Eli Wallace's pieces & interludes

Eli Wallace's first studio solo piano album –– pieces & interludes –– is a collection of four pieces (compositions) and three interludes in juxtaposition with each other. The pieces developed through intensive practice with various piano preparations that began before the pandemic. As recording studios shut their doors, the project stalled until it was safe to record again. The pieces were re-developed, reworked, and re-conceptualized until they were ready to be recorded in May 2021 by sound engineer Michael Coleman.

Each piece materialized through a process-based compositional approach, where specific preparations informed the musical material. In turn, the content influenced the further development and refining of the preparations. This back-and-forth method continued up until the recording session. These pieces came into being over time; therefore, they are unequivocally compositions due to the elements that became concretized and established through the process. However, this music is still wholly improvised (there are no scores); the pre-planned musical architecture provides a basic structure for the type of preparations and morphology of the works, but certain elements are still indeterminate. Each performance of these pieces would have a particular shape and arc that are exceedingly similar, but note and sound choices, specific rhythmic placement, dynamic gestures, and even song length would be slightly different each iteration.

The specific preparations congenital in each piece stand out due to targeted recording and mixing techniques and decisions, using different mics and sound designs for each one. Generally, for the pieces, the mix highlighted an intimate sound using close mics, putting the listener in direct contact with the piano strings:

piece 1 focuses on the low frequencies of the instrument, and the mix highlights this deep reverberation.

piece 2 is tactile, and therefore it was recorded and mixed as though the listener were literally inside the piano, adjacent to the action transpiring above the strings.

piece 3 centers around horrific screeching sounds and these high frequencies are emphasized, grating the cochlear organs.

piece 4 is essentially a percussion ensemble within the piano, and the sound design separates and highlights each of these variegated noises.

The interludes are spliced sections of music selected contiguously from a much longer work (28 minutes) centered on pure improvisation. These shorter sections are used as transitional material throughout the album, guiding the listener between the pieces. The preparations for the interludes include one preparational component from each of the four pieces, thus unifying the album's content in a macro sensibility. The approach is also different, relying more on playing notes on the keyboard with the entire piano interior prepared with objects that alter the instrument's sound when one plays a pitch. The sound engineer and producer Michael Coleman mixed the interludes with a "far-off" feeling using different room mics, thus taking the listener out of the piano for a few minutes before dropping them back into the intensity and close sonic intimacy of the next piece. The pieces and the interludes were connected seamlessly without track breaks, stitched together through cross-fading or layering to keep the momentum and energy churning. This decision leads the listener to hear the work in one sitting, maintaining the performative energy. It's not until the end of piece 4 that we finally find a conclusion. However, piece 3 is an outlier, separated from the album's surrounding material through silence before and after. It is necessary due to its abrasive sonic quality and to provide differentiation from the other transitions.

All technicalities aside, the work is about Wallace's relationship to the piano, as he invites the audience to share and revel in the experience. A tremendous amount of movement is involved in actuating the amalgam of sounds inherent to playing piano in this manner. Wallace beckons listeners to share this journey with him, to put people's ears inside the piano to hear what he hears while he's playing, and to imagine the physicality of the movements needed to make these sounds. In so doing, Wallace shares his relationship with the instrument in the most honest and intimate way possible. Through meditative passages, joyfully driving rhythmic and melodic tunes, and jarring sounds expressing the horror and depravity that it is to be human, he is offering an honest and vulnerable version of himself as an artist and human being. Consequently, this recording is a reified artifact about Wallace's life up to this point, expressed through his love of the piano.