BRUCE BRUBAKER - ENO PIANO

Released: 12/07/2024

As Brian Eno famously said, "The studio is a musical instrument," Bruce Brubaker now says, "A musical instrument can be a studio." Can a single instrument convey ambient music originally made through studio techniques and tape loops? On November 10, 2023, InFiné will release American musician Bruce Brubaker's 12th studio album Eno Piano, including a selection of Brian Eno's iconic ambient music, including Music for Airports. Eno Piano is a companion to Bruce Brubaker's acclaimed album Glass Piano (2015) — even the two album covers are companions. Named by Pitchfork "One of the most exciting pianists in the contemporary American classical scene," Brubaker, in Eno Piano, shows that just as the studio can be a musical instrument, a single musical instrument can be a studio.

Brian Eno's music is a significant part of the repetition-based musical minimalism practiced by Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and others in the 20th century. In 1971, Philip Glass performed at the Royal College of Art in London. In the audience were two 23-year-olds: David Bowie and Brian Eno. Glass's music was a formative influence on Eno. Then later, Philip Glass wrote three symphonies based on the three albums of Eno and Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. Eno Piano acknowledges a deep artistic bond. Brian Eno defined the new genre of "ambient music."

Spending hours waiting for a flight at the Cologne-Bonn Airport, Eno became frustrated with the airport's uninspiring atmosphere. At that moment, Eno conceived an album of music "designed for airports" In his original 1978 liner notes, he explained: "Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to 'brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.