[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/spirodon/piano-in-the-atmosph-re[/soundcloud]
Playing piano has been central to my involvement in social movements over the past decade.
Although building melodies and improvisations on the keys can seem distant from holding banners at a downtown Montreal rally in the snow, the reality is that piano sustains my continued involvement in frontline struggles.
Developing my piano playing is an attempt to explore the emotional and spiritual aspects of political action, of struggles against injustice. Certainly there are feelings at street protests that are incredible, that feeling of solidarity, of common cause, which have greatly informed my emotional life over the past decade.
However beyond protests on the streets, or direct actions, there is that feeling the heart pushing your involvement, that sustains your courage to confront systems of power that sustain injustice. It is exactly that feeling, that emotion of courage to stand up and all the economic and personal turmoil that is often associated with that choice that I attempt to describe in my piano music.
Piano in the atmosphère : a layered soundscape built from a solo piano recording done on a 1800s piano on Vancouver island by my brother Jordan Christoff.
