Long Night by Kyle Gann

Exquisite, mobile-like, ever-focus-shifting music for three three nonsynchronized pianos at different tempos that sometimes sound independently and at other times in synchronization with one another. All three piano parts were recorded by Sarah Cahill.

The composer writes about the piece: “I wrote Long Night very much under the influence of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, impressed particularly by his phenomenology of moods and his disavowal of personality as a unified, linear consciousness. I wanted a piece that was a series of moods, connected neither linearly nor abruptly, but in overlapping discontinuity; and a unity that was not felt moment to moment, but that would leap out in unpredictable motives and reminiscences. These were the days, you know, when ambient music was still soft and unobtrusive. Each piano part is constructed in repeating loops, whose lengths can usually be altered at will by the pianists, and the relationship between the pianos is unsynchronized and aleatory – which is why, for a recording, only one pianist is necessary. Part of the discontinuity is that the first four sections are in C, the fifth in A, and the last two in C#. I first performed the piece with friends at Northwestern University, and it was later (last, in fact) played at New Music American 1982 in Chicago.”

25-minute EP.

“If this is a long night, let it go on and on.” —Marc Geelhoed, TimeOut Chicago

“It’s a beautiful and original piece, with ‘family’ links to such composers as Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Conlon Nancarrow, and John Cage, and with allusions to ‘nature’ and the ‘East’.” —Int’l Record Review
“A commanding presence in the landscape of American music…. His music is passionate, fiercely intelligent and one of a kind. Gann’s music embraces a broad range of influences but sounds like no other.” —John Luther Adams, NewMusicBox (American Music Center)

“If I had my way, Sarah Cahill would be declared a public treasure and forbidden to ever leave the city limits.” —Berkeley Voice

“The piece has a rippling quality, like soft light illuminating a quiet room off an antique mirror, on a cloudy afternoon just before Easter, on the way down stream to later. Ambient without being minimal, classical without the powdered wig and contemporary without being electronic.” —David Beardsley, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter

“It’s a beautiful and original piece, with ‘family’ links to such composers as Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Conlon Nancarrow, and John Cage, and with allusions to ‘nature’ and the ‘East’. Over long pedals, it begins rather like an alap section of a classical Indian raga: slowly, tentatively, without metre, outlining certain characteristic notes and motifs. Gradually the piece develops more definition and a freewheeling sense of momentum, to set up a delicate skein of tiny, luminous melodic phrases that recur continuously and weave paths through different registers and different pianos. These phrases eventually change or give way to others—but the stylistic principles, and hence the broad identity of the piece, remain the same. Since the relationship between its instruments is asynchronous and aleatory, this meditative work often sounds almost like a pianistic version of an ensemble of wind chimes.” —Christopher Ballantine, International Record Review

Composer Gann is also a critic, author, and professor. He was a music critic for The Village Voice and has written seven books on such subjects as Robert Ashley, Conlon Nancarrow, Charles Ives, and John Cage. He has composed extensively in just intonation and various microtonal tunings, as well tempered tuning.