Composer: Francesco Tristano, Jason “Chilly Gonzales” Beck
Performer: Francesco Tristano, Jason “Chilly Gonzales” Beck
Number of Discs: 1
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Sony
Release: 2017
Size: 954 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Circle Song
02. This Too Shall Go
03. Grey Light
04. Never
05. All I Have
06. Triangle Song (Featuring – Chilly Gonzales)
07. Pastoral
08. Circle Song II
09. Merl
10. Circle Song III
11. Nuria’s Lament
12. La Franciscana
13. Monologue For Two (Featuring – Chilly Gonzales)
14. Tryst (Featuring – Chilly Gonzales)
15. Third Haiku (Featuring – Chilly Gonzales)
Unifying rather than choosing. Between his purely classical activities and his openly electro ones, Francesco Tristano Schlimé would rather not decide. For his first disc with Sony Classical, the Luxembourgish pianist and composer goes back to the solo piano. After a quick listen, we could easily place his Piano Circle Songs alongside the albums of Ludivico Einaudi, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm and other Max Richter. But Francesco Tristano possesses a true musical personality. He has a relation to the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi and Carl Craig which has sculpted his musical personality. Here, the intimate and the personal are in command. The offered interlacing play as much upon the stripped-down than the repetitive. Upon the space and silence as well as the untold. The pianist avoids here the dead ends and vacuity. Recorded with a microphone put really close to the piano to pick up all the natural sounds from the instrument “as if your ear was in the piano”, this essay hosts, for four duets, another extraterrestrial pianist in the persona of Chilly Gonzales, a great magician of this type of musical miniatures… It’s a success, but above all, it’s another piece in the vast puzzle that is Francesco Tristano.