You can also find this information on a special PDF we have created as part of this album!
MATTHEW LEE KNOWLES: I like to write pieces for people whose ideas inspire me, whose personalities feed me and whose friendships nurture me. These twelve pieces are a selection of about seventy compositions that name a specific person in the title and a further seventy that carry dedications, an act that I have been repeating now since 2006, it is my way of telling people that they are awesome, exploring musically how I see them. My most substantial work to date is a single movement for piano lasting twenty-six hours, titled For Clive Barker. Kate played my seven hour long composition For Alan Turing in February 2021 and we have worked together on this project since then. I can already see the future and it is paved with compositions bearing the title For Kate Ledger (!)
KATE LEDGER: “You can’t be expressive enough and I feel like I am expressive as a player, but the repertoire I choose, I can only be, you know, it's a certain type of expression or it's like you can only go so far with it. So even, like, that Matthew Lee Knowles piece, I played it expressively … Well, it's obviously a really extreme piece, where there's very little going on in terms of phrasing or melody or anything … but I play it as expressively as I can, so I think that's what I like. It’s taking that expression, but then putting it in a completely misaligned context, and I think I find that interesting.” [from a conversation between Kate and Mark Dyer; 17/03/21] Immense thanks go to Matthew and Sam for this album. I hope we get to make another one.
Influential tracks for this album
David Rosenboom - Chilean Drought (1976), Breeder - Twilo Thunder (Auranaut Remix) (2000), Faithless - Sunday 8 p.m. (2004), Martin Arnold - Points and Waltzes (2012), performed by Philip Thomas in Phipps Hall, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Chris Clark - Lambent Rag (2021)
This project was supported by 158 backers on Kickstarter - without their financial and friendly support this would not have been possible! Matthew wrote six piano pieces to thank them directly with the title of that collection simply being a list of their names.
Special Thanks To These People: Lucy Armstrong, Tim van der Avoort, Roland Bates, Òscar Colomina i Bosch, Matthew Bourne, Seán Clancy, Carson Cooman, Ed Cooper, Laurence Crane, Daniel Derakhshan, Ashley Elks, James Erber, Michael Finnissy, Connor Fogel, Christopher Fox, Ben Gaunt, Lindsay Glenn, Leo Grant, Sadie Harrison, David Horne, Fenella Humphreys, Andy Ingamells, Evan Johnson, Catherine Kontz, Neil Luck, Kai MacDonnell, James McILwrath, Angela Noghani, Grace Nyandoro, Tim Parkinson, Ian Parsons, William Penafiel, Greg Peterson, Thomas Poeser, Jane Ross, Alex Russell, Moira Searle, Ben Smith, Sally Turley, Dominick Tyler, Robert Villiers, Harriet Vine, James Weeks, Mark Wilcox, Tristan Williams, Peter Wilson, Michael Wolters, Clare Wooldridge, Marc Yeats, Niki Zohdi and The Music Department at St Peter’s School in York
credits
released April 3, 2022
Pianist: Kate Ledger
Composer: Matthew Lee Knowles
Mixed and produced by Sam Hobbs at Rebel Elements, Wharfedale
Mastered by Carl Rosamond at RRS Music and Media Service
Artwork by Gary Fisher
supported by 12 fans who also own “FOR [PART TWO: DEBRIS]”
Blurring the division between found sound and music, I love the way Look At That One evolves from seaside sussuration into an endless drone. Like the shoreline at incoming tide, hard to tell where one texture ends and the other begins. The final track's nagging guitar chords push at the senses with a firm insistence that carries the music onward yet remains fixed, turning endlessly without moving. A quiet, gentle odyssey. Modern Music Dan
Fragile cello and piano recall the bleak childhood of brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke spent in a large prefab estate in East Berlin. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 10, 2017