Rainy day food court blues
Nahre Sol is a Canadian pianist, composer, teacher, and visual artist. She's actually a ferociously talented classical pianist, which you'll only get a little taste of in this video. She has, for instance, rewritten Chopin's Etudes to emphasize modern harmonic ideas, and if you hunt around you can find videos of her playing this and other formidably difficult stuff.
This video is part of a series that she's done in which she composes a short piece of music, explains the basis for her composition, and then goes to some public place to record herself playing it. Which is why the video begins in a food court.
This particular composition is based on the traditional harmonic progressions of 12-bar blues. She briefly covers how she familiarized herself with the blues before writing this piece. I doubt that she was totally unfamiliar with them - this can't be the first time in her life that she's heard "The Lemon Song" - but her version of the martial-arts-film training montage is very endearing. Also, she doesn't learn about blues music the way you or I would learn about blues music, as you'll see when she gets to Oscar Peterson. (I would love to see a whole video that was just documenting her engagement with Oscar Peterson. The brief moments where she actually plays what she's been listening to is remarkable window into her talent.)
I mentioned that Sol's a visual artist. Her videos have a wonderfully calm and idiosyncratic visual style that she has given as much thought to as she has to the performances and ideas that she's chosen to document. I'm sure this won't be the last of her videos that I recommend this year.
This video is part of a series that she's done in which she composes a short piece of music, explains the basis for her composition, and then goes to some public place to record herself playing it. Which is why the video begins in a food court.
This particular composition is based on the traditional harmonic progressions of 12-bar blues. She briefly covers how she familiarized herself with the blues before writing this piece. I doubt that she was totally unfamiliar with them - this can't be the first time in her life that she's heard "The Lemon Song" - but her version of the martial-arts-film training montage is very endearing. Also, she doesn't learn about blues music the way you or I would learn about blues music, as you'll see when she gets to Oscar Peterson. (I would love to see a whole video that was just documenting her engagement with Oscar Peterson. The brief moments where she actually plays what she's been listening to is remarkable window into her talent.)
I mentioned that Sol's a visual artist. Her videos have a wonderfully calm and idiosyncratic visual style that she has given as much thought to as she has to the performances and ideas that she's chosen to document. I'm sure this won't be the last of her videos that I recommend this year.
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