« Thollem’s keyboard flights unleash cascades of notes of seemingly impossible velocity and no matter where he goes tonally, it always seems right, fresh and satisfying. He should be on everyone’s listening list who appreciates great piano music. As an improviser, he inhabits a world uniquely his own, rhythmically, harmonically and formally. A true original. » (Terry Riley)
« Both my mother and grandmother were piano teachers. I woke almost daily to piano lessons they were giving. Together they clocked about 150 years of teaching piano. I wonder how Thollem would have sounded to me then ? Maybe the answer is on the CD » (Pauline Oliveros)
Album available on Bandcamp :
(listen/purchase/download)
http://wildsilencelabel.
Release : 20.03.2013
www.wild-silence.com
These are recordings found in a shoe box in a garage on tape cassettes thought to be lost. The album contains both compositions and improvisations of Thollem's as well as performances of pieces by other composers including Skryabin, Prokofiev, Scarlatti, and Bach recorded while in high school and first years of college. The newest recording of this collection is from 1989, more than 15 years before Thollem's first official release on Edgetone Records and Pax Recordings in 2005. Though he never abandoned music entirely, the years between were spent primarily in grassroots political activism and urban farming. These are the best quality recordings of the collection but still retain a very 'archeological' sound to them.
website: www.thollem.com
