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I Am Piano is a live music performance centred around performed reconstructions of piano samples taken from classic modern jazz recordings.

Devised by Philip Brophy, this suite of pieces conceptually and performatively extends ideas on the piano and sampling covered in his articles Sonic Occupancy (published in Ojeblikket Vol.10, No.3, Copenhagen, 2000) and Sounding & Sampling (published in New Music Articles No.6, Melbourne, 1988). Performed live and un-sequenced on a midi-keyboard, the pieces explore ways in which fragments of piano recordings/performances can be reinterpreted as raw material for a concert-style performance via a keyboard instrument.

Far from celebrating the humanist figure of jazz piano improvization - let alone the heroic cliche of the Romantic concert maestro - I Am Piano thrusts an ironic barb into the piano's mythological status and aims to perceive it purely as a sound machine whose melodiousness is but a mirage of musical language.

(Two pieces of the suite have been presented in stereo at ARTICULATING SPACE Concert 3, Ignifuge, Melbourne, August 2005. A third piece was performed in quadraphonic sound for LIQUID ARCHITECTURE 7, North Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, July 2006 and at the Wine Bar, Auckland, August 17th. The rest of the works are currently in development, with a CD and DVD-R forthcoming on Sound Punch Records.)

BUY I Am Piano directly through Sound Punch Records online using PayPal in 2009.

Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy