This week, as a forward-looking element of The HIDDEN Project, we released three recent recordings by John McArthur, titled HIDDEN / 2.
HIDDEN / 2 is now available on all streaming platforms, alongside the re-mixed / re-mastered 1999 recordings from the original record.
These new recordings were made as an extension of the of the stories we've told in the short films HOMAGE and VOCALISE -- but, also, with our gaze focused towards the future.
Speaking to the change that's occurred in his music over the journey of the last 20 years, John wrote:
The distance from HIDDEN / 1 to these HIDDEN / 2 recordings represents such a vast chasm of time and experience and, as it would be with most of us, in the interim I had become a different person.
My approach to and technique at the piano had changed drastically and, interestingly enough, with very little time actually spent at the piano.
The pace of my life had become more organically in sync with the natural world and its relationship with time. A sort of unexpected but welcomed recalibration ensued and the enforced absence from the piano afforded me space to learn all things pertaining to the instrument as if they were new.
I took up gardening (all types of roses, mostly) and found myself surrounded by such great beauty that it became the object of study, a sort of Life Master Class in beauty.
I was to learn that beauty isn’t found as the end result of a process - but that it is in the process which leads to the result.
The two are inextricably linked.
For the musician I was, this master class had two distinct lessons to teach: sensitivity to those sounds and vibrations that create harmony, and the employment of time to allow those sounds to do their good work in the listener’s heart and mind so that music could complete its purpose: to give form to the invisible. The teacher of this master class was none other but Time itself.
These three recordings that comprise HIDDEN / 2, Jean Sibelius’ “Romance,” the “Vocalise” by Rachmaninoff and this second version of “Hommage a Poulenc” by Earl Wild, were recorded in the past five years and they represent a style of communicative playing borne out of a patient and observant silence.
You can listen to HIDDEN / 2 now
...and please consider sharing the music with someone who would enjoy listening along with us
