I have just reviewed a wonderful CD by an Oregon-based pianist by the name of Andrew J. Ross. The album is called "The Lighthouse". You can hear samples of Tracks 15 and 16 by clicking on the link below.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

www.piano-heaven.co.uk

excellent thread - I like new age, or rather contemporary instrumental, a lot and most songs I play are in this category, although I do play classical once in awhile as well.

I like the following pianists - Michael Gettel, Yanni, Michael Jones, Christopher Peacock,... looking to expand this list and now I know where and who to search for.

Aaron Parks, Eldar Dgangirov, Taylor Eigsti, Tigran Hamasyan, Gearld Clayton.. they are all world class jazz-pianist under the age of 25

Well, I have just finished reviewing an excellent CD entitled ‘Set on a Hill’ by Chad Lawson. It is relaxing, melodic and very beautiful. I am reminded of a variety of pianists as I listen to the various compositions.... Ludovico Einaudi, Michael Jones, Stephan Moccio and even a little of Michael Gettel in there as well.
Definitely work checking out. You can read the review at www.piano-heaven.co.uk
There is also a musical sample there.
Any more recommendations, anyone?

My personal favorites are Ludovico Einaudi and Giovanni Allevi. Everybody has heard of Ludovico Einaudi but not many of Giovanni Allevi, maybe because his music is quite hard to play but the music sounds so simple and beatiful. A few examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFIBFd3gKHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9uBkt7nz_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKMZ2H_a0z8

I hope you like it

I hate to say it but "New age" piano makes me want to puke! It's like drinking Coke if you've never had it before, good for about 5 seconds and then sickly sweet the rest of the way.

Every time I hear it, I want to yell out, "please, just learn an altered chord!!! or some dissonance"... These guys need to listen to Thelonious Monk or Herbie Hancock, or even Jimi Hendrix.

Actually John Tesh could be considered new age, more rock though. His themes for the Olympics and NBA are catchy and somewhat bearable, but Yanni is just gross!

Giovanni Allevi has a very unique style. 'Go with the flow' is brilliant, started learning it a few weeks ago.

I'm so glad to hear someone say that New Age is close to Classical. I've had a gut feeling about that all along.

One thing I think New Age/Solo Piano/whatever has in common that separates it from other styles is that it is not meant to be danced to but listened to. It expresses emotion but in a simple way that everyone can relate to (at least the pieces that have a melody do).

My favorite is Secret Garden (violin) but there are so many pianists that I like that there are too many to list. I listen to this music daily and am trying to compose in this style.

I attended a concert of 4 New Age artists recently and I became mesmerized by the music and how evident it was that they played from their inner selves. I truly believe these people will go down in history as the great Classical composers have. We need to appreciate again music that doesn't rely on a thundering bass to give it any kind of merit but is delicate in nature and tansports one to a level higher than the noise of this world. I think New Age does this. The world is just in too much of a rush at the moment to stop and smell this rose in my opinion. The more I share this music with my friends, the more people are amazed that it exists and are won over to it.

Hello again!

A chance encounter in HMV in London led to the purchase of a wonderful piano / cello CD entitled "The River" by Norwegian pianist Ketil Bjørnstad and cellist David Darling (who on a number of occasions collaborated with Canadian pianist Michael Jones in the late eighties).

Anyway, the ensuing CD is superb.

It has made Piano-Heaven, and the review can be read by visiting www.piano-heaven.co.uk and clicking the name of the CD.

You can also hear a preview of one of the tracks here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNl1rJPxp4Q

Hope everyone is well.

Best Wishes,
Stephen
www.piano-heaven.co.uk

That's such a beautiful and bittersweet piece, Stephen, and the accompanying video is also quite moving. Thanks!

A while back there there was a thread in AB Forum on Elijah Bossenbroek, but I don't think he's been mentioned here in this thread, so I'll recommend him here for archival purposes.

He writes very beautiful music, quite reminiscent of Einaudi or Josh Winiberg. You can listen to some samples on his website:

Elijah Bossenbroek's website

My favorite piece of his is "A Song of Simplicity." (It's the one that will start playing if you go to the website.) I've been working for weeks on the sheet music and can play it in a ham-fisted manner. But it's so pretty I'll keep slogging away on it.

