What are we really like as humans? Well, in the case of Carlos Cipa one could assume: he is quiet, gentle, slightly melancholic. At least if you take his new, fifth album as an expression of his personality. “Ourselves, as we are” is the name of the work recently published by Warner Classics, which the Munich pianist and composer actually understands as a kind of intimate self-portrait, as a “conscious introspection”.
Cipa was inspired by Corona. Because during the pandemic, like many of us, he saw himself completely thrown back on himself. Suddenly it was time to deal with time and silence and yourself in a new way. And with Carlos Cipa it ended up being locked in a room with his piano.
Now that’s probably not so unusual for pianists. Only made Cipa, after studying piano with the hardcore band Pangea Played the drums and then studied composition at the Munich Music Academy, resulting in a concept. One room, one piano, one pianist and plenty of time to improvise was the motto. This resulted in nine instrumental pieces in which the piano not only appears as an instrument, but also as a second character of its own. Hence the “we” in the title. That means: Because Cipa has reduced his playing to an extreme degree, you can hear the mechanics, the hitting of the keys and the strings in addition to the actual tones.
Admittedly, this is not entirely new either. Composers like John Cage took advantage of the piano’s potential. And as a current forerunner of this new “quietness”, as it is called in the press release, Nils Frahm comes to mind, who sometimes uses felt to dampen his piano playing. Despite it. After Cipa, who also works as a film composer, had expanded his palette on “Retronyms” in 2019 with marimba, bass guitar or dulcimer and then recorded “Correlations” in 2020 on eleven different grand and upright pianos, this is now a courageous “restart”. And it is a beautiful, welcome invitation to listen carefully and consciously.
It is best to do this alone in the chamber. There already feels the first piece “Took” as if you stuck your head in the piano and were dipped in cotton wool. Every note sounds soft and muffled. You can hear the mechanics vibrating. And inspired by other titles like “Between Two Strangers” or “Walk So Silently” movies will soon be running in your head. With “Predictable Patterns” you can hear the background noise of the piano louder than the notes melancholic title track the mechanism pushes itself in between like noise. As a listener, you soon join the “we” and become part of an intimate, meditative love triangle. Until after the final, longing “Forgotten Me” the last note disappears into nothingness.
Carlos Cipa: “Ourselves, as we are“, published by Warner Classics