Official Piano Day 2020 Playlist
Happy Piano Day!

Artwork: Alice Baldwin.

Piano Day 2020 Playlist

Piano

Mostly piano pieces, recommended for studying and contemplating.
handpicked für you.

Für Classics lovers

CST009: A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms (2000) Track 05

A SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA • "13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed"

🙃🎹Piano day 2019!!🎹🎉
Stream on Spotify and more! -> https://fanlink.to/PlinkPlay

🌱And what better way to celebrate our roots then dusting off the 🎼sheet music 🎶 and relearning some of the most important pieces from our youth 🤔

🇫🇷 Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes are two incredibly important pieces to us, and have been for a long time. As we're sure they are for many 😊 When you play them, it really holds up a mirror your craft as a performer, really showing you /and/ the listener what's going on behind the hands 🙌 There's so much s p a c e, that you can't help but reveal yourself in them 🧙‍♂️With the Gymnopédies you play the 🔕silences🔇 as much as you do the sound! How long should a chord last ⏰⁉️ When does it finish saying what it's saying 🙊 Is the melody at the top or dancing between the phrasings of the chords?! It is bare in execution but so so dense in decision, and we've heard so many different ways of playing it! 🌿

The 🗿Gnossiennes🗿 on the other hand school you in your own sense and style of rubato 🏃‍♀️it's like finding ones musical pulse 💙 It evokes such pulsing summation tones between phrasings, that with the wrong pedaling it can be a somewhat unforgiving journey- we tried our best with it haha 🙉

🎵 Set together these two pieces aim to show how we arrived where we are as a player, as well as play homage to the track that started it all, and of course- the Piano itself. Hopefully it will resonate with other like us too- let us know! ✍️ A large motivator too was a friend who's been asking for ten years for us to record a version ⏳ so if you're any requests for 2029 let us know haha 😆 With our next album nearly finished, it felt like a great stop gap to reflect 🔍 on the greats that brought us to where we are, with hopefully our unique and soft take on an old classic! 👩‍🎨

🌚 For all new listeners and old, thank you so, so much! It means to the absoloute world to us that people are tuning in to our little songs- and pushes us forward to do more and more. We hand't expected anything near the engagement we've gotten and it genuinely makes our world a better place. Thank you 🍃

Now...to the album!!

Love love
💙
PP
xx

Plïnkï Pläys: Satie

Trois Gymnopédies: No 1, Lent et douloureux

Everytime You Leave

Everytime You Leave (pianoday 2019)

Taken from the album Inwards.
https://1631recordings.bandcamp.com/album/inwards

Nil Ciuró -  Even

Dearest  - Piano day 2019

On October 4th 2019, Penguin Cafe released 'Handfuls of Night', the highly anticipated follow-up to their much applauded 2017 album 'The Imperfect Sea' 

Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth.

Bookended by the atmospheric ambient piano pieces ‘Winter Sun’ and ‘Midnight Sun’, the album traverses glacial minimalism with ease, combining their signature contemporary classical panoramas, such as the melancholic yet upbeat lead track ‘At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...’ and the colossal cinematic piece ‘Chapter’, with the crystalline folktronica on ‘Pythagorus on the Line Again’ — a re-visiting and continuation of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s 1993 Union Cafe song on the principles of harmonics.

'Handfuls of Night' began life after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music corresponding to four breeds of penguins, to help raise awareness for the endangered Antarctic seas . A fundraising evening at EartH in Hackney followed, where Penguin Cafe premiered the four songs named after their feathered counterparts to a sold out audience; the rousing contemporary folk inflected ‘Chinstrap’, the mournful and minimalistic ‘Adelie’, stoic and rhythmic ‘The Life of an Emperor’ and the wistful, string-laden ‘Gentoo Origin’.

