Timothy Cooper, East Wind Reviews

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TIMOTHY COOPER
EAST WIND
NEW PIANO AGE MUSIC

It is an interesting concept to use one of the Western world ' s greatest instruments, the acoustic grand piano, to make music portraying the people, sights, sounds, smells and feelings gathered by a westerner traveling extensively throughout the Far East. You would expect to hear some Chinese pipa lute, Japanese shakuhatchi flute or Filipino Gamalon orchestra to capture the flavor. But, no, American musician Timothy Cooper simply uses solo piano, and he makes it work. It is kind of amazing when you think about it. But his job working for the Worldrights organization has taken him throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim for long trips over the past ten years or so, and he soaked up the atmosphere while he was there, and then went home and poured it all into this piano music.

When he titles songs ' Asian Rain, '' Green Seas ' or ' Bamboo Forest, ' he is giving obvious guideposts to where he was and what specifically inspired that piece of music. He uses the sounds of a piano to capture a wide variety of Far Eastern scenery and weather " deep, rich, resonating chords one moment, then a light touch as he scampers around some high notes to indicate a small bird or sunlight or starlight. You feel like he goes into a deep trance when he is composing/playing/improvising this music. It ' s a special place worth visiting, and it ' s all done on the piano with no overdubs.

You can find the music on this CD (and his previous album) online at his record company website (new-piano-age.com) or at the regular places (iTunes, amazon, cdbaby, etc).