By PARMA Recordings, April 16th, 2021
“The Inside Story,” is a PARMA Recordings blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of their composers and performers. https://www.parmarecordings.com/inside-story-elaine-freeman-and-la-speranza/ Composer and songwriter Elaine Freeman and Big Round Records present LA SPERANZA, a careful selection of piano music, composed by ear, memory and touch without sheet music. Not quite classical, not quite pop, these pieces have the ability to appeal to both the casual listener and fans of musical minimalism. Read on to discover the tender meaning behind Elaine’s Song for Angelo… Who was your first favorite artist(s) growing up? I listened to so many different artists of all genres growing up that it’s incredibly hard to choose even a few. From a very young age my father would play a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis in the car each day. And on other days he would play Nana Mouskouri, Demis Roussos, or The Shadows, among many others. I loved classical guitar even though I never played. As I grew older I loved rock and pop and dance, e.g. Nirvana, The Prodigy, Tori Amos, Green Day, anybody who played a piano in pop I thought was a god! I was obsessed with the Welsh singer David Gray, I loved all classical music, and listened to it all night on the radio. In particular, I loved Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven, and Mozart. I really listened to everything. It’s all I did. I still do. My album collection is vast. If you could make a living at any job in the world, what would that job be? Definitely to make a proper living from composing music alone would be perfect. Anything that you love or find so easy and natural has to be an ideal way to make your living! I would love to have the chance to compose for film or tv, and another job I would really love would be music supervisor for a tv show or a movie; I’d love to be in charge of handpicking the music for literally each scene, I like to think I’d be great at it! Composer and songwriter Elaine Freeman and Big Round Records present LA SPERANZA, a careful selection of piano music, composed by ear, memory and touch without sheet music. Not quite classical, not quite pop, these pieces have the ability to appeal to both the casual listener and fans of musical minimalism. Structured around a central motive or rhythm, most of the works on LA SPERANZA seem to have an inner clock, an inner mechanism. The pieces' playability works in their favor, yet they pack an emotional punch: there's nostalgia, turmoil, grief, a quest for purpose, a struggle for beauty and clarity, all reflective of Freeman's life at various stages, and of the specific periods of their creation. The Composer claims to love all music regardless of genre, and this eclecticism definitely shows in LA SPERANZA. There's always the levity and catchiness of pop music, but one would be hard-pressed to sort the pieces into a definite category. More than anything, they are a unique expression of their inventor's inner world: generally calm and reflected, occasionally wistful and brooding, sometimes bright and soothing. Unconventionally, Freeman wrote all of these pieces by ear, and continues to play them as such. This results in a great spontaneity, forming a coherent whole with both the works' internal structure as well as the autobiographical background behind them. |
LA SPERANZAA careful selection of piano music, composed by ear
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Elaine
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