5th February 2021: Out today – Tony Tixier ‘I Am Human’ on 12″ Silver Marble Vinyl LP
I Am Human –available on 12″ Silver Marble LP here
French pianist Tony Tixier‘s new record I Am Human is out now for the first time on Vinyl. You can find a copy on our store on today’s first #BandcampFriday of the year.
In response to a world struggling with disruption and discord, Tony Tixier has instinctively turned towards his music as a way to re-establish the sundered connections of everyday existence. I Am Human, his latest limited edition release, was created when he returned from a sell-out US tour to find himself locked down in his Paris apartment. An escape route appeared out of a happy combination of chances: a loan of a new piano from Yamaha and an encounter with a neighbour, David Freiss, who turned out to be an expert sound engineer. Tixier conceived a plan to spontaneously record a series of pieces, all in one take, and then send them out across the world to a chosen band of his closest musical accomplices – Scott Tixier, Hermon Mehari, Ben Leifer, Logan Richardson and Adrien Soleiman – musicians with whom he felt so closely in tune that the enforced separation of time and space could be overcome – and invited them to overdub a response to create a series of virtual duet recordings “Each track is dedicated to a friend, someone I feel close to – I sent them the track in the morning, and by the afternoon I had the track back with their parts.”
‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ features Scott Tixier, Tony’s brother and also his twin, playing violin on the tune made famous by Billie Holiday – the level of empathy is otherworldly. “As humans, we all need a special person to watch over us: for me, this is my twin brother, my best friend.” Each track is dedicated to a friend and selected to talk about a different aspect of human emotion: ‘But Beautiful’ was sent to trumpeter Hermon Mehari as the message in the song sat naturally with his optimistic personality, ‘Like Someone In Love’ went all the way to Kansas City and love-struck bassist Ben Leifer and ‘You Know I Care’ elicited a rare, deeply committed performance on tenor sax from Adrien Soleiman. Tony contacted his longtime bandmate Logan Richardson, recalling an original tune over a well-loved sequence that they used to play: ‘When They Happen’ is the spontaneous result, developing into a thrillingly free flowing outro – “Logan is always so creative – like a visionary! We’re all a bunch of crazy guys and we just played what we felt at that moment.”.
Each side of the vinyl release is opened with a performance of an original solo piece by Tixier, both recorded back to back. ‘Leaking Life’ is a meditation on the passing of time and a call to action to make the most of every day. ‘Humain’ is an expression of his own identity “A presentation of myself – I don’t see myself as mixed race – I am 100% black, 100% white, 100% human.”
Tixier has travelled the world with the likes of Christian Scott and Keyon Harrold and performed for audiences across four continents, but this is his most personal, direct work to date. Reaching out across the world, sustained by a network of friends, he has delivered a statement for our times that transcends the limitations of remote recording with the sheer force of its emotional connection.