James Heather Selected Piano Works Music Book 2024
The music is taken from all his albums and EPs released 2017–2022, including most-requested pieces ‘Ultraviolet’, ‘Empire Sounds’, ‘Biomes’, ‘Passing Soul’, ‘Last Minute Change Of Heart’, ‘Oizys’ and ‘Beginnings’, with difficulty ranging from entry level to more experimental and advanced.
This printed collection also includes a special written introduction and insightful performance notes from Heather. The exclusive art by SUKI features 88 pulses on the cover representing 88 piano keys. Each image inside the book is a visualisation of a piece in the form of a spectrogram. Track data is plotted in a 3D timeline to visualise tiny pulses overlapping and merging, representing Heather’s unique style of playing.
Heather calls his music ‘Pulse Music’, as our own internal pulses are not rigid - they adapt to the world around us. The music is often meditative, but sometimes it’s faster, fighting for and ultimately celebrating life. Because of this, the tempos and dynamics can be fluid.
Heather notes: “This book’s been a long time coming. I can’t read music brilliantly. I stopped at 15, dedicating myself to composition built with muscle memory after a foundation learning Beethoven, Satie and Joplin scores. I’d compose by modulating between keys, feeling like an explorer sailing seas in search of new lands, only to return one day to the start. I respect people who play music by others and the craft of transcription. This respect is why this book took years to make - I had to extract this music out of my head, long after recording. Working with specialists, such as Sam Lung, there was back and forth to mould the pieces into a form that was never originally intended to be notated. The directions are as approachable as possible to play, a balance between being simple to follow and true to the essence of the original recording.”
Colorplan Ebony 270gsm cover with white foil block. Printed on Munken Polar White Smooth 130gsm. OTA thread-sewn paperback binding. Printed and bound in the UK by Halstan Ltd.