Blue Green Piano Music

Sunday, January 16, 2000

MICHAEL HARRISON: IN FLIGHT: PIANO SOLOS

Fortuna Records 17042-2

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What do these three gentlemen have in common? They are all pianists, and they all play a variant of Blue Green Piano Music.

Anyway Windham set out to make exquisite recordings of music played on acoustic instruments; pianos, guitars, flutes, soprano saxophones, etc. etc. They did very well. Slowly but surely this trend became a cultural undertow that has melded into and affected everything from what is called "New Age" music to the "Minimalist" movement in, for want of any better categorization, "classical" composition. It's getting a little more difficult these days for any of us who think of what we do as "composition" to have to admit that much of anything we do is in fact "classical" music and I'm sure a lot of it isn't. But we really have nowhere else to go and can't really be absorbed by the other musical genres. It doesn't really matter what it's called; a great number of people listen to this kind of music most of the time as a preference.

The pictures above are, from left to right;

Michael Harrison's contribution to this genre, called "In Flight" is a real classic by now for a reason that remains sort of esoteric; he uses a different tuning for the piano, called "just intonation" in some of his pieces, which makes certain intervals sound more pure than others while in some keys, the intervals sound "wild". Of course he's using the purest of these intervals, but not always. The effect is to create a beautiful and lush sound. In any case, Harrison's brand of blue green piano music sounds both improvised and composed which is a trademark feature of this kind of music. It is so easy to listen to. I enjoy just putting this CD on continuous play and doing whatever I need to do, letting the music invade my consciousness. And this is what a lot of people do with this kind of music.

In our musical life, I have come to realize that we simply cannot live on meat alone; that a steady diet of nothing but the music of the great masters tends to produce a sort of mental and emotional gout. We need the lighter faire, which like salad, enriches us while cleansing our minds and emotions of the stress and concerns that get built up from working on and listening to too much of the "hard" music, the protein of our musical life. Blue green piano music is simple. One usually doesn't hear too many claims made that it takes much virtuosity to play it. Such characterizations of any of this music are largely irrelevant anyway since beauty can very often be simple and complexity can often be ugly.. Harrison's "The Swan Has Flown To The Mountain Lake", which contains rhythmic elements reminiscent of Indian raga, is obviously not that easy to play. It should also be stated that it is not always the easiest thing to play something softly and smoothly or to make it sound that way and the mechanical capabilities of the pianos involved are very much part of it as well as the physical, mental and emotional state of the pianist.

A lot of this blue green music sounds like it comes from a variety of sources from around the world; for instance Indian, Latin, Asian or Arabic. But it is at least one step removed from any folk music of any kind, it is suggestive rather than anecdotal, impressionistic rather than didactic music. Here and there a syncopated phrase may suggest jazz but it isn't jazz. The harmonic modulations are natural, easy and simple and don't rattle or irritate and this is usually accomplished by eliminating the diminished intervals and building musical patterns using harmonic concords.

I have suggested that there are "tribes" that follow certain kinds of music. The people who follow this kind of music are more likely to be environmentalists, naturalists, vegetarians, animal rights advocates, or apolitical types, gentle people.

Saying too much about this music is already too much. It's all blue green though, music to swim by, fly by, float by, soothe by, meditate to, etc.....