Fusion Classical - Old and new at the same time, lyrical in the classic style, with contemporary phrasing.

11 MP3 Songs
CLASSICAL: Contemporary, JAZZ: Smooth Jazz



Details:
What style is this? I call it "Fusion Classical". For me, it represents the music that I always wanted to hear, but could never quite find. So I created it. And now its on one CD. Somehow I managed to transverse and invoke Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Gershwin, and in a really fun way, Brubeck. Two of them had to be looking over my shoulder (go ahead and guess). In any case, the music is not derivative, occupying its own sublime, and lyrical space.

How long did it take? - Forty years of playing the piano, ten thousand hours on the keys, result: forty eight minutes, twenty seconds of music. All the melodies are my compositions, performed by me in one three hour session at Firehouse Recording Studios, Pasadena, California, in late May, 2006.

The Piano is a Boesendorfer Model 225, 6'2" long, 923 lbs. and 92 keys - yes it has the additional 4 sub-bass "black keys" reaching down to bottom "F". Although I didn't use them, the soundboard is sized to accomodate, and it gives this noblest of instruments a rather unique timbre and resonant depth.

We had four mikes running - two in the piano, and two outboard, about five feet away to give some room ambiance. Everything was recorded digitally, and mixed down using ProTools. The final cuts are a composite of about 90 piano, and 10 room. There is just the merest hint of delay that was later added to emulate a larger space - rather cathedral like.

Other than that, what you hear is 100 real-time analog music, complete with the bench creaking probably five times, and there's also one knuckle crack (catch it if you can).

You can hear the felts coming off the strings, and the thump of the sustain pedal. Its all there. Just like sticking your head in the piano.

The melodies - well, draw your own conclusions. As I've learned, there are notes, but more importantly, there's the space between the notes, the sweetness of touch, lingering, the sustain, the breath that I let it take, ringing, smoothly, and hauntingly....this is what lingers in the soul, and lives within you.

Several songs are older standards that I've worked on for years. Others I wrote just this spring. Two improvisations Passion, and "Exposition", I played for the first and last time in the studio - so its exceptionally sweet that they are now preserved. No matter how many times I've listened to them since, there always seems to be something new to hear.

The reason it all exists? - The title song: "The Key of Love". I wrote it this year, and just had to capture it. Thus I was led to the studio, (through a very interesting chain of events) and into the extremely capable hands of my sound engineer, Ed Wooley.

We got it all....

Regards

Jeff