Pianist Todd Cochran Releases "From the Vault: Notes for the Future," a Narrative Exploration and Foray into Cochran’s Electronic Music Palette

Notes for the future are the “imagined sometime in the past” tropes of a storyteller. Freed from every day “isms” of convention and released from the symbolic containment of the vault, the music is an allegorical exploration in futurism. The stream running throughout the musical narrative is a speculative commentary about our human search for meaning, and we’re reminded that as a version of our ancestors’ vision, this quest never ends.

“From The Vault” is structured around a sequence of recurring themes and develops as an unfolding tour of references, hints, and clues. Moving from one perspective to another, we connect with how our planet is perpetually in a state of seeking solutions. Within the soundscape, without words, an underlying language is speaking. Nature evolves for the sum of us, not the few. We are in a continual state of becoming. We are connected. Love is passed along, as is happiness. Nevertheless, expressly for the listener, an implied sense of reasoning encourages us to feel free and let go of all things familiar. And then, “over there” in the distance, we get a passing glimpse of the sacred structure.

1.    PAINTED BY THE SUN

Mountain peaks, sea cliffs, oceans, opaque forests, desert savannas – and human faces colorized by the paintbrush of nature. The entirety of our planet is inhabited by intuitive human beings – all sun worshippers – collectively marking time in communal practices of decoding the mysteries of our existence.

2.    IN YOU I SEE ENDLESS MEMORIES

An imagined conversation between the sky and the wind.

3.    ISMS PRISMS

Not one thing, but all things… spontaneous change shuttles us through the cycles of life.

4.    TRANSPARENCIES

Being transparent is naturally imperfect and intensely human.

5.    WE MAKE TWO, TWO MAKE WE

Music is a language of interacting tones and colors through which one is able to experience the other; the abstract and the personal. The notion of two streams of thought merging into a unified idea makes for a wellspring of originality. At once distinctly different, yet in combination, resonating wildly.

6.    EYE DREAMING

“Within you, my love, I see endless mystery.”

7.    MOON GLOW

This duet of a middle-sized plucked string instrument and Balinese gong expresses energies I’ve experienced in Indonesia, where the nighttime sky sometimes seems so vast there appears to be an aura around the moon. 

8.    HYMN FOR THE HIDDEN PEOPLE

This is a tonal essay – an homage to the poor, the rebuked, scorned, unseen, and unheard. The music challenges our lack of compassion and moves us to feel the many who toil and struggle in silence, yet stay in the light, with hope and determination. 

9.    THE SPINNING CIRCLE

There are no simple explanations or a single equation that defines a circle. A circle has no beginning or end, there’s no start, finishing point, or conclusion. Only infinite revolutions rhythmically intertwined.

10. INSEPARABLE

Balance in our lives and the spaces we occupy is a dance of opposites. “Om” and “Amen” are the same thing.