learned to play this the other day, one of my favorite pieces of music.

Post-Classical

1 A Great Divide

Quartet N. 2

5 Opus 43

8 Opus 55

2 Opus 44

We Move Lightly

Flight from the City (Four Hands)

A Waste Land Companion is, as its title implies, an addendum to Boris Rogowski‘s
album The Waste Land which was released in February 2023 on Piano and Coffee
Records. A meditation on the infamous eponymous 1922 poem by T.S. Eliot, The
Waste Land traces its psychological journey through a barren world in search of lifegiving
water as well as its physical journey through London on the zenith of
Modernism.

During the recording sessions for the album—whose sound is characterised by the
interplay between a string quartet, flute and a collection of specifically created,
deeply warped and tape-weathered samples—over 20 pieces were recorded.
Rogowski had originally intended to use all of them in chronological order, beginning
with the famous part about April being the „cruellest month“. However, it turned out
that a shorter playlist and a strictly musical order worked better for the album.
Rogowski decided to focus on the string-centred pieces to give the album a dreamlike,
hypnotic pull. However, as he valued the shorter, piano-based pieces just as
much, the idea for a companion (mini) album was born almost immediately.

It was a most sensible decision: Chamber gems like „The Hyacinth Girl“ and „A
Wicked Pack of Cards“, mixing English folklore with nods to Richard Wagner’s Tristan
and Isolde, might have gotten lost between the dark, monolithic soundscapes of the
album. Here, however, framed by works for solo piano and harmonium, they are
allowed to shine. A Waste Land Companion begins and ends with two piano pieces
only loosely connected to T.S. Eliot’s poem: „Dear Jessie (to Jessie Laidlay Weston)“ is
an ethereal miniature in reverence of the brilliant English medievalist whose book
From Ritual to Romance, a historical examination of the King Arthur legend, greatly
influenced Eliot while working on The Waste Land. „Universe on a shoestring“ is even
serener, a kind of exhalation after a long and arduous journey. It was the last piece
Rogowski composed during his concluding writing session in the mountains of the
island of La Palma. Here, close to the GTC, the world’s largest optical telescope, the
universe seemed closer than anywhere else on earth—and the grim world of The
Waste Land already a distant memory.

Bandcamp

Dear Jessie (To Jessie Laidlay Weston)

Interlude: Mountain of Leaves

Forest In You

www.patreon.com/alicebaldwin

Für Rik. 
Experimenting with an old song idea. Trying not to mess it all up with the strings..

Freiheit wär viel lustiger

Bonus Track from the album 'The Journey Tapes' (Moderna Records, 2016).

Written by Ed Carlsen for Piano Day 2016

Hundrede Træer (Piano Day 2016)

Miracle, Mystery and Authority

A01 - Dustin O'Halloran - An Ending, A Beginning

Thomas Newman - Any other name

A quick iPhone recording of one of my favorite Philip Glass compositions. Sorry for the mistakes!

Philip Glass - Opening (from Glassworks)

A self-taught pianist from the age of 7, Dustin O’Halloran’s personal histories give us some clue to the thickly-woven tapestries of his music: he has lived in LA (where he studied art at Santa Monica College and formed the much-adored Devics with Sara Lov), Italy (in the depths of rural Emilia Romagna) and Berlin. His arresting, heartbreaking music is as much an elegant exercise in nuance and grace as it is a pure, intuitive, personal expression – and here is where we see some explanation into Dustin’s quiet rise to notoriety and his continued ascension.



Having gained serious recognition with his stunning score to Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette (which sits neatly alongside his soundtrack work for William Olsen’s An American Affair (2010) and Drake Doremus’ Sundance-winning Like Crazy (2011),



Dustin has quickly become one of the most recogniseable names in the broad-reaching “post-classical” field, a definition of the genre rather than vice-versa. Now sitting alongside peers and friends Max Richter, Hauschka and Johann Johannsson (who, incidentally, aided Dustin in mixing his newest album) on FatCat’s dedicated orchestral imprint 130701, new album Lumiere is a glowing addition to O’Halloran’s musical canon, at once an amalgamation of everything that his music has been leading up to, and an unprecedented step forwards in terms of timbral palette and harmony. Featuring NYC’s ACME Quartet, Stars Of The Lid’s Adam Wiltzie and prodigious young composer Peter Broderick among the guest musicians, the scale of Lumiere is expansive: “it made me realize how important it is to find players that truly understand what you do and to create a language with them,” writes Dustin.



Dustin’s rock background - primarily with Bella Union’s “dream-pop” outfit Devics – has yielded an unassuming, perceptive approach to composing modern classical pieces. Inspired by, among others, Arvo Part,  Philip Glass, Hans Otte, John Luther Adams, Olivier Messiaen, Ennio Morricone, Gavin Bryars, there is no lack of articulation or academic musicality in Dustin’s work, but there is also none of the aloofness or detachment that is so readily perceived around contemporary classical music. This can perhaps be attributed to the environments in which Dustin has worked - Lumiere is full of those rare elements of life shared by both vibrant cities and lush countrysides: colour, both organic and rich, sensorial intrigue and a deep awareness of space. Or perhaps it is a product of Dustin’s synaesthesia, a condition he first noticed around the time of his performance at New York’s Guggenheim Museum for their Kandisnky retrospective and 50th anniversary gala. Able to visualize his compositions as vividly as a painter might see his own work, Dustin’s expressiveness is beyond compare.



Lumiere will be Dustin’s third solo full-length, following Bella Union albums released in 2004 and 2006 respectively (Piano Solos vol. 1 and Piano Solos vol. 2). These two records were originally opportunity for Dustin to express a non-Devics creative streak: gently and privately pieced together piano suites written and recorded on a beautifully-restored 1920’s Sabel piano in his Italian farmhouse. The compositions, however, gradually grew into fully-formed solo pieces as Dustin’s ambitions and designs developed. The path, of course, would eventually lead him to Lumiere’s majestic, swooning ensemble arrangements and a focus-shift away from the piano as his work’s primary timbre without losing any of the affection for the instrument that bore his first two records.



A sublime solo live album - entitled Vorleben – will be released by FatCat / 130701 in June.

8 Opus 55

Dustinohalloran

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