Album Notes

Nicola Cipani was born in Lausanne in 1965, grew up in Milan, studied classical philology in Berlin, and moved to the United States in 1998. He now lives in Brooklyn and teaches at New York University. He has been playing piano for over thirty years.

Nicola Cipani’s “Ill-Tempered Piano” is a suprising and playful album of solo improvisations played on broken and untuned pianos. Cipani’s accomplished melodic and rhythmic approach and his responsiveness to each instrument’s raw potential set this project apart. The recordings were made over the span of two years in different New York City warehouses, on several keyboard instruments (among the pianos you hear also a clavichord), some of which are so damaged as to be hardly recognizable — but each piece takes the peculiarities of its instrument as a starting point, not as a limitation. What results is a collection of fresh, clever and fully-realized sound experiments performed on the strange landscape of each piano. The album is unpredictable and captivating — one to be heard and re-heard.