In the Hands Podcasts

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Original piano recordings, featuring music old and new. Primary Format : Classical Also Listed as: Classical Contemporary Composition Piano City : Minneapolis State/Province : MN Country : USA Country : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: Original Music | New music | classical | Music | View this Podcast on a Google Map. Add to iTunes Text Only listing of In the Hands Podcasts Trumix.com listings available of In the Hands Podcasts Click Here to Update the directory of this podcasts programs.

Trumix.com listings available of In the Hands Podcasts Build your own playlists with this podcast. Chopin Preludes 4 and 9 (remastered) Visiting the house of my composer friend Matthew Smith (who has an outstanding CD out now, by the way), I noticed the score to Chopin’s E minor prelude out on the piano. It turns out that his wife, children’s book illustrator and author Lauren Stringer, is taking piano lessons, and she has been working on it. I was delighted — the piece is a favorite of mine. I dug out my recording of it for her to hear, and decided it was high time that I release a remastered ve ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nomade à Clef I don’t usually write jazz tunes, but my friend Todd asked me to write one for him. It sounded like fun, and he had written several great pieces for me, so I took up the challenge. Nomade à Clef is the result.Todd premiered it at this year’s Keys Please, with David Edminster on tenor sax, and I think they did just a marvelous job with it. They really made it fly. I only wrote a lead sheet (just melody and chords) with a bare-bones piano part underneath to suggest voicings in t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Manic Dance (rough) Things may have been quiet on the blog, but I’ve been doing tons of music work lately. The recent round of Zo went well: I took a bit of a risk playing mostly pieces that were fresh out of the practice oven (or, in a couple of cases, still baking), but people seemed to enjoy it, and I was certainly satisfied. (If you want to know about future concerts, you should get on the mailing list.) Concerts done, I’m now composing day and night, quite productively. I now h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bach Sinfonia 5 and Schumann Bunte Blätter 6 (remastered) As regular readers of In the Hands know, I’ve been working through my older recordings and applying my up-to-date mastering process — making them sound better, in other words. As I went through the list, I found that these two recordings make a nice pair. Arranging nice little transitions like this is one of my favorite parts of doing a concert. It’s the same little pleasure as assembling a mix CD or playing DJ: even the simple act of ordering songs is a kind of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Todd Harper: Questions Perhaps it would have been better if I’d just admitted to myself (and the world) that I’d be taking the summer off from In the Hands. But where’s the fun without the suspense? Here’s what I currently have in the pipeline (not necessarily in this order): Some newly composed pieces of my own. A new recording of at least some part of The Broken Mirror of Memory, my cello work. A fine new recording from Don Betts. The remaining remasterings of my olde ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Northwoods Police Report After a cold (which left my voice in bad shape for podcasting) and MinneBar (which was a great pleasure), it’s back to In the Hands! I’m continuing from last time the series of recordings I made recently with soprano Kim Sueoka of songs by Todd Harper. For several years, Todd has been writing songs full of the sort of jazz changes that are his roots, but as much in the tradition of lieder as anything. He always makes them short, sweet, and very focused — hai ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website First Autumn Night Here, for the first time in a long time, is something I wrote — but it’s not the music! A couple of weeks ago, I recorded some of my friend Todd Harper’s songs with Kim Sueoka, a marvelous local soprano who sings with (among others) the Rose Ensemble and a first-rate voice/guitar duo called Voce y Cuerdas. She’s great, Todd’s great, and by golly, we had a wonderful time making the recordings! Todd mostly writes voice / piano duets — and th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carei Thomas: The Usual Topic Here is a second selection from this year’s Keys Please to follow Todd’s little musical rattlesnake adventure. This is an improvisation by Carei Thomas, the rattlesnake’s narrator, now on piano. I thought — and he said afterward — that there was a little nod to my own funny little improvs in this one, especially in the way it starts with a very low note and a very high one … but it’s definitely a Carei thing! Some improvs have a defin ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Todd Harper: Rattlesnake Song #2 Things don't look good for me to create more new piano recordings in my home studio in the immediate future, so I'm going to have to stall --- but I figure I might at least stall with something good! This is a piece from the most recent Keys Please! concert. It ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 117.2 (remastered) Ahoy there. It's been a while! I've been busy. It's a sad fact of life that I have bills to pay, and in spite of the tremendous generosity of some of this podcast's listeners, a whole year's worth of donations to In the Hands don't even cover a month's rent. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 117.2 (remastered) Ahoy there. It's been a while! I've been busy. It's a sad fact of life that I have bills to pay, and in spite of the tremendous generosity of some of this podcast's listeners, a whole year's worth of donations to In the Hands don't even cover a month's rent. