Jing Yang, the pianist on this album, is a Chinese-born soloist and chamber musician who has performed worldwide and won multiple international piano competitions.
Composer Biography
Nils Vigeland, the composer, studied composition with Morton Feldman and piano with Yvar Mikhashoff at The University at Buffalo, developing long personal and professional associations with them.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Nils Vigeland, the composer, states that the music on this album documents a lifetime spent playing and composing on the acoustic piano, an instrument that continues to fascinate him.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Nils Vigeland's discovery of Debussy, Ives, Schönberg, and Stravinsky in his early teens inspired him to compose, often by improvising variations on their passages.
Composer Biography
Nils Vigeland toured for eight years with Morton Feldman, a composer, as 'Morton Feldman and Soloists,' performing extended works for flute, percussion, and piano that Feldman composed for them.
Compositional Technique
Nils Vigeland composes at the piano, describing it as 'physical contact with sound' to test register, voicing, and figuration, and to explore how these decisions affect the music's rate of change.
Compositional Technique
The modern piano's resonance, created by its pedals and sympathetic string vibration, significantly influenced harmony by softening dissonance, opening new tonal combinations in the 19th century.
