After many years away from public music making, pianist Dr. John McArthur returns with a remixed and remastered release of his debut 1999 solo piano album HIDDEN.

The HIDDEN Project reimagines 10 tracks from the original album as seeds for new creative collaborations in multifaceted storytelling. Foundational to the endeavor is a life awareness drawn from McArthur’s own experience of more than two decades of love, caregiving, grief, and hope. 

It is a story of how life evolves music and how music reflects life.

Revisiting this record put McArthur in conversation with his younger self, his perspectives on music making from that time, and his mutuality with the listening audience.

There is joy in looking back and yet, there has been a deepening. Even as his artistry left the public view, privately it remained a life’s work.

The re-released HIDDEN tracks have been remixed and remastered to more fully reveal the energy, clarity, and dynamic range of the original recording.

Reflecting the evolution of McArthur’s perspectives on life and music, three new recordings have been added to expand the album’s offering.

All 13 tracks were mixed by Grammy Award-winning audio engineer Brian Losch and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Kim Rosen.

In addition, The HIDDEN Project extends John McArthur’s long-standing engagement in cross-disciplinary creative collaborations.

Three short films tell the story of his departure from and return to music. They explore how two piano transcriptions – written by McArthur's late teacher Earl Wild – became both sonic companions and lasting portraits of deeply held understandings of our shared humanity, distilled from the joys and sorrows of being a musician, a son, and a full-time Alzheimer's caregiver.

A virtual reality "single" created for the project uses music and photography in an interactive space to explore our engagement with small islands of time and place in our lives. 

And because we like to hold things in our hands and look at pictures while we listen, an old-school physical two-disc CD package will make a higher-fidelity version of the album available for those who choose it.

Woven throughout these pieces and this website is the photography of John Decker, a kindred spirit whose eye is always looking for poetic moments that are HIDDEN in plain sight, in the now that is always before us.

The HIDDEN Project was produced by Peter Field of Skylight Arts Productions, a small creative studio dedicated to arts experiences that are generous to both artists and audiences.

Singles from the record and the films related to them will begin to be released in early 2024.

The full album will then be made available as a two-disc CD set and across digital channels.

We hope you'll journey with us through the progressive release of The HIDDEN Project and other new projects to come.

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