Oglindă I from Oglindă by Paul Taylor
Spontaneous compositions performed and recorded on a Kawai grand piano at The Lit and Phil Library, Newcastle upon Tyne.
November 2021.
As a sequel to my previous album "Via", which was recorded at the erstwhile Sage Gateshead just days before the pandemic, here is another album of improvisations recorded on the first occasion I had touched an acoustic piano since the "Via" sessions.
It was both liberating and cathartic to reconnect with a "proper" piano after a necessary phase of cavorting with the ersatz version at home during that aeon of isolation and uncertainty
I remember booking the piano room in Newcastle's historic Lit and Phil Library the previous day, it was the first time I'd played an acoustic instrument in 18 months.
That morning, I had handed in my notice to the DWP at Longbenton where I had languished in a creative torpor for several months. I'd been offered my old job at Sage Gateshead music centre (as was), which had been closed since March 2020.
I took the 62 bus from Four Lane Ends into town to the Lit and Phil, riding the top deck as usual. A bevy of chronic coughers surrounded me, and I forgot my face mask. I came down wtih the lurgy the next day, rang in sick to the Ministry and never went back.
I started at Sage Gateshead 12 days later, an infinitely more creatively congenial environment. And all those pianos...
The music on those recordings represents a major positive transition for me, both musically and psychologically. It also reflects a world slowly returning to a semblance of normality and freedom.
Kawai grand piano at The Lit and Phil Library, Newcastle upon Tyne.
November 2021
