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Track 2 - Night Music: The Seven Waves (by Laura Andel) robertfleitz.bandcamp.com/track/laura-andel-night-music-the-seven-waves-2017-2021

Track 11 - Night Music: Under the Seven Waves (by Laura Andel)
robertfleitz.bandcamp.com/track/laura-andel-night-music-under-the-seven-waves-2017-2021

I met pianist Robert Fleitz through our work as teaching artists for the New York Philharmonic. Once the pandemic hit, Robert and I were placed in a team to work as collaborators for a large-scale and intense online project teaching the basics of music and composition to children. Magic started on day 1. We spent many hours working together (Robert in NYC, myself in Buenos Aires) on a weekly basis for about 6 months. We got so used to exchanging ideas and creating virtual trips for our students, that somehow, it felt completely natural to engage in a new creative project —the recording of Night Music, a series of graphic scores that I had created a few years ago. Robert and I met two times (in person, in real life) and spent about 3-hours each day recording the two tracks that are in Robert's album leaving a room. It is my pleasure to share Robert Fleitz' piano solo album, which includes my composition Night Music: The Seven Waves (track 2), and Night Music: Under the Seven Waves (track 11).

About leaving a room (liner notes by Robert Fleitz):
leaving a room was recorded in May 2021, the last month I lived in my six-year New York apartment and the last month I lived with Mordecai, a 50-something year-old Kawai grand. I practiced on Mordecai for almost four years after finishing grad school, its lovingly dulled hammers producing a mellow, crackling tone that nevertheless sparkled past the walls and out the window, conversing with the barking dogs next door and the birds that roosted in the courtyard. Its uniquely heavy action altered my technique, rebuilding the musculature of my hands; the emotional negotiation of bedroom as practice room changed my listening, reforming my sonic imagination. My life and playing traced an analemma, with Mordecai the fixed point.

The works on this album, written by brilliant composers and artists who are dear friends who I admire deeply, unravel the ambiguous feelings inherent in leaving a place. Some of these pieces were written for, on, or with Mordecai; all of them ask the listener to lean in closely, breathe, and reconsider relationships with time, hearing, and place. With a decidedly lo-fi recording setup, I embraced Mordecai’s rough features: buzzing, inconsistent touch, acoustic limitations of the room — while also holding its idiosyncratic beauties: the breathtaking clearness possible in a single note, the introspective playing style of a small apartment, unexpected overtones, the sounds of a New York City courtyard outside; an apartment recital for an audience of one.

Special thanks to Sergio Muñoz; Eric Harper; Hannah McDermott; Han Shi; Zach Green; Colleen and John Berry; Giancarlo Latta; Issei Herr; Simon Frisch; Peter Fischer; Ryan Reilly; Julian Martin; Hung-Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone; Pi-hsien Chen; Laura Andel; Patrick, Teresa, Claire, Carl and Dennis Fleitz; Mitchell List; Ellen and Rick Ontko; Michelle Fleitz and Larry Holzman; Amanda Wagner; Sarah Kendall; Andrew Brown; Matīss Čudars; The Swan City Piano Festival; Lou Sheppard; Lilita Dunska; Bastiaan Kuijt; Annie Yano; Lanee Hood-Hazelgrove; Beethoven Piano Movers; Eve Leopold, Elvin Martinez; the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation, and my next-door neighbor Tina and her dogs. Deepest gratitude to my husband, Krists Auznieks.