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A new audio logo! Sorry for the long hiatus. It's been a busy time: my latest sabbatical is running to its end, I'm broke, and back to job hunting. So I've been having to put aside the music and be all practical lately.Still, I have not left In the Hands completely neglected. Listening to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A new audio logo! Sorry for the long hiatus. It's been a busy time: my latest sabbatical is running to its end, I'm broke, and back to job hunting. So I've been having to put aside the music and be all practical lately. Still, I have not left In the Hands completely neglected. Listening to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Song for Lost Things (rough) I'm doing something today that I haven't done in far too long: sharing a recording of a new composition in progress.I've been working for some time on a set of piano pieces, all of them dances in one way or another --- and all of them, in one way or ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Song for Lost Things (rough) I'm doing something today that I haven't done in far too long: sharing a recording of a new composition in progress. I've been working for some time on a set of piano pieces, all of them dances in one way or another --- and all of them, in one way or ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Nocturne 15.2 (remastered) I had a request for "MORE CHOPIN!" which made me realize that I've been neglecting the poor fellow --- and he's such a favorite of mine! I've been working on two new Chopin nocturnes, and I'll hopefully be ready to record them soon. In the meantime, however, here's one ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Nocturne 15.2 (remastered) I had a request for "MORE CHOPIN!" which made me realize that I've been neglecting the poor fellow --- and he's such a favorite of mine! I've been working on two new Chopin nocturnes, and I'll hopefully be ready to record them soon. In the meantime, however, here's one ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schubert Impromptu D899.4, played by Don Betts This is a very familiar piece (to piano aficionados, anyway) --- but you'll find Don's performance a little refreshingly unfamiliar. It's not a wild departure from custom, but there's just a subtle tip in the balance in his performance that makes the feeling of the piece quite different.In the last ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schubert Impromptu D899.4, played by Don Betts This is a very familiar piece (to piano aficionados, anyway) --- but you'll find Don's performance a little refreshingly unfamiliar. It's not a wild departure from custom, but there's just a subtle tip in the balance in his performance that makes the feeling of the piece quite different. In the last ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 116.4 (remastered) This was the first Brahms I ever learned to play. It looked to me like a relatively easy piece, simply because it doesn't have all that many notes --- but I was wrong: never having played Brahms, I didn't recognize the difficulty that was there. Brahms doesn't always divide his ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 116.4(remastered) This was the first Brahms I ever learned to play. It looked to me like a relatively easy piece, simply because it doesn't have all that many notes --- but I was wrong. Never having played Brahms, I simply didn't recognize the difficulty that was there. Brahms doesn't always divide ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In a Perfectly Wounded Sky (remastered) Here's an older piece of mine, newly remastered. I've gone back and forth in the past on whether I like this one, but I like it today, so I'm publishing it!The title is based on my mishearing of a Tori Amos lyric (from Cruel). I generally go for titles that ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In a Perfectly Wounded Sky (remastered) Here's an older piece of mine, newly remastered. I've gone back and forth in the past on whether I like this one, but I like it very much today, so I'm publishing it! The title is based on my mishearing of a Tori Amos lyric (from Cruel). I generally go for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schubert D946.1, playedby Don Betts I'm a fellow of diverse musical tastes, and there are a great many composers I love who don't appear in the meager list over on the right of this page. So it's a delight to post this recording, because I get to add a "Schubert" category. Yay for Schubert!This is ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schubert D946.1, played by Don Betts I'm a fellow of diverse musical tastes, and there are a great many composers I love who don't appear in the meager list over on the right of this page. So it's a delight to post this recording, because I get to add a "Schubert" category. Yay for Schubert! This is ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Nocturne 55.1 (remastered) Continuing with the work of remastering all my existing home recordings, here's a Chopin nocturne I posted almost exactly one year ago. It is a subtle, spare thing, and its spareness makes it much more difficult than it sounds. Listening to this recording again, I think I could play it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Choping Nocturne 55.1 (remastered) Continuing with the work of remastering all my existing home recordings, here's a Chopin nocturne I posted almost exactly one year ago. It is a subtle, spare thing, and its spareness makes it much more difficult than it sounds. Listening to this recording again, I think I could play it ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schumann Arabesque, played by Don Betts In the Hands is primarily for my own recordings, but today I have a special