Magda Mayas

Over the last couple of decades Magda Mayas has developed a rigorous and distinctive prepared piano practice, working inside the piano with great musicality. The music on Chant captures a dramatic expansion of the pianist’s vision. Reflecting her devotion to social and musical communities through recent stretches of political upheaval and the disruption of the pandemic, she’s found solace in harmony and repetition, and after a period of exploring such sounds with clavinet and Fender-Rhodes, she now brings them to her piano work. The album’s three pieces situate this interest in radically different ways, mixing the pianist’s prepared piano mastery with the recent embrace of sustained chords, acoustic and electronic dialogues, and her experiments with digitally time-stretching the recording to enhance resonance. Chant is Magda’s third collaboration with Unsounds records. Peter Margasak has written detailed notes on the album.