Teddy Abrams - Preludes

Preludes is a contemplative, personal, and playful set of solo piano pieces composed by Teddy Abrams with recording and production by Gabriel Kahane and Casey Foubert (Sufjan Stevens, The Shins, Lucius). The trio worked collaboratively in the studio to build the electro-acoustic universes of each piece. Abrams tells us that Kahane and Foubert “identified the personality of each Prelude and found a sound world for every track to match the intrinsic characteristics of the individual works.” The 16 pieces that make up Preludes take inspiration from the canon of classical piano works such as Bach’s Inventions and Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, yet they are imbued with Abrams’s immaculate compositional language and a depth in production uncommon to classical works.

Coming on the tail end of Abrams’s Grammy Award-winning Piano Concerto (2023), Abrams explains: “After the crazy, frenetic, joyful energy of my Piano Concerto, I wanted to create a piano work that explored a completely different energy and soundscape. While the Piano Concerto is overtly populist, referencing American genres like jazz, funk, and Gospel music, the Preludes are meant to be introspective, intimate, and simple enough for pianists of many skill levels to play in both performance and home settings.”

Alongside the announcement, Abrams releases two preludes: ‘The Scream’ and ‘Toccata’.

‘The Scream’, with its heavy, overflowing harmonies, were processed by sidechaining the piano track with an unheard kick drum (adding the dance-like pumping effect) and building an ethereal breakdown out of post-production processing experiments. Kahane and Foubert encouraged Abrams to play the piece on a “beautiful sounding, but rickety old upright tack-piano. This request made an already difficult piece that much harder, as the action on the piano was inconsistent and heavy. The scream is Teddy through the piano mics, frustrated after a nearly perfect take of the piece.”

The organic and inhuman feeling of ‘Toccata’ is created by a synth bass doubling the harmonic motion of Abrams’s cascading and mechanical arpeggios.