Artist: Jörg Zemmler
Album: Piano Bar
Label: Self-released
Year: 2022
Ten electro-acoustic piano improvisations that create dialogues between its analogue and digital components, making this more like a duet between technologies than a solo performance by its creator, Viennese composer/performer Jörg Zemmler. On the whole the music sits at the nexus of minimalism, ambience, and impressionism, at times its atmosphere is wistful and others more uneasy. The album often exhibits the tense-delicacy of Arvo Pärt's "Für Alina," and the low-volume intensity of Morton Feldman's piano works. There's also a formal playfulness that reminds me of Ligeti--limitations are freeing for both composers, and one can sense the fun of finding new ways of tonal and formal liberation on the keyboard.
The opening track, "Vor Glück," begins with acoustic octaves before slowly introducing loops and electronic elements, establishing the musical elements that will form the rest of the album to come. It's a beautiful song, contemplative and melancholic. "Behustam" is impressive with its expressive use of sustain, lingering overtones build into a dense wall of exponential harmonies, forever on the precipice between cordant and discordant. "Ein Tanz" is a noteworthy departure from the more atmospheric songs, this time Zemmler explores more staccato rhythms. On "Blinzeln," the repeated loops take on a percussive role. My favorite track is the finale, "Genug," whose lush, looped sustain have the solemnity of a church and the body of a choir.
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