Piano seul by Jocelyn Robert

“…this is another wonderful release by Robert. I have been playing this the last few days every morning, which I think is the best time of the day for that kind of music. It’s meditative, yet also a bit alien and strange. It sounds melodic upon superficial listening, but perhaps it’s all much more abstract upon closer inspection. It sounds as composed as it sounds improvised; and vice versa. Excellent meditation!” —http://www.vitalweekly.net/986.html

Within the art of Jocelyn Robert, manifested diffusely over the years through text, installations, visual images, sound art, music and performance the piano has lingered as a touchstone and resource. More specifically Robert has written music for Disklavier since the early 1990s. Piano Seul is a set of negotiations with software; improvisation in real time, enabled or obstructed by pre-delineated contours and programmed constraints. This recording was made live at Quebec’s Mois Multi festival in February 2014. Apart from brief flourishes of harmonic lushness and bursts of mechanistic rhythm the music is devoid of flamboyance, yet its puzzle-solving air of alert concentration and steady determination is quietly compelling. No fireworks, but a pervasive sense of fending off potential confusion, of dodging false leads and avoiding tangles. A tightrope walk for a pianist alone at a keyboard with a mind of its own.
— The Wire, October 2015

Tracklist

1.	piano seul 1	6:51

2.	piano seul 2	4:36

3.	piano seul 3	6:44

4.	piano seul 4	3:16

5.	piano seul 5	5:04

6.	piano seul 6	4:25

7.	piano seul 7	5:41

8.	piano seul 8	12:50

Credits

released September 25, 2017

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