#4849, With Bruce Brubaker: Eno Piano

American pianist Bruce Brubaker adapts iconic ambient music by English composer, musician and record producer Brian Eno for a single instrument - the piano. Eno once explained that “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting", (Music for Airports liner notes, 1978.)

For this project, Brubaker transcribed every note into a playable score - all that was improvised by Eno and his collaborators in a studio and later assembled. To achieve some of the sounds, Brubaker also harnessed the piano’s insides using electro-magnetic bows by Florent Colautti (an eBow-like mechanism) to excite the strings. The resulting album, called Eno Piano, shows the connections of Eno’s music to minimalism, with repetition and loops as sound art. Bruce Brubaker presents music from the record and plays some of these arrangements in-studio. - Caryn Havlik

Program #4849, With Bruce Brubaker: Eno Piano (First aired 2/21/2024)

ARTIST: Brian Eno
WORK: Music for Airports 1-1, excerpt [1:20]
RECORDING: Ambient 1
SOURCE: EEG 17
INFO: Available at Amazon.com

ARTIST: Bang on a Can All-Stars
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/1, arr. Michael Gordon [:30]
RECORDING: Music for Airports (Live)
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music
INFO: https://bangonacan.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-airports-live

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/1, arr. Bruce Brubaker [:24]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Harold Budd/Brian Eno: The Chill Air [1:40]
RECORDING: Live, WNYC Studio
SOURCE: This performance  not commercially available. 
INFO: A version appears on Eno Piano https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bang on a Can All-Stars
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/1, arr. Michael Gordon [1:00]
RECORDING: Music for Airports (Live)
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music
INFO: https://bangonacan.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-airports-live

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/1, arr. Bruce Brubaker [8:31]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/2,  arr. Bruce Brubaker [11:34]
RECORDING: Live, WNYC Studio
SOURCE: This performance  not commercially available. 
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 1/1, arr. Bruce Brubaker [1:00]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: By This River, arr. Bruce Brubaker [3:31]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno/Jon Hopkins/Leo Abrahams: Emerald and Stone, arr. Bruce Brubaker [2:09]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano

ARTIST: Bruce Brubaker
WORK: Brian Eno: Music for Airports, 2/2, arr. Bruce Brubaker [2:08]
RECORDING: Eno Piano
SOURCE: InFiné
INFO: https://bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno-piano