No. 10

February 17, 2024

For this one, I invited my friend Mark Russell to join me. I met Mark shortly after I moved to Hawaii because I heard that he had a fortepiano, and I wanted to play Haydn Sonatas on it. Mark has been a lovely musical companion ever since, and his constant curiosity and thoughtful pursuit of the keyboard arts have always been inspiring. Mark and I picked a day when we would each explore the score in our own way. We ended up choosing opposing formats.

Mark’s experience in his own words:

“As Katy and I did not have access to 10 different pianos, I thought I would play each measure alternating between harpsichord and keyboard, but the result was not pleasing.  However, when I played each measure only on the harpsichord I liked it! I recorded one measure and then pressed pause while I thought about the next measure and how it could grow from what I had just played or become something new. Two times on harpsichord I found I didn't want to stop so I combined two sets of measures.  Maybe because of the different resonance on the keyboard, I felt comfortable stopping between each measure. Even though I feel there is a continuity to all 10 measures, playing in this fashion made me more aware of each note. Several of the measures have stayed in my ears days after playing them.”

On my end, I decided to record each segment sporadically over an entire day starting at 7 am and ending at 10 pm. My approach was to let my breaths govern the timing of each note. In the end-- I experienced a new way of interacting with the piano that I will do again: playing just a few sounds with strong intention, returning again and again as if saying tiny prayers. The ritualistic aspect of it was powerful. The audio is about 9 hours in length, and I invited you to hit ‘play’ first thing in the morning and forget about it.