Insomnia

   in Piano International (Jan, 2016)
Insomnia, says Kai Schumacher, is ‘a world poised between pure black and flickering neon, between melancholy and mania’. It’s also his enterprising programme of American night music, from Gershwin’s edgy Sleepless Night (Prelude) to a set of Urban Nocturnes by Bruce Stark, which Schumacher commissioned specifically for this recording. The disc’s centrepiece is George Crumb’s A Little Night Music – nine ‘ruminations’ on Thelonious Monk’s classic Round Midnight, which he transforms into a trickle of quirky vignettes, employing various pianistic techniques to ghostly effect. Cage’s ethereal Dream precedes these midnight musings, while Brian Belet’s Summer Phantoms: Nocturne, for piano and electronics, follows them with a little surreal sleeplessness. Schumacher executes …