Melsen's Piano Log

After playing duets with Dad, and after a rather messy performance of a Chopin G Major Prelude, I wanted to play just one more time before moving on to find our departure gate at the airport. If you're familiar with the prelude, you'll hear how I started there with this improvisation. I think this is the most exuberant one of the day, and a fitting end to the string of Portland public performances. Playing piano makes me so happy, and getting to play for other people even more so. Thank you for listening :)

Here is the second duet improvisation with my dad, Philip Carlsen (www.philcarlsen.com). In this one, I'm playing bass, and he's playing treble. I snuck a peak around us during the middle of this, and a sizeable crowd had gathered. It can be such a relief in a stressful situation like an airport to be able to make and listen to live music!

And then my dad joined me and we improvised two duets. This is the first: he is playing bass and I'm playing treble. I grew up listening to him compose at the piano, and I have been heavily influenced by his sense of musical adventure and creation. Check out some of his work on his website: www.philcarlsen.com. You can listen to clips there and on Soundcloud. Also, there is a professional recording of me playing a piece that he wrote for me, "October", put out by Parma Recordings. Here's a link to the recording on iTunes: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/album/october/id897219922?i=897220124&mt=1&app=music (but you can also find it on Rhapsody, and probably other music streaming services)

This is the second recording from the Kawai baby grand at PDX, and the third recording from last Saturday. By now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll recognize this style of improvising: fast arpeggiated chords, where the content is a slow harmonic transformation with the illusion of a fast pace because of the many notes used, and where there is often a slow melodic line that sparkles out of the top. After I spent a week on the Oregon coast with the constant backdrop of the pounding Pacific surf, playing in this style took on a special significance.

This Kawai baby grand piano was just sitting in the terminal at PDX. The security guard said that sometimes they paid performers to play on it, but otherwise it was available for anyone to play. My family and I had a couple hours before our plane left, so my dad and I ended up playing for almost an hour! We did some pieces we knew, but we also improvised a lot. This is my first improvisation on that piano.