Here at Making Waves, we’ve been wanting to collate a “Piano Waves” playlist for over a year now.  This staple instrument attracts so much solo repertoire that it can be hard for performers and listeners to know where to start.  There is of course the burden of tradition, of a solid canon of classical piano repertoire, but also the instrument’s versatility in playing a huge role in jazz and popular musics.  In this month’s playlist we broadened our definition to “Keyboard” to include not only acoustic works, but some amazing tracks in which the piano meets technology: via live electronic manipulation, the use of electric instruments and MIDI, input via audience mobile phones, and even a robotic piano named RHEA.  We’ve also split the playlist into a Soundcloud segment (c.50min) and a YouTube segment (c.20min) in order to include a wide array of works. Listen, enjoy and share!

Keyboard Waves (November 2016)

Listen back to all the Soundcloud recordings featured during 2016 on Making Waves playlists.

2016 Waves

Keyboard waves Nov 2016

This is from 2010 - commissioned and performed by Eclectica Trio (Amanda Lovelock, Anna Coleman and Charise Altmann).
The clarinets take on the role of storyteller for this piece – they growl like a wolf, squeal like a pig, and huff-and-puff with increasing vigour to blow the house down. Unfortunately, they do it all in the wrong language (“this contemporary music just sounds like random notes to me!”). Will you still be able to follow the story? Don’t stress, it all ends happily ever after.

The Three Little Pigs

I/O explores multiple approaches to the sounds possible on the piano via electronic manipulation. Nothing is external; every element of the work originates in the analogue sounds made on the disklavier, a sort of modern, digitally-enabled version of the player piano. 

I/O (2014)

Hyperbodies (2015)
for computer controlled piano (RHEA)

Premiere: 25 October 2015, Phipps Hall at the University of Huddersfield, UK.
Made as part of a workshop at the University of Huddersfield run by Prof. Peter Ablinger and Prof. Winfried Ritsch, 19-25 October 2015.

Information about the work:
http://danielportelli.com.au/hyperbodies

Hyperbodies

String Quartet No. 2 in E minor by Connor D'Netto
recorded live @ MICMC 2015 - 18 Jul 2015

Winner of the Australian New Works Award, presented by Chamber Music Australia

Performed by the Noga Quartet, winner of the 7th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition

String Quartet No. 2 in E minor - live @ MICMC 2015

Minimalist saxophone quartet recorded at Melba Hall at the University of Melbourne. 
The Jive is a lively piece in three sections. It employs minimalist techniques such as canon, adding rhythmic cells, cross-fading, resulting patterns and mensuration canon. Some of these techniques are used more freely than in strict minimalism. I experimented with different canonic textures and the resulting patterns created when shifting motives between the different saxophones. Motives in rhythmic unison as well as cross-rhythms are explored in the last part of the piece. Dynamic swells and funky rhythms make The Jive somewhat unpredictable…

The Jive

I. Suddenly for soprano, flute, and piano (A. Mellos 2014)
Madeline Cain, soprano; Daniel Pesca, piano; Caroline Sonett, flute
Live recording, November 12, 2014 Kilbourn Hall, The Eastman School of Music


I. Suddenly from 'Three Poems of Yannis Ritsos' - for soprano, flute, and piano

Taking the live setup through its paces. A little number for piano and electronics. This track is entirely live. The only editing is the courtesy top and tail.

Earthquakes Behind Closed Doors

Born spontaneously on a lazy Sunday afternoon, this piece marks the first of what will develop into a collection of vignettes for various ensembles. The aim for this piece and for the works that will follow it, is quite simply to build an impression of a moment. In this case, quite a lovely moment.  

This work can be purchased at https://ethanconnormcalister.bandcamp.com/releases

Sunday Afternoon || Vignette no.1 || for piano solo

for two flutes, percussion, piano
Music X, Blonay, Switzerland
July 2010
Timothy Munro and Pethrus Gardborn, flutes
Jeremy Malvin, percussion
Erika Dohi, piano

These dark notes drifting takes its title from a poem by 9th-century Chinese poet Li Po.  Inspired by a Chinese folk tune, the piece evokes distant flutes, coloured by the sounds that one might hear across a valley at night in the spring.

Spring Night in Lo-Yang hearing a flute
In what house, the jade flute that sends these dark notes drifting,
scattering on the spring wind that fills Lo-Yang?
Tonight if we should hear the willow-breaking song,
who could help but long for the gardens of home?

These dark notes drifting

Performance March 2013, Auer Hall, Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington IN, USA - Premiered by Kornilios Michailidis

Six Piano Minikins

Composer and pianist from currently based in Berlin. Contact me at e.simic.prosic@gmail.com

Some longer projects and videos of performances can be found at my YouTube channel through the link below.

I/O (2014)

Eli Simic-Prosic