I’m happy to help trumpet the release of I Still Play, a new album of piano music from Nonesuch coming out May 22^nd. It feels like a bright piece of news in a dispir­it­ing time, and perhaps a useful one as well. This is music written to be played—if not under quarantine—then at least in the home, as I explain in the liner note:

The exis­tence of I Still Play as an album is a bit of a paradox. Each of these 11 tributes to [former Nonesuch pres­i­dent] Bob Hurwitz was written for an audience of one, on a partic­u­lar Steinway in a specific Upper West Side living room. And yet here they are, making their way into the wider world. None are loftily ambi­tious or daringly exper­i­men­tal compo­si­tions. Rather, each distills an aspect of its author’s voice to a concen­trated minia­ture. The prevail­ing tone is conver­sa­tional rather than declam­a­tory, though it’s a wide-ranging conver­sa­tion. Large ques­tions are posed but rarely answered in full. If the listener has the odd feeling of having stumbled into an exchange between two friends and missing an inside joke or shared refer­ence here and there—that’s not far from the truth.

The pieces were premièred as a set in April 2017; I contributed Wise Words and later recorded seven of them (the other pianists being Jeremy Denk, Brad Mehldau, and Randy Newman). The video above, of Nico Muhly’s Move, was made by Robert Edridge-Waks and filmed a few of weeks ago in my apart­ment, where I am now of course ensconced indefinitely.

Nine of the pieces were to have formed the core of my Carnegie recital in April, now cancelled, along with every­thing else. I feel less sad than simply unmoored by these circum­stances. Antic­i­pa­tion of the next perfor­mance, the next new piece, has always lent struc­ture to my life; with these things suddenly revoked, I feel my produc­tive impulses going into hiber­na­tion, as if they’re making prepa­ra­tions for a long-haul flight.

I know I’ll return to work in earnest soon. In the meantime, I’m cocoon­ing, and I’m not too opti­mistic or naïve to imagine this result­ing in any growth—personal, artistic, or other­wise. I live with a doctor, and in a way I’m grateful to be able to simply set every­thing aside and be the support crew, keeping the house tidy and pantry well-stocked. 

And I do, in fact, still play; here’s evidence from Nadia Sirota’s Living Music show last week, in a new working-from-home format.