https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n_27cN9naRS3pE0yxpO9aNAE17uHy4l9s

CD / Vinyl / Limited colored Vinyl (Turquoise, transparent) / digital

Bill Laurance
Yamaha CFX2 grand piano
Yamaha UX3 upright piano with felt

For a couple of days and nights, Bill Laurance went into hiding. He locked himself away in a place where he could be alone at the piano, lost in music, could allow himself to drift, sometimes guided by existing compositions, sometimes less so. Around him the solid brick walls of St Faith's Church in Dulwich in South London provided a buffer from the outside world, creating a spiritual backdrop for the music. ‘I'm not a very religious person,’ recalls Laurance as he thinks back to the recording situation in early April of this year. ‘But it was special to play there while everyday life was on hold. And it's different when you're in that kind of setting, just communicating with yourself. I wanted to capture the freedom in music that arises at moments like that.’

With his latest solo recording, Bill Laurance, who often experiments with acoustic and electric sounds, is passionate about exploring the full sonic and musical spectrum of an accoustic concert grand piano - and to inhabit the realm between composition and freedom: "When you play solo, you have a unique opportunity to explore that. Recording in a church was the perfect setting and let me fully surrenders to the music. The superb guitarist Isaiah Sharkey once said to me that it’s the music itself which tells him what to play. That idea really left its mark on me. We are usually trained to control everything, to practice until it’s perfect. But I think I've got to a point where I just want to let it flow. Do the opposite, let the music take the lead."

It would be wrong, however, to infer that Bill Laurance has suddenly thrown away the rulebook completely. Whereas many pieces on ‘Lumen’ have a strong improvisational component, others are composed and have clearly defined structures. The 44-year-old pianist, composer and bandleader is not interested in heading in the direction of resolution and completion, but rather in the power that ar.......
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