![]() ![]() They knew how to write toward their mostly female, mostly teenage fans, of course. (An orange!) So, yes, a big show-but also five kids who won life’s lottery and were just as much along for the ride as everyone else. The goofy videos, the way they cracked up in their interviews, the way you could see Harry sitting behind Rihanna at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and casually peeling an orange. No matter how crazy things got around them-95,000 fans packed into a South African soccer stadium, the Directioner who forced his way into Liam’s hotel room to steal his boxers and wear them around for a day, the shrine to where Harry got sick on the side of the LA freeway-the boys retained an air of approachability that made them seem a little different. He eventually came back to the stage, but not before setting a precedent: One Direction might be a boy band, one of the biggest in pop history, but that didn’t mean they were gonna dance. Not to be missed.In a formative moment in 1D history, Zayn Malik ducked out of the dance segment on The X Factor, because dancing just made him feel weird. Connoisseurs of improvised piano should regard this album as essential listening. As a piece, The Hills Shout is grippingly captivating from first note to last. ![]() Demierre's rearrangement of the concert recording ensures that there is plenty of variety throughout the piece, with some daring juxtapositions as well as some surprises. That tranquility is soon broken by a percussive assault on the frame of the piano which leaves it resonating, before the zither returns. So, the opening minutes could easily be mistaken for a zither recital in an echo chamber, followed by a performance of a long-lost Satie piece characterized by its sparse melodic passages. No new music is added, but all the sound material that was once produced is being reconsidered through the immediate and present experience of my listening imagination." As it often has, Demierre's piano playing ranges far and wide, exploring every conceivable extended technique, and coaxing every imaginable sound from the instrument. Demierre said of that process, " The Hills Shout sounds like the live memory of a past concert. During the 2020 lockdown, he worked on the recording of it. On January 31st 2020, Demierre gave a live solo piano concert at Offene Ohren in Munich. As on past solo albums, Demierre named the track after a poem, this time by the American poet Robert Lax (1915-2000). The Hills Shout comprises one forty-minute track which shares its title with the album. ![]() ![]() Since Assemblance (Unit Records, 1987) Demierre has also recorded occasional solo piano albums, with The Hills Shout being 2023's offering, following The Well-Measured Piano (Creative Works Records, 2019). Along the way, it includes collaborations with such luminaries as Cyril Bondi, Sylvie Corvoisier, d’incise, Barry Guy, Insub Meta Orchestra, Hans Koch, Urs Leimgruber, Lucas Niggli, and Barre Phillips, in such fine recordings as Brainforest (Intakt, 2006) by the Demierre-Guy-Niggli trio. Swiss pianist Jacques Demierre has a relatively small recording history considering that it dates back to June 1984. ![]()
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