Solo Keyboard

Recently I have been rediscovering the joy of playing solo keyboard, finding quieter, meaningful songs that tap into some sort of emotional core.

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

Carole King and Gerry Goffin
Listen on Spotify / Apple Music / Youtube / etc

You know when a song is so well known that you just kind of take it for granted?

In early 2020 I ended up listening to this song again as if hearing it for the first time, and found myself kind of in awe. As I started playing it on the keyboard, I tried to leave the music clear and simple, to let the beauty of the melody and the emotion of the song shine through, and then gradually allowing embellishments to emerge that especially spoke to me as the song progressed.

This was actually the first solo keyboard song I had ever really recorded, and it was a bit of a surprise. Still feels meaningful to hear. Somehow listening with fresh ears to such a well known song ended up opening the door to a new musical land to explore.

My Country Tis of Thee / Lift Every Voice and Sing

Traditional / John Rosamund Johnson
Release date on Spotify/Apple Music/Youtube/etc: Oct 14, 2021

It’s already easy to forget that during the intense, difficult summer and fall of 2020, it felt like American society was stretching to a breaking point. Between a massive pandemic, an inspiring but difficult moment of racial justice reckoning, and one of the most searing and awful presidential election years we’ve witnessed, I remember so many of us wondering whether things would hold together, and what might come next.

One night during that year, the song “My Country Tis of Thee” ended up in my head, and it brought me back to warm memories of a variety of patriotism from my childhood that felt more warm and unifying than divisive. Of watching the olympics, of barbecues on July 4 with family and friends, of feeling like part of a shared national community. The warmth of those memories is matched by the difficulty and complexity of reconciling those feelings, both in the past as well as the present. But I also find myself reluctant and defiant to “cede” the territory of those memories entirely. I hope there may be a version of those emotions that collectively call us to higher purpose.

I’m not sure why I started playing “My Country Tis of Thee” except I’ve always found it beautiful and moving. But as I played, the melody of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” sort of came out of nowhere and layered and intertwined itself. It felt like it happened via some external inspiration, from both deep sadness and intense hopefulness. It felt like a reclamation. I stayed up recording it, finishing alone in my studio late that night wiping away tears. I don’t know whether that feeling comes across in the recording for others, but listening to it still brings me back there.

Bist Du Bei Mir

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel
Listen on Spotify / Apple Music / Youtube / etc

This is a more modern take on a 400-yr old opera aria that my dad always loved. It’s often wrongly attributed to Bach though it’s actually by a composer named Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. I still thought it was Bach when I recorded it, although in my defense, my dad’s sheet music said “J. S. Bach” in huge letters with a big old picture of the guy on the cover. So c’mon.

Growing up I played the song occasionally on the piano, and always thought the melody was beautiful. But I’ve typically only heard it performed in operatic style, which is a bit harder for me to connect with. I actually went searching for a more modern version of it but came up empty, so I sat down one day to play it myself.

Somehow playing it on the keyboard opened up a new dimension of appreciation for the beauty of the music. So I got a bit obsessed with the song and as I read the lyrics I realized it's a full on romantic “torch song” from the early 1700s ("If you are with me, I go [die] with joy". Whaaaat.) Reinterpreting it in my own “native” musical language felt really moving. Four centuries later and still straight to the heart.

V’al Kulam (prayer)

Traditional Prayer
Listen on: Spotify / Apple Music / Youtube / etc

While fasting during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in 2020, I sat down at the keyboard and absentmindedly started to play this traditional melody that I’ve heard every year at Yom Kippur services since childhood. It’s from a particularly powerful moment in the “Kol Nidrei” service when, singing together as a community, you lay aside pretense and defensiveness and seek forgiveness for shortcomings of the past year, named and unnamed.

I was struck by how beautiful it sounded on the keyboard with different chords behind it. So as Yom Kippur approached again the following year, I went back to record it, aiming for chords that sort of “open” up the song layer upon layer as it repeats, in a similar manner to my experience with the prayer itself, where you can feel your resistance wearing away each repetition, hopefully working your way towards a more unguarded, open, and vulnerable place within yourself.

Playing this melody was surprisingly moving for me — resonating deep into my center, as if I was catching the current of a stream running through my childhood, my family, my community, and its history.

Photos: at top by Deleece Cook, on main page by Adi Goldstein