JS Bach, Re-Imagined

My son Sam, as some of you know, is an accomplished pianist and composer here in DC.  [his website’s here]  He and Ralitza Patcheva, a close friend and colleague (and masterful Bach interpreter), have just released an album on Acis Records that is generating (deservedly so, in my opinion) some buzz: The Well-“Tampered” Clavier, in which each of the 24 Preludes and Fugues in Book 1 of JS Bach’s magisterial “Well-Tempered Clavier” are rhythmically re-worked and re-imagined.

It’s pretty wild: think Bach meets Scott Joplin, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Thelonious Monk.

The CD, and streaming links and other info, are all available here.  Have a listen. I realize that a father’s recommendation is by its very nature of questionable reliability, and that, ties of blood being what they are, I might urge you to listen even if I didn’t think the music was very good.  But that doesn’t mean that I think this music is not very good – quite the contrary.  I am very much a worshipper at the Bach altar, and I think Sam and Ralitza have come up with something that deepens one’s engagement with the original while being new and interesting and fun to listen to. See if you agree!