“A Kind of Mirror”, by Miki Sawada.

The Japanese classical pianist Miki Sawada – with a repertoire that includes Beethoven, Olivier Messiaen, Gabriel Fauré and György Ligeti – completely changes register with A Kind of Mirror, an album released through the Slashsound platform, in which she performs pieces written especially for her by the American composer Brendon Randall-Myers (a member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble, which he has led since the death of its leader in 2018). The album is the synthesis of a series of pieces created in 2018 by Randall-Myers for live concerts that Sawada performed during a tour of rural West Virginia (Randall-Myers’ home state) in which the pianist wanted to break the mould of classical piano recitals before an audience unaccustomed to this type of concert.