Search - Nancarrow, Conlon :: Studies for Player Piano 1 & 2

Nobody plays this music. Conlon Nancarrow composed these pieces by punching them directly onto piano rolls. He began using this method when he felt his music was becoming too rhythmically complex for live performers. That may be true, but this still isn't very difficult music to listen to. It always contains familiar elements, many of them coming from the jazz Nancarrow played on the trumpet when he was young. These wildly imaginative pieces have an exhilarating effect, live performers or no, and they are strongly recommended to the adventurous. Not long before he died, Nancarrow won a McArthur Foundation "genius" grant; he deserved it. --Leslie Gerber