Chris Conway - A Full Moon Summer Night's Dream
piano improvisation

background
My last solo piano improvisation album Outside In was recorded at noone along with daytime outside sounds out of the window. I had been wanting for some time to record a night music companion to it with sparser, and slightly more atonal, music.

On a warm, still summer night I felt it might be the right night for it. I then discovered that it was a full moon! So I chose to heighten the atmosphere by making a ceremony/ritual out of the recording process. I set up the studio, with 3 candles, and a Tibetan singing bowl to play 3 times at the start, along the way, and at the end of the piece. I took photographs of the night sky and the full moon from my loft studio before and after recording as part of the ritual, and they make up the cover art. I started recording shortly before midnight.

It makes an interesting step on the solo piano journey from Glisten (short varied tracks), Midnight Window Blue (longer tracks & minimalism), Outside In (one whole piece wandering where it will)

The result certainly isn’t like anything I’ve done before. The stillness of the night comes through, and the themes that drift in now and then are like memories or dreams. It is a strange wandering creature of the night.

influences
Morton Feldman, Steve Kuhn, Marcin Wasilewski, John Taylor, Alexander Scriabin. Toru Takemitsu

trivia
Recorded by candlelight at full moon, midnight 9th July 2017,

Total time - 58.32