Michael Svoboda - Piano - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Trio Parnassus - Complete Piano Trios / Scherzo for Piano Quartet [COMPACT DISCS] date 03/08/2011

Natural Habitat is a collection of music composed over the last decade, much of it written around the time I moved from Boston to New York City. During my first few years living here, I would frequently travel back and forth to perform, and the excitement and energy I felt at that time is expressed in these songs. The title track is the oldest tune we recorded - when it was composed in 2009, the manuscript simply said InchUntitled SwingInch. For a while, that title stuck and became somewhat of a joke when I would play it on gigs, but in 2018, I was back in Boston and found myself performing it again at the same venue (and with some of the same musicians) as when I had composed it nearly a decade before. The title Natural Habitat came to me, as it suddenly felt like I knew where that tune belonged. // The other music on this recording was written while I was settling into life in New York City - which now feels like my natural habitat, both physically and musically. I chose material for this project that represents how I feel living and working in this environment. The variety of meters, forms, and intensities heard in these songs mirrors the unpredictability of daily life here, but the excitement and energy I feel when performing in this city is unparalleled. -Michael Thomas

Erik Satie, the French musical poet and inventor of Inchfurniture music,Inch provoked fierce criticism from his contemporaries, but also inspired Mike Svoboda to this special homage. Close to the pulse of his time, Satie was a visionary with the courage to pursue slowness. Mike Svoboda takes over this idea by approaching Satie as a researcher of sound and time in space, as a philosopher and forerunner of Dada and John Cage. This new composer portrait, with joyfully contrasting music from Svoboda's pen, thus promises anything but music as fabric softener. InchWhat I Am Everyone will tell you I am not a musician. That is correct. From the beginning of my career I immediately considered myself a phonometrographer. My works are pure phonometry.Inch (Erik Satie)