MANY HANDS: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (2021)

Benzine Magazine: “A magnificent record” - 4/5 STARS

After last spring’s Shawnee Ohio, the American Brian Harnetty demonstrates the extent of his musical spectrum through Many Hands, a collection of pianistic and minimal miniatures, delicate and fragile as a faint memory.

For anyone interested in experimental music, folk, or neoclassical, the name of Brian Harnetty will inevitably evoke something. We know him especially for his collaboration with Bonnie Prince Billy at the time of Silent City (2009), but the American is not constrained by genres. Between old Appalachian traditions, folk, and the minimalist school, he enjoys acting as a music anthropologist, telling stories of people who lived, like the beautiful Shawnee Ohio released last April.

With Many Hands only available digitally on his Bandcamp page, he tries to revive lost memory through some scattered piano notes, like trying to understand pictures of past moments that one has not experienced. For Harnetty, there is no desire to shine or perform virtuosic pieces, or to be clever: he has no tricks up his sleeve. The writing here is more sensitive than cerebral, and leaves in its silences the power of suggestion. Stripped to the bone, the music of Brian Harnetty both reveals its flaws and knows how to be welcoming.

Yet to fully appreciate these twelve contemplative landscapes, it is necessary to find the lost art of listening. Indeed, Many Hands––despite its immediacy––is never an easy record, and it requires careful attention to discover its details and depth.

Refusing any form of lyricism and overbearing romanticism, Many Hands is immediately aligned with minimal works, especially those of Philip Glass. However, this record has the virtue of reminding us that contemplation is an active and encompassing process, far removed from reverie and torpor. To contemplate is to listen totally, to be imbued with what surrounds us; it is to abandon inaccurate concentration, to let go of the volatile interest for the other. To contemplate is to be one with the moment and the person who speaks to us.

Many Hands requires an effort in these times when our attention often does not exceed the duration of a post on the Internet. Even though Many Hands is completely instrumental, it tells us many things similar to other explorations of Brian Harnetty, who is sort of a modern Alan Lomax who seeks to keep memories, folklores, and stories so that they will never disappear. The album sometimes even takes on accents of Glenn Gould’s version of the Goldberg Variations, as on the magnificent “Three Hands” for example.

At times, we are reminded of Hans Otte and his Book Of Sounds or American visual artist Joanna Brouk for this same praise of barrenness, and an ability to appeal to the imagination of the listener who will come and dress the silences that are heard here. From a single piano, we hear one, two, three, or six hands emerge as a quiet expression, but an expression anyway, something that would not be affirmed or declaimed but more a suggestion.

The music of Brian Harnetty invites you to focus on a precious moment or a beautiful journey, such as his wanderings in a mining city in Ohio or in the silence of winter, and you can not get enough of it.

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Does the very notion of conceptual music intimidate or scare you? Do you have trouble understanding sound theorists who seem to experiment more than just play? For you, is this merely a vague question of ego, of pretension, or perhaps only a simple series of more or less harmonious noises (more often, less ...)? With a good deal of commendable humility, you might recognize that your ear may not be educated: that you don't necessarily have all the references for this particular dodecaphonist composer, or for that composer more in the minimal school, or for a virtuoso of Free Jazz. You might not know anything about the work of the “acousmatic school,” or perhaps even listening to a simple phrase from Boulez leaves you feeling perplexed!

However, there have always been bridge artists, musicians who create bridges between learned music and secular music, between contemporary music and Pop. From Moondog to Eden Abhez, from Philip Glass's most approachable works to those of Simon Jeffes' Penguin Café Orchestra, many of these musicians, in addition to being great creators, have also proven to be great openers of horizons, one could even say pedagogues, and perhaps also popularizers.

If we were to qualify the music of American multi-instrumentalist Brian Harnetty, it would be very difficult to put it in a single box: we could speak of chamber folk, pastoral solo piano, wanderings worthy of a Walden around musical notes. As on the first Volume of Many Hands mentioned here, Brian Harnetty continues an exploration of minimal piano as if he were looking through infinite tiny details to revive old memories. And, as in Volume I, the mood is for contemplation and drifting; however, there will sometimes be a bit of mischief, sometimes more letting go, too. Brian Harnetty, even in his piano playing, seems to draw a theme here, that of a caring touch, taking care, and attention to the other. No surprise then to learn that this disc was composed and recorded in the forced shelter of the confinement linked to Covid 19. Harnetty himself poses this as his intention of departure for the music.

If Harnetty’s intention in Many Hands Volume I was to illustrate the landscapes of Appalachian Ohio, then in Many Hands Volume II he wishes to return to a human dimension alone, to focus on the care given by a social worker, or a mother with her child, or a nurse with a patient.

On the first volume, Brian Harnetty never fell into repetition or poorly digested references. The totem of Aaron Copland and his Appalachian Suite could have overshadowed Harnetty’s desire to illustrate Ohio landscapes through music, but here he rocked left and right in delicious hesitations that only made him more unpredictable. On Many Hands Volume II, he refers to all the nuances of touch. How can you express such a variety of different and sometimes contradictory feelings from the palm of your hand, when it is always the same hand? This might lead to understanding Harnetty’s intention for the title Many Hands.

The result is a magnificent record, sometimes empathetic, sometimes shady, here in suspension, there lively and proud: a gateway disk to his music, a runaway disk of escape, a porous disk that might slip through your fingers.

July 18, 2020 and October 26, 2019
Greg Bod

Columbus Alive: “Alluring, hypnotic, peaceful”

It’s no secret we’re fans of sound artist, archivist and composer Brian Harnetty here at Alive. He was the focus of a 2019 cover story concerning Forest Listening Rooms, which also ties in to previous projects that delved into the sounds and culture of southeastern Ohio coal-mining towns known as the Little Cities of Black Diamonds.

Harnetty has a new album out today — the second volume of a project titled Many Hands, which is a series of piano pieces for multiple players. While the first volume was inspired by Appalachian Ohio, Harnetty said the theme of the second volume is particularly focused on ”‘care labor’: the work done quietly and selflessly by unnoticed parents and nurses and social workers and teachers and artists.”

It’s an alluring, hypnotic, peaceful collection of piano compositions that may help to quiet your mind in these anxious times.

April 20, 2020
Joel Oliphint