We’re thrilled to present a Trillium + OFMS peformance with Eli Wallace, a Brooklyn-based pianist, improviser, and composer. The all-ages performance is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, inside Millar Lodge on Mount Sequoyah with a $10 suggested donation. Wallace’s work as a pianist displays his vast milieu of experiences from classical, jazz, and free improvisation, incorporating elaborate piano preparations that John Lewis (The Guardian) says is "...pushing the boundaries of the prepared piano." His compositions employ notational strategies to broaden how musicians produce sound and the ways in which they interact.
For this concert, Wallace will play one extended uninterrupted improvisation utilizing the same concepts in terms of approach to sound and form employed in the preparation and construction of the album. However, the music presented in this concert will transpire according to visceral improvisational whim from beginning to end.
Eli Wallace’s first studio solo piano album - pieces & interludes - is a collection of four pieces (compositions) and three interludes in juxtaposition with each other. The pieces materialized from intentional experimentation with specific piano preparations that came to define the content and generate the morphology. However, the entire album is improvised; there’s no score. These compositions are a framework for spontaneity.
The interludes are spliced contiguously from a much longer work and provide contrast to the intense intimacy of the pieces, taking the listener out for a few minutes before dropping them back into the intensity of the next piece. The music directs the listener into the piano, inviting them to share not only the cochlear experience but also the kinesthetic experience of the performer. Therefore, this work is an intimate expression of Wallace’s relationship to the piano, an uncompromisingly personal manifesto that encapsulates his lifelong love of the instrument.