The Complete History of the Piano (2025)

for piano and electronics

premiered by Wesley Shen at Array Space 

 

BEHOLD: The Complete History of the Piano — a 14-MINUTE SONIC EXPLOSION cramming 300 YEARS of piano music, aesthetics, styles, emotions, ghosts, powdered wigs, heartbreak, nationalism, and polyester suits INTO A SINGLE PERFORMANCE!!!!

 

FEATURING the chopped, mangled, stretched, melted, and gloriously ruined sounds of:

LUDOVICO GIUSTINI! (insert baroque drama here)

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MOZART!!! (insert smug genius here)

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BEETHOVEN!! (insert fury and deafness here)

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CLARA SCHUMANN!!! (insert unacknowledged brilliance here)

 

CHOPIN!!! (insert existential longing here)

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DEBUSSY!! (insert blurry dreamscape here)

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SCOTT JOPLIN!! (insert syncopated explosion here)

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BARTÓK!! (insert barbaric folk logic here)

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CHARLES IVES!!! (insert marching bands fighting each other)

 

THELONIOUS MONK (insert meditative jazz) 

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ELTON JOHN!!! (insert glasses and piano rocket fuel)

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QUEEN!! (insert operatic stadium ecstasy)

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ABBA!!! (insert glitter and dance)

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VANESSA CARLTON!!! (insert dramatic heartbreak) 

 

We begin in the BAROQUE ABYSS—wailing in ornamented confusion— Then we leap to the CLASSICAL VOID—inhumanly virtuosic, emotionally repressed—and then! A romantic meltdown! Rubato collapses into robotic gestures! Debussy drowns! Joplin syncopates! IVES EATS THE PIANO. MONK TURNS TO MUSH. POP & ROCK MUSIC ARRIVES AND EVERYTHING EXPLODES INTO A COLLAGE OF CONFETTI. 

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Each musical era devours the last. Nothing is safe. Everything is LOUD. 

History becomes mud—fragments emerge like fossils from a lost civilization of pianos. The final section explodes into the digital age, a glitching, genre-hopping wormhole collapsing under its own reference weight. 

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ONCE AGAIN!!! THAT’S: THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE PIANO!!! Available NOW for only (insert arbitrary yet mystical price here)!!! Call within the next 10 minutes and receive ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FREE!