EL MAHBOOB

Category: Piano

  • 78, for piano

    For Ash (2019-21) is a short, three-movement work for solo piano dedicated to my friend, Ash Mistry. In contrast to some of my earlier piano music, there is greater focus on melodic design and variations in harmonic voicing and less on structural symmetry, balancing lyrical and systematic aspects.

    Each of the three movements explores a melodic line in two parallel voices, mostly in intervals of a third in the first movement and fourths in the other two. In the third movement—”78″—a three-note pattern rotates through pairs of notes then is layered upon itself, expanding as the harmony develops.

    The movement titles reference years in the late 1970s, evoking nostalgia for my childhood and the popular emergence of minimalism and electronic dance music. The opening chords of the first movement—the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees in the key of G-flat major, which recur in this movement—are also callback to the era.

    The music of For Ash and its main idea of two parallel voices was later used as the basis for “dyad,” the first movement of my piano trio we have lived before (2021). The material is explored differently in each instance.

    Composed March 2021, recorded March 2025, Roland digital piano

    Photo: 5:48 a.m., June solstice, 2021, Toronto

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2025

  • In Conversation with Stephanie Chua and Adam Sherkin

    On Thursday, November 14th, I will be part of Artists in Conversation, discussing my piano compositions in person with junctQín keyboard collective‘s Stephanie Chua and Piano Lunaire‘s Adam Sherkin, and listening to them perform solo selections of mine that they are also playing in concerts during November. Questions and input from those in attendance are welcome. Details are below.

    Date & Time: Thursday, November 14th, 7:30 pm (doors 7:00 pm)
    Location: Arraymusic, 155 Walnut Ave, 2nd floor, Toronto
    Admission: Free
    Duration: 1 hour
    Register your attendance in advance: info@pianolunaire.org

    Go to my Events page to see the concerts related to this event.

    There is also a Facebook event page.

  • World Premiere of For Celine by Piano Lunaire

    On Sunday, November 10, 2024, Piano Lunaire will give the world concert premiere of For Celine (1995, dedicated to my niece). “Fourths + Fifths” (2012, from Children’s Suite) will also be performed. These two short pieces are part of Composers in Play XII: Still Reeling, an expansive program that highlights world premieres by Charlie Piper, composer and pianist Christopher Mayo, and composer, pianist and Piano Lunaire co-founder Adam Sherkin, as well as music by Allison Cameron, David Sawer and Sean Shepherd. The concert will take place at 3 pm at Arts & Letters Club, Toronto. Doors open at 2:30 pm.

    On Saturday, November 23, 2024, the same program will be performed, with songs by Emily Hall sung by Nathaniel Sullivan in place of the Cameron work. This concert will take place at 8pm at the Tenri Cultural Institute, New York City.

    I performed For Celine several times in the late 90s in informal settings, always from memory with a variable duration and improvised details. I’m excited to have it played for the first time in its notated form by an expert performer in fine settings. This will also be the first time “Fourths + Fifths” has been performed as a standalone work, and its second appearance on a program since Stephen Clarke premiered the complete Children’s Suite at Arraymusic in 2020.

    I’m grateful for the opportunity to have my work presented by Adam and Christopher, two wonderfully accomplished artists.

  • Perhaps Bells: New Piano Music by Bruce A. Russell

    Perhaps Bells: New Piano Music by Bruce A. Russell

    On November 16th, 2024, my second portrait concert “Perhaps Bells” will take place at Arraymusic, with much anticipated performances by the adventurous and multi-talented junctQín keyboard collective. This is a special program I’ve been hoping to hear since the start of my Array residency. It’s all piano solos and duos, all world premieres of work composed in the 90s and 00s when there were few audiences or concerts if any, and includes a new arrangement of Madra (originally for variable instrumentation). These pieces relate directly to my recent ones written for Array and other ensembles. They were created under the influence of American and Canadian minimalists, popular music in general, and a more expansive list that includes Wally Badarou, Harold Budd, John Cage, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Henryk Górecki, Kraftwerk, Arvo Pärt, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Erik Satie, Ann Southam, Linda Catlin Smith, and James Tenney.

    On the same weekend, Freesound will present their season opening program in the Array Space (“Music for Piano Quartet II,” November 15th and 17th), making for an exciting mini-fest of contemporary concert music.

    Stay tuned for another piano announcement (November is my piano month) and more.

  • 2004+20 aix

    aix (“waters”), for two pianos, is a short study in rising and falling patterns, with alternating chordal and canonic textures. It’s a slightly unsettled lullaby, composed on “04 04 04” (April 4, 2004, the 36th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.).

    The primary melodic shape, an ascending seventh followed by a descending second, is heard in several of my piano pieces of the early to mid 2000s, which I later grouped together as a cycle under the title “Kindred Pieces.” The piece is written in diatonic A-flat major, with a harmonic progression on the scale degrees 4-3-2-1-5-6.

