Insomnia Kai Schumacher

• 1Sleepless Night (Arr. K. Swift for Piano)02:42
• 2Dream07:50
• 3A Little Midnight Music - I. Nocturnal Theme01:58
• 4A Little Midnight Music - II. Charade01:48
• 5A Little Midnight Music - III. Pemonition01:59
• 6A Little Midnight Music - IV. Cobweb and Peaseblossom02:09
• 7A Little Midnight Music - V. Incantation03:06
• 8A Little Midnight Music - VI. Golliwog Revisted02:28
• 9A Little Midnight Music - VII. Blues in the Night03:00
• 10A Little Midnight Music - VIII. Cadenza with Tolling Bells02:14
• 11A Little Midnight Music - IX. Midnight Transformation03:41
• 12Nocturne11:07
• 13Urban Nocturnes07:56
• Total Runtime51:58

Info for Insomnia

Insomnia is the story of a nocturnal journey, reassuring and disturbing at the same time, both mystical and unpredictable. An escape from ourselves into the soft focus the night, but then leading us back again at the end, taking us even deeper inside ourselves. Insomnia is the aimless wanderings of the Sleepless One, through inner and outer worlds which remains hidden during the harsh light of day. Insomnia is five Hymns to the Night, composed by five American composers over a period of nearly 100 years. While at first glance, they may seem stylistically very different, when taken together; these five works are the perfect soundtrack for a journey through the long hours after the sun has set.

At the center of this journey stands A Little Midnight Music, George Crumb's adaptation of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Standard 'Round Midnight. He leads his listeners and performers past the neon signs of the New York jazz clubs of the 1940s into the oppressive darkness of the avant-garde pianist. Sleepless Night and Urban Nocturnes by Bruce Stark not only reference jazz, and are the outgrowth of the composer’s long-standing interest in improvisation. In George Gershwin short Prelude we can almost imagine the clinking of glasses at last call. John Cage's Dream and Brian Belet‘s Summer Phantoms - Nocturne function as the album’s centerpieces and provide a pair of contrasting soundtracks for nightly inner escapism.

To describe Kai Schumacher as a “punk pianist” would be excessive.

His deeply thoughtful style of playing blurs the boundaries of the classical avant-garde and pop culture without getting stuck in all-toofamiliar crossover paths. One focus of Kai Schumacher's solo repertoire has been on American piano music of the late 20th and the 21st centuries. His debut album of Frederic Rzewski’s monumental variation cycle The people united will never be defeated! (2010) was celebrated by FonoForum magazine as 'a pianistic sensation'. With his second album Transcriptions (2013), he ventured into the musical heroes of his youth - Rage against the machine, Nirvana, Slayer, etc., transforming the concert grand in his piano remixes into a tone generator of monstrous proportions, sound effects board or a set of tuned percussion instruments.

Kai Schumacher, piano

Kai Schumacher
received his first piano lessons at the age of five, his first public performance was at the age of seven, and his orchestral debut (with Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto) took place when he was 15. At first glance, the classic story of a young prodigy. But the piano was for him in the true sense of the word a plaything and not some piece of sports equipment; music was a passion and not a discipline. After receiving his school diploma, Schumacher was accepted at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen (Germany) - even though at that point he had attended more punk rock events than symphony concerts. He was awarded the Folkwang piano prize and was given a prize by the Köhler-Osbahr Foundation; Schumacher played his concert examination in 2009, which received the citation, "outstanding". In addition to his studies with Till Engel, he worked with the American pianist Guy Livingston in Amsterdam, and studied chamber music with Andreas Reiner.

As a result, Kai Schumacher's repertory places special emphasis on contemporary American music for the piano. In addition to numerous European premiere performances, he works closely with composers of the younger generation: for example in his project "Darling, I'm indeed useless to you - 12 Variations without Amanda Palmer" (premiere January 2009) for which 12 composers, ranging from jazz to avantgarde, wrote one variation each based on a theme composed by Kai Schumacher. In cooperation with the Duisburg Philharmonic, he was developing new forms for concert presentation, mixing classic and contemporary piano music with rockmusic and electronic sounds, also using light and video installations to form a collage that attracts younger audiences and older critics as well. But Kai Schumacher is not only active as a proponent of modern music; he also concertizes regularly as a soloist and works as producer and arranger for various pop- and rockbands. Besides Germany, he played concerts in Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lithuania, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Southkorea, Israel and Palestine.

Booklet for Insomnia