What's your favourite modern piano music album?

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It's hard for me to think of any answers that aren't either classical or jazz. A couple of recent piano trio albums I've enjoyed:
Uri Caine - Live at the Village Vanguard
Misha Mengelberg - Senne Sing Song

o. nate, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:31 (seventeen years ago) link

what I was looking for was maybe rather piano music with a non-classical or non-jazz approach

Three pieces come to mind immediately:
"Banana Cabbage" by David Grubbs from Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange is a beautiful channeling of Satie via minimalism.
"Period" by Jonathan Coleclough--looooong decaying piano strikes.
"Wurmloch Variationen" by Stephan Mathieu--beautiful computer-processed piano

William Selman, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:42 (seventeen years ago) link

I did google Hauschka: you get a Harold Budd mention, then a description talking about how the piano is tampered with, so it made me think of it in a John Cage of the "Sonata and Interludes". So I jumped on the 'classical' Cage and forgot him in that experimental line that is bordeline classical.

xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't count Cecil Taylor's The Willisau Concert as classical or jazz. It's more like someone attempting to describe the destruction of Pompeii using a piano.

unperson, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

try to find an album by Ben Kamen "So The Light Came to Contain Numbers." Available here.

It has gotten me through many a lonely night. Beautiful stuff.

the table is the table, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 16:42 (seventeen years ago) link

i know they're jazz or jazz-like but they have a melodicism and stridency that i always enjoy - esborn svennson trio

nonightsweats, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 06:06 (seventeen years ago) link

three weeks pass...
As promised, I slapped together a mix which you can download from here. You find some of your suggestions in the mix, so thanks to all who replied to my question.

xhg, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 06:36 (seventeen years ago) link

tracklist, please...

nonightsweats, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 07:53 (seventeen years ago) link

nine years pass...

Well maybe not very modern, but Jan Johansson's "Jazz på svenska/ Jazz på Ryska" has been quite popular over the last few years. And it's fucking amazing.
― the Dirt, Tuesday, March 6, 2007 2:50 PM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jazz på svenska is so good! will check out Jazz på Ryska

just sayin, Tuesday, 27 September 2016 09:58 (seven years ago) link

Someone I've never seen mentioned on ILM is Neil Cowley, a great contemporary British jazz pianist. His new album Spacebound Apes is lovely.

heaven parker (anagram), Tuesday, 27 September 2016 12:24 (seven years ago) link

Lost Daylight - Compositions by Terry Jennings and John Cage (played by John Tilbury & Sebastian Lexer)

The Terry Jennings material (played by Tilbury) is especially beautiful

braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Tuesday, 27 September 2016 22:49 (seven years ago) link

five months pass...

The new Hauschka album "What If" sounds quite promising. He does lots of interesting things with his prepared piano.
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/23/520524495/first-listen-hauschka-what-if?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=firstlisten

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Thursday, 23 March 2017 06:29 (seven years ago) link

gotta be something by or featuring kris davis but i don't know what. spoilt for choice.
first paradoxical frog album? "save your breath"?

massaman gai, Thursday, 23 March 2017 06:33 (seven years ago) link

Perhaps by Harold Budd for me (improvised live).
That, or the somewhat older The Harp of New Albion by Terry Riley (just-intonation piano).

Max Florian, Thursday, 23 March 2017 21:38 (seven years ago) link

Laurence Crane - Michael Finnissy ‎– 20th Century Music - Solo Piano Pieces 1985-1999
Terry Jennings / John Cage / John Tilbury / Sebastian Lexer ‎– Lost Daylight
Philip Thomas (4) - Jürg Frey ‎– Circles And Landscapes
Klaus Lang / Trio Nexus ‎– SAIS.

Looking for some Cecil Taylor solo recommendations..

braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Thursday, 23 March 2017 22:30 (seven years ago) link

William Duckworth - The Time Curve Preludes

Hideous Lump, Friday, 24 March 2017 02:15 (seven years ago) link

Chucho Valdes - Bele Bele en La Habana/Briyumba Palo Congo - all his 90's Blue Note output is good but I love these 2.

