The piano music of my dreams

April 8, 2019 8:28 AM

I am seeking beautiful piano music within the avant garde / contemporary classical / etc realm. Specifically, I'm looking for two genres: very long solo piano songs, and interesting combos of piano with yelping/wailing etc. Examples within.

My gold star for the long piano songs is many things by Charlemagne Palestine.Strumming Musicis my favorite.

John Cage's In a Landscape is the shit.

Of course LaMonte Young's Well-Tuned Piano is up there, and lots by Ryuchi Sakomoto, Keith Jarrett, and Lubomyr Melnyk and of course Glass.

Long=around 10 minutes or more.

I'm more interested in contemplative (not new age) than in more dissonant stuff like Vijay Iyer.

I also seek examples of a more niche genre involving simple piano lines and wailing. There may be a better name for this. I'm looking for more classical stuff than rock; I'm a big Tori Amos fan so have that one covered. Along with Diamanda Galas.

My gold star for piano + wailing is Gotham Lullaby by Meredith Monk. Runner up is Casting No Shadow by Wim Mertens.

These songs don't have to be long.

Thank you--excited to listen to suggestions!

posted by mermaidcafe to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

One of the most beautiful collections of piano music I've heard is by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou , an Ethiopian Nun. I can listen to it over and over and over. It helped me get through most of my writing in graduate school.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:34 AM on April 8, 2019

Sounds like you might enjoy some Alkan. Check out this piece as an example but it's worth listening to others as well.
posted by exogenous at 9:31 AM on April 8, 2019

Sleep by Max Richter
posted by mkb at 10:06 AM on April 8, 2019

A few long contemplative performances by jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara:

* Firefly
* Haze
* Old castle, by the river, in the middle of a forest
posted by rollick at 10:52 AM on April 8, 2019

The pianist Michael Mizrahi performs a lot of contemporary work by composers in the neighborhood of what you're talking about. Two recent solo albums, The Bright Motion and Currents, are definitely worth checking out.
posted by dr. boludo at 12:42 PM on April 8, 2019

Joanna Brouk - The Space Between for example
posted by gyusan at 2:58 PM on April 8, 2019

Simeon ten Holt - Canto Ostinato

Julius Eastman - e.g. Gay Guerrilla
posted by Jabberwocky at 3:16 PM on April 8, 2019

Give George Crumb's Apparition a spin. It is some verses with lyrics and some with wordless "extended vocal technique" singing. I've linked the recording with mezzo Jan DeGaetani who recorded a bunch of Crumb. (His scores are sometimes crazy and graphical so that's also neat to google and look at.)
posted by Smearcase at 4:07 PM on April 8, 2019

Oh also for good modernist classical wailing, though with an ensemble rather than a piano, "A la femminisca" from Berio's "Folk Songs" as sung by Cathy Berberian is pretty top notch wailing. Berio might have other stuff worth exploring, I don't know his oeuvre super well. But he wrote a lot for Berberian, who he was married to, and she was not afraid to do all kinds of shit with her voice.
posted by Smearcase at 4:18 PM on April 8, 2019

I feel like there must be some Myra Melford that fits your criteria, even if most of the songs are only 6-7 minutes.
posted by umbú at 8:21 PM on April 8, 2019

I have a a feeling you would like Tom Johnson's An Hour for Piano.
posted by dfan at 5:47 AM on April 9, 2019

Einojuhani Rautavaara's Piano Sonatas have always scratched this itch for me. Here's No.1
posted by Chairboy at 3:47 AM on April 10, 2019

Ludovico Einaudi?
posted by Sublimity at 6:59 AM on April 10, 2019

If you like Young's Well-Tuned Piano, you would probably also enjoy Dennis Johnson's November, the sparse, meditative ancestor to all things Minimalism. Long (over four hours) and beautifully evocative.
posted by bulgroz at 10:00 AM on April 10, 2019