exception to make: over the summer, I recorded Don Betts, my piano teacher, playing in his home. Don has made a great many excellent recordings over the years --- including the Chopin album available on ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Schumann Arabesque, played by Don Betts In the Hands is primarily for my own recordings, but today I have a special exception to make: over the summer, I recorded Don Betts, my piano teacher, playing in his home. Don has made a great many excellent recordings over the years --- including the Chopin album available on ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Ballade 10.4 (remastered) This is perhaps my favorite of the recordings I've made for In the Hands --- and the remastering really helps. The piece is very low throughout, and the low notes before had a murky, cottony quality. Now they're rich and clear, and all the subtle little motions in the depths ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Ballade 10.4 (remastered) This is perhaps my favorite of the recordings I've made for In the Hands --- and the remastering really helps. The piece is very low throughout, and the low notes before had a murky, cottony quality. Now they're rich and clear, and the all the subtle little motions in the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Return of the Paul It's been a while since I posted here --- but the time has not been wasted! The Paul Creative Efforts Fund (a.k.a. my bank account) was running low, and I spent June and much of July working on MPR's new online contribution system. Yes, jobs are rough --- getting up ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Return of the Paul It's been a while since I posted here --- but the time has not been wasted! The Paul Creative Efforts Fund (a.k.a. my bank account) was running low, and I spent June and much of July working on MPR's new online contribution system. Yes, jobs are rough --- getting up ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lusk, Lingle and Torrington (remastered) When I started In the Hands, I also started recording little unplanned improvisations. I'd done some of this same sort of work during college in the Macalester New Music Ensemble, and some things like it at Keys Please, but it wasn't until last year that I started putting a regular, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Three Places (remastered) This piece is my old, trusted standby. I wrote it back in college, in the winter and spring of 1998, and since then it's been the one piece of my own that I've continually kept in my hands and head, always at the ready when somebody says, "Play something ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Three Places (remastered) This piece is my old, trusted standby. I wrote it back in college, in the winter and spring of 1998, and since then it's been the one piece of my own that I've continually kept in my hands and head, always at the ready when somebody says, "Play something ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 117.1 (remastered) My mastering experiments are complete, at least for now, which means two things: First, I'm back to composing and practicing again, so new recordings are on the horizon. Second, I'm reposting all my old recordings using the new mastering process, starting today! This is the first recording I posted to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Intermezzo 117.1 (remastered) My mastering experiments are complete, at least for now, which means two things: First, I'm back to composing and practicing again, so new recordings are on the horizon. Second, I'm reposting all my old recordings using the new mastering process, starting today!This is the first recording I posted to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Outside and the Inside Last night in tango class, Florencia was trying to impress upon us leaders the importance of learning to follow as well, so we know what the dance feels like to the followers, and so we have a chance to feel what the really good leaders do. You can't just ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Outside and the Inside Last night in tango class, Florencia was trying to impress upon us leaders the importance of learning to follow as well, so we know what the dance feels like to the followers, and so we have a chance to feel what the really good leaders do. You can't just ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Niobrara (Interstellar Medium Remix) My recent mastering experiments have been all about reproducing ... well, not the literal sound, but the musical spirit of real-life piano --- but of course there's another side to this software I'm using, and it seemed a shame not to play with it! So I went and had ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mastering Experiments, Part 2: EQ&Imaging This is the second half of the thrilling chronicles of my attempts at mastering the piano recordings. (Here's part one.)Mastering Experiments, Part 2: EQ& ImagingListen (12:42 / 15.0 M)I'm constantly changing things --- I've tweaked the process since my last post, and even while making the explanation, I ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mastering Experiments, Part 1: Reverb Loyal readers of In the Hands might reasonably ask: "Paul! Where the heck are you? What have you been up to?" Well, there are many answers to that --- preparing my McKnight fellowship application and visiting my parents in Colorado among them --- but the piano recordings have not ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Disembodied Dance I have been busy applying for a fellowship, and also writing writing writing more music. Here is a new one in the set of dances I've been working on --- as with the others I've recorded, a rough performance (there's a section in the middle that is horrendously hobbled ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Smoot