Composer Ryan Francis has a box of musical toys that’s finally ready to share. His new album Works for Piano was released on Tzadik Records April 19, and features Vicky Chow performing ten years of Ryan’s piano music, including one he wrote at age 19. His Six Etudes for Piano, a series of rhythmic musical concepts, was commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble in 2007 and premiered at the Digital Sustain concert at Chelsea Art Museum in 2008. Etudes then developed into a more cohesive Piano Concerto, also a Metropolis commission (with American Composers Forum and funds provided by the Jerome Foundation), that premiered at the LOOP concert later that spring. Ryan explains how the recording project was born out of these two performances:
“Andrew Cyr originally approached me about a chamber orchestra piece, and I countered with the idea of a chamber piano concerto. I mentioned that I had the idea of writing a set of companion etudes to the concerto, sort of like what György Ligeti did with his, and Andrew jumped at the idea, and commissioned the etudes as well, to be used as a prelude, or an introduction to the larger concerto. Vicky Chow, who is a close collaborator of mine, premiered several of the etudes on the Digital Sustain concert, and went on to perform the whole set many times, which drew the attention of John Zorn, who is the composer/co-founder of Tzadik Records. He offered me and Vicky the opportunity to record a CD, and because I’ve spent so much time writing piano music over the years, the proposed project we came back with was my complete piano works. Neither Vicky nor I had ever been in charge of a recording project, and Zorn basically cut us a check and said "go make it; this will be a learning experience for you”, which it was. I originally hoped that we would release somewhere in the range of a year after we got the offer, but it ended up taking over two years to finally come out in stores. One of the first and biggest challenges we encountered in making the recording was simply deciding where we were to record. We didn’t have a very big budget, and finding a space in New York that both had a good piano and had good acoustics for piano turned out to be one of the hardest things to find! We got lucky that our mutual friend Ryan Streber, a composer and recording engineer, was taking the leap and opening his own studio, Oktaven Audio, in Yonkers. I’ve worked with Ryan rather extensively through the years as he has been on site for a lot of live recordings of my music, and we have a close working relationship (and I also put him in touch with Metropolis Ensemble way back in the day!) so working with Ryan just felt like the best, easiest decision.“
[caption id="attachment_655” align=“alignright” width=“326” caption=“Ryan Francis and Vicky Chow”]
[/caption] The new album is now available on
,
,
, and
. From April 25-29, WQXR’s online station,
, is featuring the curated “loops, ladders, and wind-up birds” of Ryan Francis’ body of work, culminating in a complete broadcast of the new album on Friday. Each
Hammered!
broadcast is hosted by Metropolis artist
, who is also a pianist and regular contributor on WQXR. During the Q2 broadcasts, Ryan will be giving some background on his compositions, including
Etudes
,
Consolations
,
Wind-Up Bird Preludes
, and
Moonlight Fantasy
; and Vicky Chow will perform new works by fellow composers Andy Akiho, Evan Ziporyn, Eliot Britton and Daniel Wohl.
Follow the complete series here.
Listen to
Six Etudes for Piano
here:
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