Francesco Tristano

This season we are giving the stage to musicians with a new look at the piano. Enthusiasts of canon classics are invited to symphonic concerts during which great virtuosos will sit at our piano. As part of the recitals, we offer intimate meetings with a new sound quality created by young visionaries.

Francesco Tristiano likes to quote Alban Berg, who said that music is music, regardless of which genre or era we try to label a given composition with. This viewpoint must be close to Marcin Masecki, our artist-in-residence this season.

We see here a sign of our time. In the bloom of historically reliable interpretations and reconstructions of old instruments, there is a strong individualization of the view on music. There is this universal carrying capacity of the sound in itself, allowing the creation of new interpretations of songs created both today and in distant eras.

Francesco Tristiano records albums with music by Bach, Buxtehude, Stravinsky and Ravel for Deutsche Grammophon. Recently, he has also released a CD with his compositions. He is enriching his studies at Julliard in New York with his experiences with hip-hop, house and techno, which result in albums with his compositions and Piano 2.0 – the processing of piano sounds with the use of synthesizers.

‘Tokyo Stories’ is above all a love letter to this magical city in which every moment – a subway ride, morning ride through Yoyogi Park, an afternoon walk or a visit to a sushi bar – becomes a cinematic memory of immeasurable lyricism. An intimate feeling emerges from the music, which is soft and fragrant like the spring air. The album is also a consolidation of Francesco Tristano’s composing style, which was first heard in 2017 on ‘Piano Circle Songs’. The artist keeps looking for organic synthesis of all his musical interests – both electronic ambient and baroque, as well as jazz and ephemeral impressionism.