Katrina Krimsky unleashes a vibrant spectrum of colors from just a few looping melodies. The pianist’s compositions and improvisations build from small, repeated phrases, creating dreamy patterns in their interweaving. Her light, fluid music draws from her experiences performing in eclectic corners of the 20th century avant-garde—notably playing works by electronic trailblazers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luc Ferrari and minimalist pioneers Terry Riley and La Monte Young. When she turned to composition in the 1980s, her pieces naturally emerged as a hybrid of contemporary styles, finding a sublime depth within every pattern she dreamt up. 1980, an unearthed solo piano recording from a June 1980 concert in Woodstock, New York, introduces the effervescent oscillations that would become Krimsky’s signature, showcasing the artist as she began to solidify her compositional voice.
Krimsky performed the music of 1980 while visiting Woodstock’s Creative Music Studio, which at the time was a hotbed for musical exploration. The evening marked a turning point in her musical practice—it was an early performance of material she composed and improvised, rather than material composed by others that she later interpreted. It also provided a lens into the lattice-like compositions that she’s written throughout her career. Across three tracks, Krimsky presents three different ways of creating a trance from undulating melodies, making music akin to her minimalist counterpoints and Keith Jarrett alike. With each return, her motifs take on a different mood—what may have at one point felt cheery might turn ominous—displaying how a change in perspective can affect a sequence of notes, not unlike meditation. In the liner notes for the release, Krimsky describes her love of patterning as a “search,” a means to an end of finding resonance. As her ostinati inch closer together, she writes, “It makes me free, another dimension happens.”
In the opening seconds of the 42-minute “Soundscape,” Krimsky lays out a rippling motif that loops throughout as other moody tones swirl around it. Though her gentle style often feels pastoral, here, there’s a hint of tension driven by the music’s rumbling, low notes; they chug along like a train that’s late to the station, picking up tension with every repetition and every trill. Krimsky examines her themes from every angle; gradually, a bright-hued, higher-pitched melody derived from the earlier motif emerges, presenting a new take on what we’ve already heard. And while much of her music ends up feeling ecstatic, she also touches on darker emotions, which make the bright spots feel even sunnier. She pauses, stretches notes, lets them sit awhile and ruminate. In a few moments on 1980, her oscillations even drop out, revealing dissonant, faraway clangor. It’s brief—her melodies return, stronger, brighter, within minutes—but their absence underscores how she explores each color and texture.
Documenting the start of her journey as a composer, 1980 presents Krimsky’s work at its most stripped-down and exploratory as she works through the ideas that would go on to define her voice. In some cases, the distinct pieces on 1980 would even return later in her career. “Stella Malu,” the album’s upbeat finale, returned in a more melancholy form on 1982’s Stella Malu; in this version, Krimsky slows her melodies down, transforming its peppy rhythms into pensive, meandering swaths of sound. It’s another example of the staying power of her vivid approach—though they’re just a few repeating notes, Krimsky finds new angles within them, teasing out different harmonies and moods. Every time, she shows us that there’s more left to say.
