Solo Piano
When we loved is a solo piano project by 35mm film photographer and poet Francis A Willey. The solo piano compositions span 21years of creative exploration of the piano.
The piano is a percussive magician with huge motifs adorned with a melancholic fantasy of memories, recollections, and dreams.
Each key has a duality and tension of endless polarities. Rolling emotions of romantic vs the melancholic. A tenderness dipped in thick ink, scrolled with fingers percussively.
These pitches struggle with the ecstatic melodic arrival and departures of a language that is at times languid and then spirited.
Each piece was written as a dedication to a particular memory, rapture or longing. Time quenched and a love that made the struggle all worthwhile.
I tip my hat also to the exploration or rhythms particularly inspired by the minimalist music of the late 20th century and the impressionistic era of expression depicting an imagined atmosphere to arouse emotions or tell a story.
Influences : Eric Satie, Claude Debussy.
Dedicated to my daughters Agatha and Pax Willey.
Cover painting: Maia Adriana Reinking