Bicentennial man
A fortuitous coincidence accompanied my move from Glasgow to Warsaw in 2010. Having then recently bought a piano, a set of strings samples, and Apple’s Logic Pro, I had been playing with modern-classical and ambient music. Following in the footsteps of Icelanders Jóhann Jóhannsson and Ólafur Arnalds, I began exploring life away from the guitar. At the same time, Poland celebrated the bicentenary of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth. With so much of Chopin’s music to enjoy, I became a little obsessed that year. I was a regular at the Warsaw Philharmonic, and from May through September, I spent every weekend in Łazienki park, where, under a large statue of the composer himself, concert pianists from around the world would perform Chopin’s music to a delighted audience every Sunday.
Over the following several years, I began taking piano lessons with a local teacher from the British School. I chose the British school to find my teacher, as I was able to then sit exams each year with the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music. My journey ended in 2013 when, during a football match, I broke an elbow and only just scraped through my grade 4 six weeks later. In a weird twist of fate, I couldn’t play guitar for a while with my broken elbow, but my cast was set in such a way that I could easily strum my guitar. That broken bone would lead me back to delay and distortion pedals in a big way, but those are stories for the future.
Variations of Chopin
Before all of that, though, in the autumn of 2012, I invited several ambient, electronic, and modern-classical musicians to help me create the collection of contemporary interpretations of Chopin’s music that became 2mf013, Variations of Chopin, released on May 13th, 2013.
The album opens and closes with 24 Preludes op. 28: no. 7 in A major: Andantino. The first interpretation is my own straight performance, albeit soaked in reverb. Clem Leek’s version closes the record with a beautiful bath of piano, violin, and ambient washes of sound.
When I invited friends to be involved, I had no idea what the record would become. I certainly didn’t expect Miaoux Miaoux’s exhilarating, pumping electronic interpretation of 2 Nocturnes op. 55: no. 1 in F minor, nor deSelby’s beautiful classical guitar recording of Fryderyk Chopin’s 3 Nocturnes op. 9: no. 2 in E flat major. Ensemble Thing provided a superlative, jazzy performance of the Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, which I still can’t quite believe when I hear it today.
Other ambient interpretations filled out the record with music that tugged on the heartstrings, from Antonymes, Good Weather for an Airstrike, and Now Wakes the Sea, among others.
Other Notes
Variations of Chopin was the first physical release to come from Too Many Fireworks since the hiatus in 2006, and as such, we looked at ways to make it pop. Ekopaks replaced the jewel cases we used on earlier releases. To design the artwork, I asked Polish illustrator Justyna Kowalska to create her own interpretation of the composer. She chose to include the willow tree, something almost synonymous with Chopin, here in Poland.
I will come on to talk about Laeto from Dundee, Scotland, later in this series, however, at the time of this record, the band’s drummer Robbie Cooper was fighting a rare and aggressive form of cancer. To support Robbie, all profit from Variations of Chopin was donated to Robbie to help during that time. Robbie tragically died almost a year later on the 23rd April, and he is still very much missed by friends and colleagues. The record, such as it is, is still dedicated to him.
You can listen to Variations of Chopin here