water hollows stone
alex weiser + HOCKET
FOR YOUR
GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
ABOUT
LISTEN
HOCKET’s world-premiere recording of Alex Weiser’s water hollows stone is a four-hand piano tour de force. The EP explores the idea of Ovid’s adage Gutta cavat lapidem — dripping water hollows out a stone — with the music beginning stripped away to its elements and put back together drop by drop. Notes come together to build gestures. Gestures are molded to build phrases. Masses of sound differentiate into harmonies. Melodies emerge from bubbling textures. Weiser casts the material of musical minimalism as an exploration of the nature of music itself and of its power over us.
ABOUT ALEX WEISER
Broad gestures and rich textures are hallmarks of the “compelling” (The New York Times), “deliciously wistful” (San Francisco Classical Voice), music of composer Alex Weiser. Born and raised in New York City, Weiser creates acutely cosmopolitan music combining a deeply felt historical perspective with a vibrant forward-looking creativity hailed as “personal, expressive, and bold” (I Care If You Listen).
Weiser’s debut album and all the days were purple, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and cited as “a meditative and deeply spiritual work whose unexpected musical language is arresting and directly emotional.” Released by Cantaloupe Music in April 2019, the album includes songs in Yiddish and English.
ABOUT hocket
HOCKET is a cutting edge piano duo based in Los Angeles. Lauded as “brilliant” by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times and as an "adventurous young ensemble" by The New Yorker, members Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff are both pianist-composers dedicated to commissioning and performing contemporary music. They have performed in some of the most exciting festivals and venues across the country including The Bang on Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, MATA Festival in New York City, The Center for New Music in San Francisco, the Carlsbad Music Festival, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Noon to Midnight” Festival. Together, they have premiered over one hundred chamber and solo works and have collaborated with the premier, new music ensembles Eighth Blackbird and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. They have performed concerti with the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, USC Thornton Edge, Oberlin Sinfonietta, and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. HOCKET has received grants from the Presser Foundation and The Earle Brown Music Foundation and has been a selected artist in Firebird Ensemble's Outstanding Young Artists Initiative and Eighth Blackbird’s Blackbird Creative Lab. HOCKET is a Piano Spheres core artist and a performing artist on the Schoenhut Piano Company Artist Roster.
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