This is the selective record of a meeting – of two Steinway grand pianos, audio and video equipment and technicians, and the fingers of a young jazz pianist and a much older classical pianist. The notes teased out intuitively by these fingers reflect an uncommon complicity that allowed us to walk onto the platform and begin to play without having decided anything more than the position of the pianos. Of the 49 pieces we recorded in total, in 2 sessions of 4 hours each, these 12 are a taste of the sheer joy we had in playing together on instruments of such quality. Needless to say, the suggested titles came later.
"If there’s such a thing as a “best mirage,” it is the fata morgana, an exquisitely complex greatest hits package of everything light refraction can muster: dancing, diving, climbing, shapeshifting, delivering impossible (yet wholly filmable) first/second/third-eye opening phenomenological jolts. Likewise, when pianists Samuel Gapp and Nicolas McNair play the music of Mirages on two vintage Steinways, a coalescence of horizontality and vertical ascent constantly renegotiates observer and observed. The effect is all the more remarkable since Samuel and Nicolas arrive at their seamless improvisations spanning age and genre and geography, all of which shimmer in an instant(ly) shared dialect. In the liquid and languid moments, in the percussive avoirdupois, in the melodicisms and subversions of expectation, the suspension of conventional sightlines is itself the guide through this joyously elastic sense of dimension."
- Killick Hinds, December 2021
1. Question 05:43
2. Action/Reaction 05:07
3. Mimesis 06:39
4. Spontaneous 03:34
5. Interrupt 03:45
6. Mirages 03:34
7. Chiasm 08:24
8. Delusions of Grandeur 02:01
9. Rêves/Espoir 05:10
10. Vortices 04:41
11. Fieberwahn 05:10
12. Answer? 03:47
Samuel Gapp – Piano
Nicholas McNair – Piano
Recorded on July 29 – 30, 2021 at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa
Recorded by Sérgio Henriques, with assistant Pedro Santos
Filming by Caio Rodrigues
Mixed by André Fernandes
Mastered by Killick Hinds at H(i)nds(i)ght Studio, Athens GA, US
Cover by Samuel Gapp
Cover photography by Mafalda Carapeto
Cover writing by Laura Hinz
Recording photography by Henrique Santos
Steinway Concert Grand Pianos tuned by Manuel Patrão
Produced by Samuel Gapp and Nicholas McNair