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 06:13 (seven years ago) link

cecil taylor solo recommendations:
ALL, but:
silent tongues;
for olim;
air above mountains;
indent.

massaman gai, Friday, 24 March 2017 06:51 (seven years ago) link

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by 'modern piano music.'

pomenitul, Friday, 24 March 2017 12:29 (seven years ago) link

music played on a modern piano? (not the old type with the horses)
i think what was intended was old fashioned john tilbury / toru takemitsu "modernism".
words be damned.
ach, cecil taylor solo :
when i typed "all, but"
i meant "all, but these are especially good", not "all, except"

massaman gai, Friday, 24 March 2017 13:07 (seven years ago) link

I was going to say ... surely your calling these shit, but I thought each to their own!

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 13:13 (seven years ago) link

..not..

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 13:13 (seven years ago) link

It's just kind of weird as it runs the gamut from, say, Bred Mehldau, Nikolai Kapustin and Phil Glass—a motley trio to begin with—to György Kurtág, Michaël Levinas, Unsuk Chin, etc. There are countless possible answers.

pomenitul, Friday, 24 March 2017 13:36 (seven years ago) link

It is just a recommendation thread, with a vague modern piano music theme - it doesn't need to be about precise categories as long as Geir doesn't come back with Ben Folds Five imo

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 13:56 (seven years ago) link

All Cecil recommendations seconded, but want to add Don Pullen's Healing Force and Evidence of Things Unseen. Pullen had a startlingly unique approach, but had to deal with "You kinda sorta sound like Cecil Taylor!" throughout his whole career, despite the fact that a) he didn't, and b) he arrived at his approach independent of Cecil's influence. His Black Saint boxed set (which includes the aforementioned solo recordings) is absolutely all-killer/no-filler.

And rumor has it his epochal duo 1966 duo recordings with Milford Graves will soon be reissued.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 24 March 2017 14:07 (seven years ago) link

don't care to discuss terminology but a contemporary (as in composing/playing *now*) composer i'm enjoying is julien marchal (insight 1)

his pieces are very simple, mellow and melodic, but it's the type of old man background music i would write and i find it comforting

F♯ A♯ (∞), Friday, 24 March 2017 16:43 (seven years ago) link

what do people think of that solo pno jazz record the master and the margarita? I remember hearing some of it on the radio ages ago and being pretty into it but I never followed up. Can't remember the guy's name.

chip n dale recuse rangers (Jon not Jon), Friday, 24 March 2017 16:52 (seven years ago) link

The Russian pianist Simon Nabatov?

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 17:45 (seven years ago) link

Yesss that's him. Do you know it?

chip n dale recuse rangers (Jon not Jon), Friday, 24 March 2017 17:48 (seven years ago) link

I had a period of listening to a few of his albums last year and that one I never got around to, I think mainly because I downloaded it in the Ape format which my player doesn't like. I think it was his solo album of Brazilian standards that reeled me in, it is called Around Brazil and is really quite beautiful.

calzino, Friday, 24 March 2017 18:07 (seven years ago) link

three months pass...

I have been loving some Dave Burrell trios today. His Expansion album with William Parker and Andrew Cyrille, and Momentum one with Formanek and drummer Guillermo E. Brown are both brilliant. He reminds of Mal Waldron in the way he mixes old bluesy trad jazz styles with hard angular avant-garde free jazz in a wonderful way at times.

calzino, Sunday, 25 June 2017 15:07 (six years ago) link

A guy with whom I worked in a restaurant in my early 20s just released this solo piano album that is terrific

https://jadjemian.bandcamp.com/releases

fgti, Sunday, 25 June 2017 15:27 (six years ago) link

I've listened to a lot of Nils Frahm recently - love Solo, Wintermusik, Felt - but is he a bit sub rosa for this thread?

attention vampire (MatthewK), Sunday, 25 June 2017 22:31 (six years ago) link

Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks

enochroot, Sunday, 25 June 2017 22:49 (six years ago) link

a friend at work introduced me to Joep Beving (the albums Solipsism + Prehension).. it reminded me of Nils Frahm's work, but more affecting.

a recent favorite is Des pas sur la neige by Eve Risser

https://youtu.be/pboY9n0jCnw

braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, 25 June 2017 22:52 (six years ago) link

Marylin Crispell Trio - Live In Zurich

nicky lo-fi, Monday, 26 June 2017 01:25 (six years ago) link


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