“Such is its mastery of slowly uncoiling drama you can almost taste the salt in the breeze" ★★★★ — MOJO⠀
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"Arthur Jeffes' music has a direct clarity. Dramatic swells and sweeps showcase the jaw-dropping landscape. Most importantly, though, the music carries an environmental message, which is a critical issue for this generation" — A Closer Listen ⠀
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"One of their most impeccable moments to date" ★★★★ — Music OMH ⠀
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"Elegiac strides across epic landscapes... Arthur Jeffes is doing the legacy of his father proud" — Prog Magazine ⠀
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"Another winner from this group, with Jeffes and company mixing minimalism, folk music and classical string writing into a charming combination” ★★★★ — All About Jazz ⠀
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"A sensitive, frequently lovely follow-up to 2017’s ‘The Imperfect Sea… Handfuls of Night’ conjures pastoral panoramas and weathered vistas" — DJ Magazine⠀

Handfuls of Night

Midnight Sun

Buy LP/CD/DL

Penguin Cafe - Midnight Sun

#pianoday2020
photography : Delphine Dauphy

church session 1

02 Flux / Reflux

#pianoday2020

Taken from the album 'To Believe (Remixes)', released 6 March on Ninja Tune: http://tco.lnk.to/remixesSo

Follow James Heather -
Spotify: http://found.ee/jheather-sp
Apple Music: http://found.ee/jheather-am
Instagram: http://found.ee/jheather-ig
Facebook: http://found.ee/jheather-fb
Twitter: http://found.ee/jheather-tw
Youtube: http://found.ee/jheather-yt
Soundcloud: http://found.ee/jheather-sc

Follow The Cinematic Orchestra -
Spotify: https://found.ee/tco-sp
Apple Music: https://found.ee/tco-am
Instagram: https://found.ee/tco-ig
Facebook: https://found.ee/tco-fb
Twitter: https://found.ee/tco-tw
Youtube: https://found.ee/tco-yt
Bandcamp: https://found.ee/tco-bc
Soundcloud: https://found.ee/tco-sc

To Believe (Remixes)

A Caged Bird/Imitations of Life (James Heather Rework) [feat. Roots Manuva]

Jörð

originally only released for Piano Day 2020, now  available on  all platforms.

https://linktr.ee/aukai

A Halcyon is a mythical bird said to lay her eggs in a floating nest at sea, during which time it charms the wind and calms the waves. 

www.aukaimusic.com
www.pianoday.org

Halcyon

thesisproject.bandcamp.com/album/thesi…artyn-heyne

Ben Lukas Boysen - editing, zen garden.
Martyn Heyne - guitar, organ.

Composed, mixed, and mastered by Martyn Heyne + Ben Lukas Boysen at Lichte Studio Berlin.
Additional engineering by Matthias H. Franz Hahn. Vinyl cut by Mike Grinser.

Thank You!
Gregory Euclide, Matthias H. Franz Hahn, everyone at Manners McDade, Erased Tapes Records & Publishing, Claudia Gödke, and Karolina Zenobia Heyne.

Dedicated to Frieda and Frau Bellmann.

Thesis 16

& Martyn Heyne - June

To mark this year’s 88th day and as an acknowledgement to these unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in, Piano Day founder, pianist and producer Nils Frahm releases a collection of eight solo piano pieces titled 'Empty'. 

Stream and download 'Empty': https://idol.lnk.to/nils-frahm-empty

Conceived of just before Nils broke his thumb and composed the similarly intimate solo piano album 'Screws', 'Empty' is a soothing vessel of eight simple and serene pieces originally recorded as the music to a short art film he shot with his friend and film director Benoit Toulemonde. Drifting through emotions from the stark and sobering opener 'First Defeat', to the gently euphoric 'No Step On Wing' and the contemplative but hopeful closer 'Black Notes', with its poignant minute of silence, 'Empty' is a comforting score for these turbulent times.

“When I came back from the hospital with a broken thumb and listened to the recordings, I felt they were unfinished. I decided to put them aside and started to work on my small album, 'Screws'. 

Many many other notes of the piano have been struck since these days, and before we all forget about this, I thought it would be a good moment to share these lullabies with you. I hope they help you stay all strong and calm in these days of solitude – despite the hardship, we can discover introspection and reflection unexpectedly. Who knows what it is good for.  
 
Much love, Nils”

Empty

No Step On Wing

Stream & order LP · CD

Nils Frahm - No Step On Wing

Kindred piano lovers Peter Broderick and David Allred have gifted the sheet music for their song Hey Stranger, taken from their collaborative 2017 record Find The Ways. Reminding us of the importance and power of friendship, it was originally performed on double bass, with Peter on violin and the two singing together. David kindly recorded this solo piano version to make it easier for you to follow the notes.

www.allredbroderick.com
www.pianoday.org

02 Flux / Reflux

melaine dalibert