Has anyone mentioned George Winston yet? Him I like, and I admit I'm not that fond of what people think of as "new age" piano since the music is fairly unstructured. I'm not a jazz fan either, though. But Winston's stuff is sort of halfway between stuff you can play in the background and stuff that is worth listening to closely.

Yep. George is the man. But from what I've heard, he's not going to be producing the music that's made him famous anymore. Instead, he's going to concentrate on "stride" piano.

The guy's a true artist.

Hello, Monica- I like Elijah's music too.... supposed to be doing an interview with him this month. At the moment, I am doing an interview with Chad Lawson.

I also enjoy George Winston's music, and he has an undisputed gift. We are unlikely to see someone become as well known in the genre in the forseeable future, not because of a lack of talented pianists, but rather due to a shortage of big-label backing- distribution, publicity, etc. That is why I designed Piano-Heaven- to promote the beautiful music of (mainly) independent artists (48 CDs to date). All of whom who feature are, in my opinion, supremely talented, and I am sure there are many more out there waiting to be discovered.

I love this thread as it just might highlight someone whose music might go on and give you a great deal of pleasure.

Please keep posting folks.

Stephen
www.piano-heaven.co.uk

How about giving some room to the fresher and newer face? Someone who is from the bottom. Give someone a chance to shine so to speak.

First post and absolute beginner with the piano. Five years ago or so my ex-wife had gotten a CD of a local pianist, Matthew Mayer (http://www.matthewmayer.com) from a friend. The CD was titled "Beyond" and I think most of it is outstanding, particularly the title track "Beyond", "Watching the Clock" and "A New Day". After my divorce, I decided for myself that I was going to do what I wanted to do and not let others (myself included) hold me back. I made a list and although it's taken me a while, I've finally bought an inexpensive DP last week and am waiting for my 1st Alfred book to arrive from Amazon. I'm not sure how he compares to the others posted about in this thread, but Matthew Mayer's music was one of the major inspirations for me to take up the piano. To me, that makes him the best.

The pianist I listen to most of the time is Danny Wright. He's from Texas and
just an outstanding talent. I guess he's lumped into the new age genre but his
music is so heartfelt, romantic, compelling and uplifting. He definately is not
the typical new age pianist. He doesn't take a "song off". You can feel his heart and soul with every song.

I love this thread! I can't believe it's only now that I discovered it. I don't like calling it New Age too - I've dabbled briefly with New Age in the past (divination) and I have some New Age-y records for meditating and as ambient music, but I have a hard time lumping together Einaudi, Yann Tiersen, Elijah Bossenbroek, etc. in the same league as my ambient music. I like calling the genre Contemporary Classical instead. To me, this genre is like classical music, made better. I love classical, but I have to say I can understand and relate to the more contemporary works better. I discovered my love for these wonderful instrumental solos mostly through game/anime/movie soundtracks, and it's only recently that I've begun discovering individual artists that don't have a major production company backing them. My favorite composer thus far is Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame. I always listen to the solo piano albums from Final Fantasy VII and X during my weekly long commute.

Another Japanese composer I love is Kajiura Yuki who writes both songs and background music for games and anime. My favorite work of hers is the OST for the anime Noir. It was while watching that show that I became aware for the first time of the beauty and importance of background music in videos! The music lent a certain feel to the anime that would've otherwise been impossible to achieve. Imagine a scene where a young girl assassin is blasting the brains out of some random bad guys in suits. But instead of adrenaline-pumping background instrumentals with electric guitars, the music playing is a song called 'Canta Per Me' which sounds more like a baroque hymn/chant sung at church! It felt very surreal - I never really noticed the significance of background music until that moment. However, I hardly know of any solo piano works from her (she uses a lot of different instruments in her compositions) though I know she's a good pianist so I'm not sure if she counts.

I recently discovered Einaudi and Elijah Bossenbroek through Pianoworld ABF. Good stuff. And now because of this thread, I've discoverd David Nevue. I have yet to buy his albums, but I really like the samples from his site. I think I'll have to create a fund to buy a Contemporary Classical album or two each month

@Stephen C: I love your site! Thanks so much for sharing to the world the love for this underrated genre of music. Can you recommend an artist/album with a bit more flourish, a la Elijah Bossenbroek? I find that quieter works tend to be drowned out while I'm riding a noisy bus (where I do most of my listening), and I prefer music that captures my full attention.

