo Piano.

Comme tout acte final, y figurent des complications et des conséquences auxquelles succède l’urgence de franchir la ligne d’arrivée. Et comme ses prédécesseurs, l’album s’achève sur un happy end en do majeur mais le chemin est ponctué de plus de dissonances, de tension et d'ambiguïté.

Solo Piano (2004) est sorti à une époque plus innocente, où Chilly Gonzales faisait figure de pionnier dans l’évocation des genres classique et jazz sur le déclin, pour les pousser à cor et à cri dans le 21ème siècle. Cet album à la virtuosité fortuite a surpris tout le monde, y compris le génie musical autoproclamé.

Solo Piano II (2012) est apparu tel un petit chef-d'oeuvre pop pour un monde connecté, une transition vers une nouvelle réalité. Devenu showman légendaire et collaborateur d’artistes renommés et estimés (Drake, Daft Punk, Feist) Chilly Gonzales y dévoilait une collection de morceaux accrocheurs et raffinés, visant à plaire, montrant qu’il était prêt pour le prime time.
Ce second opus a assurément satisfait un public grandissant et toujours plus avide des miniatures imparfaitement parfaites de Gonzo.

Solo Piano III surgit à un point d’inflexion plus problématique.

Les collaborations se poursuivent (Room 29 avec Jarvis Cocker, Ibeyi, Toddla T...) mais Chilly Gonzales ne cherche plus à plaire. A présent, il laisse les fausses notes. Les mystérieux accords et les structures singulières deviennent addictifs et finissent par résonner de façon inéluctable. La première édition du Gonzervatory, école de musique éphémère vient de s’achever et le professeur est redevenu l’étudiant qu’il a toujours été et sera toujours, n’ayant aucune crainte de laisser la musique parler pour elle-même.

La pureté musicale de Solo Piano III n'est pas un antidote à notre époque, elle reflète toute la beauté et la laideur qui nous entoure.


Ce recueil de partitions rassemble une sélection de 9 pièces de l'album fidèlement transcrites. Ces transcriptions révéleront pour beaucoup une fine mécanique musicale souvent trompeuse ou même invisible à l'écoute. Leur édition a exigé de faire des choix, le premier étant de proposer aux pianistes des partitions aussi confortables que possible.

En bonus, les partitions de 2 titres extraits de l'album Chambers, une respiration Solitaire et un happy end Cello ni majeur, ni mineur, mais en mode à 2 (Duo Piano / Violoncelle).

SKU: PR.110418490

ISBN 9781491137260. UPC: 680160690022.

Carter Pann writes, the piece might have been titled Three Improvisations, but there is an expressive inertia baked in to these works which makes them truer as rhapsodies. This description tells us much about the work, whose movements are an enterprising tango, a bombastic central movement with virtuosic thrust, and a and a hymn heard from afar without any sense of marked time.
Three Rhapsodies was commissioned by the American Composers Forum with complete support from the Thelma E. Hunter Fund. The premiere performance took place in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York by pianist Marina Lomazov.As with all of my piano works, this was very much an at-the-piano compositional experience. As a pianist I cannot imagine writing a solo work away from the instrument (though at times that would be quite convenient).The whole work explores a palette of impassioned emotions – sometimes veiled, sometimes emboldened, or even outrageous at times. There are technical freedoms in each movement, allowing the pianist to stretch their interpretive inclinations to great lengths. In this way the piece might have been titled Three Improvisations, but there is an expressive inertia baked in to these works which make them truer as rhapsodies.The first movement is a tango with real wanderlust. The second reminds me of Rachmaninoff’s Polka de W.R. in its bombast, but also Chopin’s sixteenth prelude with its sheer virtuosic thrust. The third is a hymn heard from afar with no rhythmic drive, only sheened sonority.

SKU: PR.140401330

ISBN 9781491134412. UPC: 680160684939.

Nathaniel Dett was among America’s leading composers in the early 20th century, and MAGNOLIA SUITE is a beautiful example of his rich, hybrid style. Deeply inspired by the music and mission of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dett’s piano music springs from the late Romantic traditions of florid texture and embellishment, along with programmatic titles and raw emotion. It is notable for melody writing inspired by and paraphrasing African-American song. The 18-minute MAGNOLIA SUITE contains five movements, any of which may also be performed separately. This edition by Lara Downes provides a clean, new engraving that corrects the many errors and unclear indications appearing in the historical printing.
Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in a place that was built on freedom. The little village of Drummondville, Ontario was founded by enslaved Africans – Dett’s ancestors among them – who traveled the Underground Railroad out of the American South into Canada. Their journey brought them to a safe haven, a place where fortunes and futures could be transformed in the span of one generation, to lives full of new possibilities. You could call it “the place where the rainbow ends,” which is the title of the last movement of Dett’s Magnolia Suite.When Dett wrote these pieces, he was a young teacher at Lane College in Tennessee, a historically Black college that had been founded in 1882, the year of his birth. A place built on freedom, with the purpose of educating newly-emancipated slaves – a place designed to nurture the blossoming of ideas, the vibrant flowering of minds set free. This music is inspired by the gorgeous splendor of the magnolia blooms on that college campus, and also by the shared histories, experiences, and aspirations of the community that Dett found there.These five pieces pay affectionate tribute to lineage and legacy. They express gratitude for the bittersweet beauties of the present; nostalgia for the past (a bit romanticized, as the past always is); and an effervescent optimism for the future that awaits us in the place where the rainbow ends.