This CD from 2009 features 51 minutes of gentle ambient music. As implied by the release’s title, the principle instrument here is a grand piano (a model 1923 Steinway D, to be exact).
The latter has been sampled, and the notes are accompanied by electronically generated atmospheres. The result, as one might expect, is ambience seasoned by classical influences. Sanfilippo plays gentle Steinway chords that linger with a congenial sovereignty. The melodies pursue an extremely relaxed temperament with each expression isolated by reverent pauses (which are suitably filled with languidly drifting texturals). The electronics are primarily tenuous, establishing vaporous environs not unlike the mists that cloak a beach in the dawn hours.
These tonalities engulf the music in translucence, a luster delicately penetrated by the piano notes. Some of the atmospherics exhibit a suppressed grittiness reminiscent of distant electrical currents crackling in an open field. For the most part, though, the ambience remains moderate and courteous. The compositions are ethereal yet compelling. While most ambient music relies entirely on the ebb and flow of harmonic auralscapes, these songs employ a melodic structure generated by the piano keys. Those melodies are then enhanced into pleasant phantasms by the conjunctive application of soft tones. The fragile compositions evoke moods the exact nature of which are wholly derived from the mind of the listener.