What do you do when your piano's a touch out of tune? You record an improv like this. Or at least I do.Improvisation: SmootListen (0:58 / 1.2 M)Oh, you say you wanted a piano improv with actual notes? Well then, check out Chris Morris's very clever tip ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Ballade No. 3 I wrote recently about the the danger that virtuosity can make us neglect the virtues of simplicity, and even neglect the music itself. That is true not only of a simple masterpiece like the prelude I was talking about, but also of technically difficult pieces --- such as the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Prelude 4 To conclude this trip down prelude memory lane (at least for the time being), here is the veeery first piece I worked on with Don Betts. I've actually hardly played this one since that first year of lessons, but I found it came back quickly. Is playing a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Prelude 20 As long as I'm on this Chopin prelude kick….Frédéric ChopinPrelude Op 28 No 20 (in C minor)Listen (2:17 / 2.7 M)This piece is easy to sink one's teeth into, I think, very dramatic and engaging on the first listen. But subsequent digging reveals a lot of subtlety in ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Prelude 6 We live in a time of superhuman performers. The stars of the classical piano world do things that hardly seem humanly possible --- certainly that are far beyond me --- and people love it, demand it. It's a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it's amazing to hear ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chopin Prelude 9 An old favorite, brought from the past to the present for your listening enjoyment.Frédéric ChopinPrelude Op 28 No 9 (in E major)Listen (1:35 / 1.9 M)I love the steady outpouring of energy, the unbrokenness of the flow as it goes through such a dramatic series of changes, the perfect balance ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Rozer Today's improv is a bit of fun with one of my favorite sounds from extended piano technique, made by damping a low string with a finger or two at about the point where the copper winding ends. This sound also makes a prominent appearance in the second movement of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How can I keep this project afloat? As any of you who have ever learned a piece of music or made a recording know, what I'm doing here is a lot of work. It's amazing how much time it takes to post two recordings a week. Just the mechanics of recording, editing and mastering are a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bach WTC Book 1 Prelude 1, à la Hewitt As long as we're conducting experiments on the familiar C major prelude…Some years ago, Don and I heard Angela Hewitt play a marvelous concert of Bach and Messiaen. (There's a combination!) She gave the most unusual performance of the C major prelude I've ever heard: very fast, very light, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bach WTC Book 1 Prelude 1, à la Hendrix So here's the deal with the mystery recording (Ahree got it right):It is, of course, a familiar Bach prelude. I learned to play the piece backwards --- that is, playing the notes in reverse order --- recorded it that way,then reversed the recording. Got it? So ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bach WTC Book 1 Prelude 1, à la Hendrix So here's the deal with the mystery recording (Ahree got it right):It is, of course, a familiar Bach prelude. I learned to play the piece backwards --- that is, playing the notes in reverse order --- recorded it that way,then reversed the recording. Got it? So ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Jelm Crystalizing, particle by particle.Improvisation: JelmListen (2:24 / 2.8 M)That's the last of the January improvaganza. I've been composing day and night (and it's a perfect night for it tonight: new snow and a near-full moon!), and that will yield some new recordings just as soon as I manage to ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Natrona A sudden outpouring with no resolution!Improvisation: NatronaListen (2:08 / 2.5 M)I sat down and played this once, then for some reason started it again a couple of times --- perhaps trying to find a resolution that wasn't there to be found. But I ended up using that first take ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Wyarno I can't decide: is this one emotionally charged, walking in an unfamiliar place, breath held? Or is it something moving without human intention, like water flowing beneath the ice, seen through human eyes?Improvisation: WyarnoListen (2:58 / 3.5 M)Hmm. I think this one went on too ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Alcova Shelter. A safe place.Improvisation: AlcovaListen (2:36 / 3.0 M)I'm returning from Colorado tomorrow, but it will likely be a while before my piano is back in tune and I'm recording again. Will the blog go silent, you ask? Fear not! I recorded a little round of improvs a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Sublette Bells? The memory of bells? A fanciful description of the memory of bells?Improvisation: SubletteListen (2:03 / 2.4 M)Maybe not bells at all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brahms Waltz Op 39 No 15 At the New Year's Eve party my family has been attending for the last ... oh, at least 20 years, we have a tradition of doing waltzes. By “doing,” I don't much mean dancing --- sadly, only a few brave souls do that --- but playing them, since it's ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Improvisation: Ethete This one's for all you Gregorians out there, celebrating the new year:Improvisation: EtheteListen (2:08 / 2.5 M)A mysterious song, still unformed and incorporeal, full of potential! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website