Max de Wardener - Music for Detuned Pianos (2020)

Max de Wardener returns to Village Green with an album of detuned acoustic piano pieces, performed by pianist Kit Downes (ECM).

Drawing inspiration from modernist composers James Tenney, Harry Partch and La Monte Young, de Wardener’s intentions here were “to try and bend something established and monumental into something new”.

The resulting album is deceptively simple, belying the project’s myriad technical challenges, (pianos are immensely stubborn when subject to unorthodox tuning methods). Captured over a two year period, Downes’ enlivening improvisations do justice to de Wardener’s vision in creating an elegant record that feels at once familiar, yet otherworldly.