Breathing, Remembering, Dissolving

music for four pianos — Innova Recordings (2023)

A collaborative record bringing together a collection of contemporary experimental musical perspectives that share a common interest: challenging the idea of what the human is in a musical performance. The project collects six works by composers of various backgrounds, gender and racial identities, and diverse musical styles, coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, United States, Latin America, and Europe: Clara Allison, Julie Herndon, Hassan Estakhrian, Seán Ó Dálaigh, Manuel Pessôa de Lima, and Marcel Zaes. Each piece is a new composition written specifically for the Kukuruz Quartet on the occasion of this project.

Based in Switzerland, the Kukuruz Quartet—4 pianists on 4 pianos—is a close-knit group of divergent artistic personalities, all trained in disparate musical fields: Simone Keller is a versatile pianist in contemporary and classical music, Philip Bartels is an experimental theater stage director, Duri Collenberg studied composition in Amsterdam, and Lukas Rickli has broad experience in improvisation. They are equally at home on theater stages, concert halls, clubs, bars, office buildings, and studios.

Recorded at Stanford University, March 2022
Recording, Mixing, & Mastering: Zach Miley
Cover image: Binghuang Xu
Director of Recordings: Chris Campbell
Manager of Recordings: Tim Igel

Innova is the label of the American Composers Forum, supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation. The project is also supported by Pro Helvetia and the Stanford Music Department.