Abbey Road in Concert

The Beatles’ Abbey Road presented by pianist Christopher Donison with Limbic Media’s Aurora

“Now—the music itself.  This is really the interesting part.  These are not ‘arrangements’ for the piano.  They are an attempt to as accurately as possible give a portrait of the actual recording as far as the essential musical elements are concerned.  It is entirely my rendering of them.  But there is no new material that an “arranger” would add to these.  There is no real extra improvisation or new material.  It a presentation of the melody, rhythm, harmony,  but also more difficult to define — something I call musical ‘intent’ (and this may be the most important part).  That intent would be , for instance:  “What is the intention of the energy being telegraphed.  Enthusiasm, excitement, joy, refection, etc… ? And how do the musical elements all on their own accomplish that?”  If done properly you should not think you are listening to a ‘piano’.  It will not sound like a pianist in the lobby of a hotel playing Beatles songs.

I recognize that there are all kinds of other content in all of this popular music,  such as the style of vocal production,  the lyrics themselves,  the types of instruments used and distinctive new instrument sounds  (such as playing a guitar through a Leslie speaker cabinet) .  But my project considers only the musical content.

So this process is a chance to look at this music with only  the musical content. Without being distracted by the familiar sounds of their voices and instruments or the lyrics,  the idea is that this exposes so completely the true compositional strength or weakness of the music writing.  This is the strength that will enable this music to enter into the pantheon of classicism as far I can tell…so that means, that the musical elements themselves will enable future audiences to respond to that musical intent without having to know anything about the performers here and now,  or what our world here and now is like.  Universality being the key to this type of classicism…which enables the musical content to be relevant and meaningful to all people in at all times…

I have played it through a few times for a small group of other musicians or people that are very familiar with this music, or  even experts on this music.  They have all said it was actually clearer to them than listening to the album, with which they are so familiar with.  And they all enjoyed hearing this music  from a fresh look,  but without it being altered.

The sonic/interactive chandelier hanging over the piano is by Limbic media,  and they are writing a special programme to help the robot Aurora respond to this performance….I like to say that I am anxious to see what Abbey Road does to her… ”