Kathleen Supove - Eye to Ivory (2019)

This release from the widely acclaimed, leading-edge pianist Kathleen Supové features electronics, theatrics, extended techniques, Yamaha Disklavier, and vocals ranging from humor to horror. Joan La Barbara describes the music as “Intimate, violent, roaring, serene,” and the New York Times has observed, “What Ms. Supové is really exploding is the piano recital as we have known it.” The album presents the premiere recordings of Mary Ellen Childs’ readily engaging Eye to Ivory; Nick Didkovsky’s dispassionately shocking Rama Broom; Guy Barash’s technically sophisticated Talkback IV; Randall Woolf’s laugh-fest In The Privacy of My Own Home; and Dafna Naphtali’s Landmine, composed for Supové playing a Yamaha Disklavier, the Disklavier playing itself, along with Naphtali’s real-time processing. La Barbara also writes, “Kathleen Supové has built an extraordinary career as a solo artist performing almost exclusively contemporary works, many of them composed for her and often commissioned by her. For this courageous choice she has been showered with an impressive array of awards, prizes, and well-deserved recognition. This collection should certainly garner her more.”