In 24 Ways of Looking at a Piano,
Eric Schwartz approaches the instrument as a sound-source for notes, noises, and any fantastic thing that can be imagined. Playing on its potential for various percussive attacks, blurred harmonies, and prepared effects, as well as its more traditional patterns and gestures,
Schwartz takes the piano one step further into electronic music by altering its sonorities through a computer and creating a kind of experimental musique concrète. If only by numerical association, these 24 pieces may suggest connections to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or
Chopin's Préludes, but these are just some of the many allusions and little jokes
Schwartz has embedded in his witty set of studies. Though
Schwartz began with little knowledge of the sequencing software he would use, he turned his limitations into an aspect of the compositional process; thus, the pieces progress from relatively simple manipulations in "Prelude: Elliot's funky shuffle" and "The beelzebub rag" to eerie cosmic distortions in "Vestigial necromancy," quasi-industrial skronk in "Untitled #1," and "Jason Voorhees takes a bath," nearly orchestral textures in "Gone away," and full-blown sonic mayhem in "A final shaking of the penitent smurf." This album is a tour de force by an inventive composer of, as
Schwartz himself describes it, genre bending music, and intrepid listeners will find it absolutely fascinating.