If you ever needed a piece of music to tell you it’s all going to be OK, it’s Courtney Bryan’s ‘House of Pianos’
After being featured on 'Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' Network for New Music is performing the piece inspired by Nina Simone, Herbie Hancock, and others, at the American Philosophical Society.
Imagine yourself in a house, and as you move through its rooms, you hear a series of pianists: Thelonious Monk, Jelly Roll Morton, Nina Simone, and on and on.
Courtney Bryan did just that. The composer and pianist conjured the scene and set it to music in House of Pianos, a piano concerto being performed Sunday by Network for New Music with Bryan as soloist.
”Once I decided I was writing a piano concerto, I started thinking about all the different influences that have been key to me, which is a long list,” said Bryan. “And so then I ended up picturing myself walking into a house where every room there was this different collection of pianists hanging out together.”
In Bryan‘s imagined house, time is collapsed and genres commingle.
“I wanted to mix up the time periods and the styles and stuff, most primarily coming out of jazz, but there’s classical, there’s gospel.”
The piece captured the attention of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which featured a clip of one movement on its #LateShowMeMusic online music showcase. Which is perhaps the first time Philadelphia’s superspecialized Network for New Music has performed a piece with such late-night-host credentials.
The clip features one movement — “Praise House” — which glows with a sense of tenderness, sincerity, and ease. If you ever needed a piece of music to tell you it’s all going to be OK, this is it.
“I could wake up to this every morning, and my day would go all the smoother for it,” wrote one YouTube listener.
“Now that’s musicianship. Disciplined, orderly and full of heart. I’m a hard rocking blues dude and THAT caught my ears,” said another.
Bryan, 42, is based in New Orleans, but she has an ongoing connection to Philadelphia.
She just wrapped up a stint as composer in residence at Opera Philadelphia, and while she’s writing a new opera for Bard College based on Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer, she is also at work on a piece for Philadelphia’s Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra about Rebecca Cox Jackson.
The work centers on the 19th-century Philadelphia feminist writer and Shaker community founder and the religious awakening she experienced in 1830 during a severe thunderstorm.
Sharp listeners may also detect a Philadelphia influence in House of Pianos inspired by Bobby Timmons, the Philadelphia pianist and innovative force in soul jazz.
Bryan structured the piece in movements where something different is going on in each room — “Rent Party,” “Jam Session” — while referencing specific pianists along the way.
The names of Ahmad Jamal, Ellis Marsalis Jr., Erroll Garner, Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, Hank Jones, and others are written into the score, but Bryan didn’t splice musical quotes from these artists into the piece.
“I didn’t want to sample anybody’s pieces or techniques, but it was just kind of like I was thinking about techniques and I was thinking how to use it in my own way as an inspiration.”
So in her nod to Nina Simone, “there’s a part where one of the movements ends with this very dramatic cascading.”
Other references, like one to Herbie Hancock, are more abstract, she says.
“There are so many ways I could have gone with Herbie Hancock’s influences, but I just thought about some of his voicings with some of the recordings he did with Wayne Shorter.”
House of Pianos first existed in versions for chamber orchestra and piano, and full orchestra and piano. But after Network for New Music artistic director Thomas Schuttenhelm heard a movement, the group commissioned the version for string quintet and piano.
“I really loved the intimacy of it and felt it embodied that concept, being that love letter to pianos and pianists,” he said.
Piano-love is definitely something Bryan set out to capture.
“In my body of work, I’m often drawn to very heavy topics. I’m moved to do whatever my mind is on at the moment. But this piece was purposely a joy piece for me where I was like, ‘I’m gonna focus on pianists.’”
Network for New Music performs “House of Pianos” on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the American Philosophical Society, 427 Chestnut St. Also on the program: works by Nathan Lincoln-DeCusatis, Kinan Abou-afach, Sepehr Pirasteh, Yoshiaki Onishi, George Tsontakis, Jennifer Margaret Barker, and Jan Krzywicki. Tickets are $5-$25. networkfornewmusic.org, 215-848-7647.