LISTEN: 'Rise & Fall'

A new, collaborative piece with pianist & composer Garreth Broke

It was a whole decade ago in January 2015 when I first began sharing the piano music I had been working on; quietly, tentatively, unsure of where it even sat within the maddening world of musical genre.

Emerging, phoenix-like - though with trepidation and deep insecurities - from the ashes of the previous decade: from arriving in Leeds in 2005 as a fresh-faced, well-meaning but ultimately quite fragile, squashable and highly impressionable 18-year-old to study music at university, through to the well-trodden path of establishing oneself as a freelance music professional, taking every primary school music job, beginner-piano teacher and playing every wedding gig going, via a cavalcade of musical and faith-based mis-steps; it felt as if, simultaneously, I had done an awful lot, and yet also not done very much at all.

Meaningfully, at least.

As I began to share some music - through SoundCloud, whilst it remained relatively uncorrupted by the embedding of streaming as the primary means of listening to music - it became apparent that there were others quite like me, based in quite varied, disparate locations, with vaguely similar stories, but certainly an appreciation of each others’ music, and a desire to find other people to share this with.

Community.

It was this elusive quality which I had been searching for. An introvert; world-weary already in my late-20s, by the weight of expectations, what I didn’t do and what I hadn’t become. But here were people who were really quite similar, with whom I had a shared musical aesthetic, despite never having met.

One of the people I connected with on SoundCloud - Tinder For Musicians™️ as we came to think of it - during this nascent period was a pianist & composer called Garreth, who was from the UK, but had just moved to live and work in Frankfurt in Germany.

Life does have a funny way of connecting you with people sometimes. Garreth and I are a very similar age, and despite some differences, have a remarkably similar set of experiences, stories and musical interests.

Garreth is a wonderful pianist: far better technically and musically than I’ll ever be. He’s also a brilliant composer, with a great ear for melody, as well as a typically-pianistic love for harmony. He is a much in-demand teacher and has his own extremely interesting Substack page Piano Creativity, which is a treasure trove for anyone involved with teaching and learning the piano.

In the years since we connected, we’ve performed together, stayed in each others’ houses, met some of our respective family’s, and shared any number of extended long conversations about literally everything. It’s a mutual friendship which means a great deal to me, one which developed very organically, and occurred at very different yet important moments in both our lives.

In some ways, I guess it is strange it has taken us so long to collaborate musically. But, as we begin 2025, it is a really nice way to start the year by sharing our new piece ‘Rise & Fall’ with you - a collaborative, mostly improvised piece based exclusively around an E natural minor scale.

It’s taken from Scale Vol. 2, an upcoming compilation by Bigo & Twigetti - a UK-based label both of us have released a number of pieces with in years gone by - in which all the contributions focus on a specific scale or series of notes.

Starting from Garreth’s melancholic natural minor chordal base, I was let loose to try to - tastefully (!) - bring out a melodic development which creates a sense of flow, shape and dynamic lift, whilst staying true to the feeling of the piece.

We’re really pleased with the results, and very much hope you enjoy listening to the piece. It feels appropriate to be releasing it during the dark, cold month of January, but I hope you hear a sense of hopefulness within the melancholy. In my mind, melancholy - complex emotion that it is - doesn’t exist without an element of hopefulness.

If you have any questions about the process, whether compositionally or from a recording/technical process, do pop a comment below!