This new film of My Lips From Speaking is the latest episode in my “year of the Wolfe.” Orig­i­nally scored for six pianos (count ’em), the piece was later arranged for a mere two, which is the version I’ve recorded here, joined by my doppel­gänger. It’s a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally single­minded piece, based on the opening riff of Aretha Franklin’s “Think.” Like much Wolfe, it’s relent­lessly method­i­cal in how it treats its musical material, violently decon­struct­ing, recon­struct­ing, and finally tran­scend­ing it.

I’m indebted to Kettle Corn New Music for commis­sion­ing and present­ing this new film, which is undoubt­edly one of the most complex and diffi­cult I’ve made so far, from both a musical and tech­ni­cal perspec­tive. The two piano version contains most of the notes of the six piano—at times, literal fistfuls of them. The music is also constantly, almost cartoon­ishly synco­pated, the parts lining up, or often not lining up, at unpre­dictable moments. This means it has to be rhyth­mi­cally ultra-precise—it’s a delicate illusion that can be destroyed by mere millisec­onds of vari­a­tion in timing, causing the whole thing to sound like a haphaz­ard jumble. What I was striving for in this perfor­mance was to super­sede the “counting like hell” feeling that can plague perfor­mances of such rhyth­mi­cally intri­cate music, and give it some­thing of the loose, rolling groove of its source material—leaning into the synco­pa­tions, easing off the strong beats.

This piece is also just loud—it tested my record­ing setup, my poor long-suffer­ing piano, and my physical stamina. It’s a chal­lenge to find and savor the few moments of respite within its struc­tural jugger­naut. Playing both parts let me fine-tune the dynamics on a moment-to-moment level and find some trans­parency in the dense inter­play, allowing details to come through that may not be audible in the six-piano version. Of course, you lose some of the wonder­fully over-the-top ridicu­lous­ness of the original—though the ending comes close, I think.