How are you feeling about performing your first show without your band and only a piano?

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It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, literally for years. I remember seeing Nina Simone Live in Montreal and thinking, I would love to do a solo set. When I’m playing with Ben and Rob, which I love to do, I’m not with a real piano. With a real piano, there’s a chemistry that I can have with it that I can’t have with a keyboard. There’s something fundamentally different about it and I’ve never really been able to take a full piano on tour, this gives me an opportunity to do the thing that I’ve always loved to do and the thing that is the reason that I make music in the first place. Improvising on the piano has been my bread and butter since I’ve was a child. This is actually extremely less nerve wrecking than coming out and doing what we’ve been doing.

So what’s fundamentally different about the connection with the piano versus the keyboard?

The electric pianos that I take on the road, I have whole different connection with them. There’s a lacking in chemistry. And there’s pure physics in it too. It’s also, the place that I’ve always felt most comfortable. Sitting in front of a piano is my favorite places to be. It’s where I’ve felt the safest. And maybe that’s because I don’t have any bad recollections or memories there. It’s always been a place that’s a catharsis and it makes me feel quite comfortable on the stage to have that between me and the audience. I probably wouldn’t be able to get up and do it without it.

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What finally led you to the decision to scale down and perform with just the piano?



By releasing the records I’ve released, the expectation of me may be something quite different. But at this point, I think I’ve made a lot of electronic records and I think I’ve made my statement in regards to that. Concisely enough that I can go and do things and people won’t be confused. It might be a bit strange for people because there is nothing electronic there to accompany me but, at the same time, I think the some of my most successful efforts have come from sitting at that thing. Most of the songs I’m going to play tonight are going to translate well because they were written at the piano.

How will these solo piano shows change the instrumentation of certain songs? Will you just perform them without that or stick only to songs that don’t require those other sounds?

I’m probably not going to try and recreate electronic sounds. Essentially, there will be some songs in there but I don’t really know which ones I’m going to play until I get on stage. I want it to feel like a new experience. I would be weaving my way through certain material everyone seems to think.

And that’s different for you because when you’re on stage with other people they have to know what’s coming up next.

What I want to do is improvise as much as I can. That means doing what I do when I usually play is pretty much writing on stage and the way the songs are played change over time. That’s my way of making things a little bit tense myself. The best part is that part when you know when a little bit too many people come out and you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. And then there’s that sweet spot of slight uncertainty which maybe is the thing that might make it most fun. In the same way that when you’re playing live, you’re creating a moment that should be tangible but that moment that you’re trying to create is one of spontaneity. For example, when stand-up comedy loses it’s snap is when it’s no longer spontaneous. It’s the same with improvisation. We’ve been touring certain songs and we’ve been playing them sometimes the same way which is a huge step away from that and it puts me really at the deep end and I don’t really know what’s going to happen, which is why I’m trying it here because there’s an element of spontaneity in this place.

