Released: 06/09/24
I was lucky enough to see the English pianist Pat Thomas play a few years ago, performing two works by the criminally overlooked 19th-century African-American composer Thomas Wiggins, and I was struck by the ferocity, both intellectual and physical, with which he approached his instrument. It's often difficult to capture the power of live performance on record, but on Thomas's wondrous new LP, a collection of avant-garde solo piano improvisations that take in new music, post-bop and free jazz, the energy is thrillingly palpable.
Where opening track The Solar Model' is the artist at his most uncompromising, a muscular Schoenbergian workout that evokes, at times, a malfunctioning clock and a metalwork factory “ achieved by Thomas standing up with one hand inside the piano and one on the keys “ there are also moments of exquisite beauty, such as on closer The Birds Are Singing', which somehow sounds like Messiaen'sPreludes for Piano(aptly, given the French composer's affinity to birdsong) fed through the programming software Max/MSP. It's incredible.
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