• Tracks

Insomnia is the story of a nocturnal journey, reassuring and disturbing

at the same time, both mystical and unpredictable. An escape from

ourselves into the soft focus the night, but then leading us back again

at the end, taking us even deeper inside ourselves. Insomnia is the

aimless wanderings of the Sleepless One, through inner and outer

worlds which remains hidden during the harsh light of day. Insomnia is

five Hymns to the Night, composed by five American composers over

a period of nearly 100 years. While at first glance, they may seem

stylistically very different, when taken together; these five works are

the perfect soundtrack for a journey through the long hours after the

sun has set.

At the center of this journey stands A Little Midnight Music, George

Crumb's adaptation of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Standard 'Round

Midnight. He leads his listeners and performers past the neon signs of

the New York jazz clubs of the 1940s into the oppressive darkness of

the avant-garde pianist. Sleepless Night and Urban Nocturnes by

Bruce Stark not only reference jazz, and are the outgrowth of the

composer's long-standing interest in improvisation. In George

Gershwin short Prelude we can almost imagine the clinking of glasses

at last call. John Cage's Dream and Brian Belet's Summer Phantoms -

Nocturne function as the album's centerpieces and provide a pair of

contrasting soundtracks for nightly inner escapism.

To describe Kai Schumacher as a "punk pianist" would be excessive.

His deeply thoughtful style of playing blurs the boundaries of the

classical avant-garde and pop culture without getting stuck in all-toofamiliar

crossover paths. One focus of Kai Schumacher's solo

repertoire has been on American piano music of the late 20th and the

21st centuries. His debut album of Frederic Rzewski's monumental

variation cycle The people united will never be defeated! (2010) was

celebrated by FonoForum magazine as "a pianistic sensation". With

his second album Transcriptions (2013), he ventured into the musical

heroes of his youth - Rage against the machine, Nirvana, Slayer, etc.,

transforming the concert grand in his piano remixes into a tone

generator of monstrous proportions, sound effects board or a set of

tuned percussion instruments.