Sarah M Silverman - Lyric Pieces (2023)

LYRIC PIECES is a re-imagining of the music of Edvard Grieg. This collection of music grew out of a time of transition - an overwhelming sense of isolation in a new city with a growing family. While everything around me was unfamiliar, I gravitated to the piano for comfort - it was the one place I could go and feel at home. I unpacked boxes of music books and started playing through music from the Complete Lyric Pieces, a collection of 66 piano pieces written over the span of 58 years by the Norwegian composer. These pieces seemed to perfectly encapsulate everything I was feeling and I instinctively began to explore the music in new and unusual ways.

Pushing beyond the confines of my classical music training, I was no longer preoccupied with how the music was supposed to be played, but focused entirely on how the music actually made me feel. I allowed myself the freedom to use my voice - wordlessly and with text. I played with tempo and form - cutting parts of pieces and repeating others. I wrote lyrics for counterlines, and created new melodies based on harmonic movement. I chose pieces out of order jumping around between different opus numbers. I gave myself time and space to improvise, and found myself entering into a new kind of musical exploration and conversation.

Grieg lived from 1843-1907 in a world that couldn’t possibly seem farther away, but his emotional life is timeless. He left home at a very young age and experienced intense loneliness and homesickness, and he yearned to find his place, his unique voice as an artist. These very human experiences are what connect us all, and these are the experiences that pour through his music, that broke through the barriers of time and place and spoke to me.

LYRIC PIECES is meant to be listened to from beginning to end - a kind of classical concept album that follows a descent into the shadow self. While I begin and end with the same two pieces from Grieg’s piano collection, the music chosen in between is a reflection of my own experiences as a woman, a mother, and an artist finding her place.