Tiago Sousa

"Portuguese composer and pianist Tiago Sousa follows his 2011 album Walden Pond's Monk with his first solo piano record, Samsara. While Walden Pond's Monk featured Sousa on piano accompanied by clarinet and percussion players, Samsara allows the playing of Sousa to take center stage. Samsara is an intricate record, built on a complex narrative that's anchored on this oriental philosophical concept -- a bold and emotive piece that stands through its carefully managed balance between opposites. Samsara is, for several oriental cultural manifestations, the repetitive and re-occurring cycle of life, death and rebirth; it stands for a continuous drift through the various modes of existence. For Sousa, then, Samsara works as a metaphor for the flux of human creativity and how it influences our perception of reality while at the same time positing new challenges and difficulties."