Not a new age listener, just got drawn in here by the reference to the great and irritating jazz pianist Keith Jarrett as a new age pianist.

New age is a term that was first used to define a type of spirituality...not exactly a religion, but an anti-religion. It's been around longer than new age music.

New Age spirituality is generally an amalgam of whatever a proponent wants it to be, including elements of eastern religions, reincarnation, paganism, wicca, nature worship, Native American religions, success oriented philosophy guru stuff.....

That's where the term came from. So for me, new age music was and is that moody, meditative, free form, pretty sound, seems to be mostly original compositions, soft and relaxed.

It really has nothing in common with jazz which is much more complex, more often played in at least a trio, and has a foundation almost as stringent as classical: the basic chords are at minimum 7th chords, often 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, it is often fast and hard driving, includes a lot of resolving dissonance and is often based on a standard type of song, which is then completely recreated. It involves the use of many different diatonic scales and other scales, some popularized by jazz musicians (be-bop), blues musicians (blues) others used by folk/rock as well (dorian and pentatonic scales).

You can go to most universities with music programs and major in either classical or jazz, but I don't think you would find many courses of study for new age music.

It's kind of a niche I think, and although I don't doubt there are some wonderful musicians, sadly some of the hacks like John Tesh and Yanni really give this music a bad name.

I have been watching the pianist Gustavo Romero perform on several occasions. In fact I try not to miss any of his performances.
He comes to South Africa quite often and was in Cape Town (where I stay) on the 16th. of August and played 4 of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. Gustavo is a Steinway Virtuoso and has a stellar reputation for both the technical brilliance and interpretive depth of his playing. He is now Associate Professor of the piano at the university of North Texas. During his last concert I have been told that Gustavo is now rated as 1 of the 10 top pianists in the word. Watching him play is quite an experience. I have had the privilege of meeting with him twice and chatting with him. He is also a very humble man

Hello!
I have just finished an interview with highly talented American pianist Chad Lawson. His album, Set on a Hill, has been nominated for Whisperings' Album of the Year 2009. Anyway, I found his responses very interesting and I think people here might enjoy the interview. It can be found here:

www.piano-heaven.co.uk

And thank you Marimorimo for your kind words. If you like Elijah, try Philip Aaberg (Blue West / Live from Montana) both of which feature on Piano-Heaven. You might also wish to check out the work of Michael Allen Harrison- "Composer / Pianist" is a good place to start. Again, this is featured on the site.

I am hoping to interview Elijah soon.

Best Wishes to all,
Stephen
www.piano-heaven.co.uk

Thank your lucky stars that Eweiss didn't see your post or you would have been in for a 50 minute lecture and a $50 fine!

I did see it. To each his own. I don't like Jazz all that much either. Others do. End of story.

And I thought he snuck that one by you!

Anyway, IMO, Keith Jarrett's playing on Koln COncert was the perfect fusion of new age and jazz.

Is this new age?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKuEJBKRW4M

What irritates you about Keith? Just curious.

@Stephen C.: Thanks a lot for the recommendations! I'll check out Philip Aaberg and Michael Allen

Your interview with Chad Lawson was very interesting. Now I'm curious about him too, especially since he's worked with David Nevue. Now 'Set on a Hill' joins my very looong CD wish list. Arghh, if only international shipping wasn't such a pain and so expensive!

Philip Aaberg is by far one of my favs. I heard his album after searching through a list of others and instantly thought "now this is what I'm looking for". The album is High Plains.

As a professional pianist, I was just taken by his talent. Very creative, lyrical and although you can tell he's such a proficient musician technically, he keeps doesn't display this "look what I can do" air about him.

Kieth is may be talented to some, but he's sick and I think he gives music a bad name.

You listen to this, and if you can say you honestly like it, then .... what can I say!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iv4F17Kw4o&feature=PlayList&p=5162F2879F8D2C6F&index=38

I can honestly say I love it. I listen to him often. He exudes music from every pore of his body.

Barb