    Stephen Clarke, Wesley Shen, pianos
    Recorded live at The Array Space, Toronto by Daniel Tapper, November 21, 2020

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2024

  • 2012+10 Fourths + Fifths

    “Fourths + Fifths” is the first of three movements from Kenza (2012), and the fourth movement in the cycle of nine in Children’s Suite (2007-2014). It was composed the year my second child Kenza was born. Like all the other movements in the suite, it’s written entirely on the white keys of the piano, in pandiatonic C major. My intention was to create music that was both childlike and abstract.

    The movement is structured around a sequence of six diatonic modes, each associated with a melodic pattern. Each pattern is built up from a single, seven-note arpeggio into a homophonic canon by layering the pattern against copies of itself with different starting points. The intervals of the fourth and fifth predominate throughout.

    Performed by Stephen Clarke, piano, as part of a composer portrait concert by Arraymusic, November 2020

    Audio and image from video by Daniel Tapper

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022

  • 1997+25 urfunk etude

    urfunk etude (1997) is for solo piano with or without electronics. In terms of the sequences of minimalist canonic material and the parallel alignments of pitch, rhythmic structure and register, it is a precursor to my string quartet Madra (1999) and other works. It also builds upon a particular piano technique that worked around my limitations as a self-taught pianist. It can be performed in the just intonation tuning heard here or in equal temperament. I gave the premiere performance in February 1997 at Love Salon, an informal monthly event held at Liminal Laboratory, an artists’ loft in a now demolished and rebuilt part of Toronto.

    The piece was performed and recorded on my Korg 01/WFD workstation, technology which dates to 1991. With some minor score tweaks, the present audio is of the original sequence and effects played back to digital in 2022.

    Composed and recorded December 1996–January 1997

    Image from video by Carsten Knox, Liminal Laboratory, February 1997

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022

  • World Premiere: dream of a blue elf

    On Saturday, February 19, 2022, pianist Stephen Clarke of the Array Ensemble will present the world premiere of my solo piano work “dream of a blue elf” (2007, from perhaps bells do not play tunes), as part of the prerecorded and livestreamed program “Premieres.” Event details and a link to purchase a ticket (CAD$25 or pay what you want) can be found here.

    I also had a “Living Room Talk” with Arraymusic artistic director David Schotzko, to give a brief introduction to the piece. That can be found here.

  • Companion

    Companion (2019) was composed through late 2018 and early 2019, while the first pencil sketches date to 2011. It is dedicated to my two youngest children. All of the material derives from seven-note rows: orderings of the pitches of the diatonic scale. The harmony resembles traditional tonality heard through a pandiatonic filter. There are four sections, divided by key signature: F major, A-flat major, B major and D major.

    https://soundcloud.com/brussell/companion-1?si=a791927ab54a4ebc8de5ad61286cd9e1&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

    Each section is constructed from one or two unique, quasi-symmetrical rows that proceed most often by the interval of a fourth or fifth. Each row is layered against itself in a homorhythmic canon of up to six voices, often accompanied by high and low pedals tones that present an additional canon in augmentation. Almost every chord in Companion is the result of a basic serial process, one exception being the transition between the third and fourth sections, which features chords built from nested fifths. Ultimately, such chords result from the canons as well.

    The final chord is arrived at through symmetrical voice leading from the penultimate chord and is also the initial row spelled vertically from bottom to top. Form at the local and vertical levels is highly rationalized, while global and horizontal form—rhythmic structure and phrasing—is loosely associative.

    Stephen Clarke, Wesley Shen, pianos
    Recorded live at The Array Space, Toronto by Daniel Tapper, November 21, 2020

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2022

  • Holding Pattern

    Holding Pattern (2003) is the closest thing to garden variety minimal music that I’ve written. It’s somewhat less a composition than an active meditation ritual. The steady, two-against-three rhythm established in the opening measures remains the same for the entire duration of about ten minutes. The right hand remains fixed on a droning, pendulum-like figure on the notes D, E and A. The left hand cycles through a gamut of dyads on complementary pitches, usually changing one note in the dyad at a time while the other acts as a common tone. The upper note of the dyad is occasionally added to the right-hand part. The hands eventually cross as higher inversions of the dyads are played, revealing more complex melodic possibilities.

    In 2003, I had briefly returned to songwriting and was trying to stay engaged as a vocalist on my demos, during a particularly unhappy and unrooted time. I felt disengaged from the idea of being a composer. I found myself gravitating as a diversion—from all of that though not unmindful of it—towards the simple tension and release of familiar and sometimes dramatic chord progressions, locked in a basic polyrhythmic groove.

    In 2021, the distraction was away from a relatively positive though sometimes traumatic set of personal and artistic changes in the preceding 24 months. Something to practice daily for a few weeks.

    The harmony moves most often by a descending fifth in regular groupings of four or eight measures, moving through several different key centres in a partly recurrent, partly through-composed structure. I felt free to leave the material as is, without applying transformations like phasing or additive process or layering in other parts. There are few if any surprises or random moments. It’s just a stream of harmonies in the middle register, though not quite ambient music. With relatively little piano technique required, the focus is on flow and overall shape.

    Composed 2003
    Recorded March 2021, unedited take on Roland digital piano

    Photo: NYC, 2003

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2021