PIANO/ORGAN/DULCIMER /SOUND ART
WATERMARK PROJECT & PRELUDES
Adrian completed undergrad music studies at City University London under electro-acoustic composers Denis Smalley and Simon Emmerson, taking piano lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and graduating in 2001.
He gained an LRSM piano performance diploma in 2015 and finished masters studies in Sonic Arts at Oxford Brookes University with Patrick Farmer in 2020, gaining an award for his major project piece WATERMARK, and excerpt of which was released on the label nonclassical.
Piano/organ performances include the Norwich-based Voice Project as pianist and improviser working alongside jazz Saxophonist Andy Sheppard, Norwegian Trumpet player Arve Henriksen and pedal steel player B.J. Cole. Site-specific pieces include Lost and Found at City Hall Norwich, creating a 40 minute improvised Bartok-esque thematic performance prelude, and the nocturnal Arms of Sleep joint-comissioned by Brighton Festival and the Norfolk and Norwich Festival featuring improvisations and recitals of pieces by Chopin and Liszt.
Initiating Confluence Project, a multi-media piano improvisation performance project in 2016, Adrian worked with sound artist Bill Vine and three visual artists exploring responses to coastal, river and marshland landscapes/ecosystems around his East Anglian home. This was performed at The ‘Cello Factory Southbank London, Anteros Arts Foundation Norwich, Norwich Arts Centre and Cley Calling Festival, North Norfolk. The project also enabled exploratory lessons with leading pianist/improviser Alexander Hawkins.
Further piano-based work with artist Bill Vine includes Flux:Intermedia at Norwich Arts Centre with contemporary choreographer Vinicius Salles.
Confluence expanded following sound art studies to include a field recording practice based on river and water systems in Stara Planina (SE Serbia) and instrumental response using dual pianos, microtonal tuning systems, preparations and extended techniques - this new work is titled Watermark.
For all booking and session work enquiries please get in touch here
“I am a composer, particularly interested in the relationship of music and natural sounds, and in music which is spatially provocative. I have been lucky enough to have worked with Adrian on several projects, and have benefited from his brilliant piano and dulcimer playing. I have been following his Watermark project with great interest and admiration. His playing of two pianos simultaneously is, apart from being an astonishing technical feat and a brilliant piece of improvisation, a spatial provocation that makes us listen in a new way - almost questioning the fact that we have only two ears! And his way of combining the sounds of nature into his music makes us think again about the relationship of the natural and the human worlds.”
Orlando Gough - Composer
WATERMARK PRELUDES
WATERMARK - LIVE
CONFLUENCE PROJECT
"There are moments of absolute pin-dropping silence ... as well as moments of beautiful, violent passion.
A spell is woven between performers and audience alike... Humans. Nature. Art. Music. Technology. To work together is to create beauty, and we felt it tonight"
Outline Magazine online review