Conlon Nancarrow: Study # 1 for Player Piano

Nancarrow's Study # 1 for player piano: composed in 1949-50, published in 1951. It's jazz at its purest and craziest level: polyrhythmic composition with over two hundred shifts of meter.

It was recorded with the Ampico Bösendorfer Grand in the possession of Jürgen Hocker, which was restored under the supervision of Nancarrow (see more at http://www.nancarrow.de)

A few words about Jürgen Hocker. We will often meet with this name along as we will listen the studies of Nancarrow. Between 1980-2000 Jürgen Hocker was the president of the Gesellschaft für Selbstspielende Musikinstrumente e.V. (Society for Selfplaying Instruments). He visited Nancarrow several times in Mexico and archived his documents as a basis for a monograph that was published in 2002. Hocker organized by the end of the 1980's a Nancarrow concert tour in Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Vienna and Paris. The concerts were performed by the Ampico Bösendorfer Grand player piano of Hocker (I said by and not on, as it is about a player piano).

Study # 1 for player piano (video by playerpianoJH)

(Conlon Nancarrow)