sun and moon

Sarah Nicolls is an innovative pianist and composer. She invented the 'Inside-out Piano', a sculptural feast of an instrument which stands 2.5m tall, designed to enable 'inside piano' playing. She currently performs on a re-shaped 1900 Erard, using the strings as much as the keys to create layers of textured sound. Her company Future Piano is currently building a new lightweight version using carbon fibre and aerospace engineering, collaborating with the extraordinary piano builder David Klavins. During the pandemic, Sarah toured her climate work '12 Years' and 'Ballad of a Changing World'. She is now writing new music and learning how to be a farmer in Gloucestershire too. Sarah has been a frequent soloist on the new music scene, performing in events such as the PRSF New Music Biennial, Matthew Herbert's 20 Pianos project, six world premiere piano concertos with London Sinfonietta. She is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and features on several CDs. She also makes music, theatre and installations and curates, founding her own festival of interactive electronic music.

About the track, according to the artist:

This track is all sounds from the piano, with some delay and reverb. The more unusual sounds are made using the inside of the piano directly - which my upcoming Inside-Out Piano Virtual Instrument features heavily - muted strings, magnets, bow, plucks, gently hitting the bass strings with a timpani mallet (which sounds so full and lush). This is the first ever track where I've used real and virtual pianos - the same thing recorded and played in two different ways - one direct, physical, acoustic and one through being recorded and then performed via software on a keyboard. One is present, reverberant, resonant in its wood right in front of the mic and the other is all through effects, delays, echoes, ephemeral, imagined to some extent.

It seems to me like "spooky action at a distance" which I've held in my head for a while (I don't pretend to understand quantum entanglement, so holding in my head is as close as I'll get). And it makes me think about things which are in conversation but don't meet, things which commune but don't touch. The sun and moon alternate endlessly and sometimes I see them together in the sky. I've also been listening to David Sylvian a lot for the past 18 months, loving his velvet voice and the sumptuous indulgence of the beds of sounds. I try to make simple melodies shrouded in strange sounds and this time I tried to embody the soothing legato of his singing.