Glassforms

If bridging two musical universes – the Rebotini-Zanesi, Mills-Rudy, and Craig-Tristano tandems come to mind – is a complex yet often successful exercise, the Brubaker-Cooper pairing adds a not inconsiderable variable to the equation by tackling the solo piano works of Philip Glass, one of the creators of the American minimalist movement. The result is breathtakingly accurate and delicate. Piano and electronic machines are interconnected, each instrument, each gesture, each breath influencing each other, giving us to listen to the microevolutions of musical cells (the founding principle of repetitive music) in a new light. Man and machine are in dialogue. More than a simple reinterpretation, what the London producer and the American pianist propose is a mutation of Glass’ work. We plunge into a cinematic universe with “Two Pages” (although it’s not a work for solo piano, I can’t help but think of the use of “Music With Changing Parts” as the only soundtrack to the film Réalité, by Quentin Dupieux, aka Mr. Oizo). The dreamlike and poetic takes over with “Tirol Concerto”. In contrast to the delicate progressions resonating in the hollow of the ear, the five preludes bring us closer to a darker, acousmatic and multidimensional facet, both in form and substance. “Mad Rush” reveals itself as a quiet, hypnotic and swirling force. The two instrumentalists deliver music that is abstract yet so concrete that you could touch it with your fingertips.