• DOUBLE CD SET

Hidden Heartache is 100 minutes of piano music from the last 100 years in the context of social inequality and unequal power relations. The Swiss pianist Simone Keller is both courageous and fearless with an eye for the essentials and for the big issues of the day. The album is a self portrait and an homage, with Keller asking herself which piano music of the last 100 years deserves greater attention.

« It soon becomes obvious that there are thousands of hours of unheard, unplayed works by underrepresented composers. The selection I ultimately made is very personal and closely connected to my own pianistic activities. But it was also very important to me that Hidden Heartache should not merely gather together historical figures, but also present compositions of today that reveal varied perspectives on societal and power inequalities while at the same time paying homage to the music of Julius Eastman and Julia Amanda Perry. These new works by the Swiss composers Jessie Cox and Cristina Janett, and the Americans Julie Herndon and Jessie Marino, were created in direct collaboration with me », writes Simone Keller.

PERSONNEL
Simone Keller - Piano
Abathar Kmash - Oud
Valeria Curti - Bassoon
Michael Flury - Trombone
Philip Bartels - Arrangements & Toy Piano

Recorded on October 1 and 2, 2022, at Stadthaus
Winterthur, Switzerland, by Michaela Wiesbeck.

CD ONE: Compositions by
Jessie Cox
Olga Diener
Irene Higginbotham
Abathar Kmash
Jessie Marino
Ruth Crawford Seeger

CD TWO: Compositions by
Lil Hardin Armstrong
Olga Diener
Julius Eastman
Julie Herndon
Irene Higginbotham
Cristina Janett
Abathar Kmash
Julia Amanda Perry