Maxence Cyrin is today one of the most listened pianists in the world, thanks also to his famous transcription for piano solo of “Where Is My Mind?” by Pixies, a song that has been certified “Triple Diamond” and has totaled over 150 million listenings in the world.
Today he returns with a new album, Springsong, composed of ten new musical haiku for piano and in two songs with string trio, with a minimalist approach in form, but not forgetting the melancholy sweetness of twentieth-century French pianism, from Debussy or Satie to Sakamoto.
On the other hand, Cyrin has been a citizen of Montmartre for thirty years, which has always been the heart of the cultural and artistic life of Paris, lively but at the same time veined with melancholy, a bit fané, a bit blasé, still authentic today despite the postcard stereotype.
If the original inspiration of Cyrin’s compositions is born, by his own admission, from the journey in nature, modern wanderer in search of the warmth of the sun and the scents of the sea far from the city, as for the previous projects of this ideal trilogy Aurora (2020) and Melancholy Island (2022), on the other hand, it is in the solitude of his Parisian apartment that life becomes music. Growing up as a self-taught musician in the most indie electronic avant-garde environments of the roaring 90s, since 2005 Cyrin has felt the need to return to the acoustic sound of the piano, but with a completely orginal approach compared to today’s panorama: the compositions are in fact born from the improvisation on the piano and above all from the experimentation on its sounds, with particular interest for those often neglected of the vertical piano, in clear contrast to the magniloquent myth of the grand coda, true icon of every pianist, professional or amateur.
Maxence, on the other hand, prefers the intimate, friendly, familiar dimension of the vertical plane, whose potential has never been studied or enhanced due to its role in the ancillary world of keyboards: neither big tail nor electric keyboard, the vertical was never considered as an autonomous instrument, able to create its own sound world of real interest, but only as a means of passage.
Cyrin overturns this cliché, so much so that he often uses it even in live concerts because some songs are born specifically for the intimate and warm sound dimension of the vertical, expertly exacerbated by the refined microphoning game with which Maxence loves to experiment, after recording the spontaneous, instinctive improvisations, not filtered by the secrets of the trade, directly and simply, as a novice boy, on your mobile phone.
Also this album can therefore be told as a series of short visions, suggestions, reminiscences of travel, rapid impressionistic brushstrokes transcribed in spontaneous music, almost in free flow of consciousness, by a composer who has no hands wanted to adhere to any way, if not to an insesausto, fresh, youthful desire for poetry in everyday life.