New solo piano album by German musician and composer Henning Schmiedt.
During the pandemic, Henning started to do a ritual – every day, he recorded an instant composition on his upright piano, an acoustic piano diary / klaviertagebuch.
There were no 2nd takes, just a moment’s notice. Usually no longer than 3-4 minutes.
Since the piano is in his living room, the sounds from the street, passing cars, wind, and birds merge with the piano strings’ soft sound.
Henning developed some Instant Composing technics during the pandemic, musical algorithms, like slowly growing echoes. Sometimes his playing was like walking through an imaginary house, where the opening of a new door creates an unknown motive.
He could see his state of mind through the sound, and he felt connected to himself, like an inner dialogue. Since the lockdown was a time of limited communication, that internal dialogue became more critical.
But like in a real journal, when the thoughts and memories of the day become clearer through writing down, it felt that playing and recording the piano created order to issues and ideas.
Finally, he imagined playing for an audience, trying to connect to every single listener even from a distance, and to his surprise, it worked! He felt a genuinely remarkable and happy physical sensation, to experience connection through resonance.
Piano Diary is both: an inner dialogue and the result of a distant concert with his audience. When listening actively and conscious, every listener is sending back imagination, creating endless resonance and reflections. Becoming one through musical resonance is a state of mind that makes bliss for both the artist and the audience. And that is true even in times of physical isolation.