The first thing I wanted to do was just to improvise... [Princes] was so composed and there was a lot of formal processes going on, a lot of really intense intellectual thought going into it... so I just needed a relief from that, and trying to get back to direct creativity, sort of unmediated. ...There’s no edits in any of the tracks, so it’s just like, as I played, and the improvs were completely unplanned.
When I started to get into doing the playing, I started to think about, what is this form of solo piano that I’m doing? There must be some precedent for this... what’s in my subconscious that’s affecting how this is going down? So I started to think about people who influenced me, specifically who did solo piano records. ...I was sort of confronting all those influences and getting into what makes them work. ... and then just thinking about how you spontaneously make a composition... because like it or not... you’re gonna have a beginning and an end.
When you’re doing it, sometimes you think, oh, this idea is lame, why am I sticking on this? And then you listen back, and you’re like oh, I really could have gone farther with that, that was really suggesting something. So it opened my eyes a lot to being open to just letting ideas develop.”
-Tom Aldrich, "The Peter Paluska Show"(WBOR), February 25, 2017
1. Respirations 04:23
2. Three of Spades 05:24
3. Ace of Hearts 08:23
4. Ace of Clubs 03:52
5. Two of Clubs 07:48
6. Bar Island Picnic (Pea Soup) 03:19
7. Six of Spades 04:33
8. Two of Diamonds 08:00
Tom Aldrich, piano
