section1 has announced a compilation of solo piano music, piano1, which features new original compositions from Hand Habits, Youth Lagoon, Mark William Lewis, Kelly Moran, Ichiko Aoba, and more. Today, we get to hear ML Buch, Laraaji, and Alice Boman’s contributions, which are titled ‘getting to know each other’, ‘Waltz Life’, and ’17’, respectively. Take a listen below, and scroll down for the full tracklist and album artwork.
“My piece is a dialogue between different piano elements with their different timbres,” ML Bucg explained in a statement. “It deals with both the euphoric and confusing awkwardness of getting to know someone new. The piece starts with a call n response between a very simple riff played on a grand piano and a melody answering both in pitch and completely out of tune. It’s been fun playing a very expensive newly tuned grand piano and also layering 5 upright pianos each in its own very bad shape. The riff transitions into an ostinato and another piano enters and tries to learn that ostinato – sines played with an EBow on the piano strings flow on top. Looking back I guess I treated the piano more like a guitar and tried to mess a little with that clean and precise sounding instrument.”
Laraaji shared: “The piano has been my major instrument of joyful expression since the age of 10. My dear mother honored my interest in piano and violin at a very early age by having a piano in the house and allowing me to take piano lessons. With piano I go into many various worlds of the imagination, dancing images, space images, mysterious images, unfamiliar tonal worlds.”
And Boman shared: “I have been playing the piano since I was a child and I remember moving from playing sheet music when I was younger, to playing more freely and exploratively — just for the joy of it. That was a big change in what the piano meant to me. Making this tune I was going back to that — just playing around, letting the fingers lead the way.”
piano1 Cover Artwork:
piano1 Tracklist:
1. Kelly Moran – Heart Thread *
2. Brad Oberhofer – I Hugged A Clown In My Dream
3. Alan Wyffels – Intermezzo
4. Laraaji – Waltz Life
5. Alice Boman – 17
6. ML Buch – Getting To Know Each Other
7. The Kimba Unit – Three Sundays
8. Mark William Lewis – Josh, this is Lin, I accidentally left my documents in your car yesterday
9. Matthew Tavares – COOL PIANO VIBE
10. Hand Habits – Not Worth The Lie
11. Youth Lagoon – The Harvest
12. Ichiko Aoba – 2024-06-13
* Kelly Moran’s track only appears on the vinyl version of piano1
