On his piano, he has played the greatest composers: Ravel, Chopin, Rachmaninov… Although Thomas Valverde is an outstanding performer, the desire to compose has not less tickled him since his adolescence.
Until now, the concert performer was content to string his short works between pieces of the repertoire during his recitals, as at the Biarritz piano festival.
Today, the pianist created a surprise by signing a totally electro album entitled
Vortex
: not the work of a DJ struggling with his drum machines and his samplers, but that of a composer. Thomas Valverde used both the computer and the acoustic and very characteristic sounds of the Rhodes keyboard, the famous electric piano popularized in the 1970s, as well as the very surprising ones of the Wurlitzer piano, prized by Daft Punk and Neil Young . Although we are very far from the recital with grand piano,
Vortex
remains an album of "dreams and introspection" in the words of its creator. As if this music were an accompaniment towards the intangible, towards the return in oneself, towards this hypersensitivity that one never dares to show.
Out of time
With new sounds, Thomas Valverde seems to seek that same serenity that the most sublime melodies in the repertoire provoke.
Here we are out of time, with music that would have no reference, no constraint, no attachment except the one we decide to give it.
A sort of decompression chamber.
Music that modulates in its own space, in its own energy, like an embracing slow.
Where are we?
In the 1970s, today, tomorrow?
Nobody knows.
Eleven pieces for a journey towards oneself, like this “strange and penetrating dream” of which Verlaine spoke.
At the Café de la danse, 5 Passage Louis-Philippe, 75011 Paris, Thursday, October 14