Carol Lian on Freedom

Carol Lian is a technically amazing pianist with great imagination and taste. Escape with her into the subconscious world of beautiful music and exciting piano playing”.

The Reading Eagle

Carol Lian’s improvisations on The Seven Last Words of Christ have been in constant rotation on the CD player.

On An Overgrown Path

A little background…….

Over a period of about two years before recording ON FREEDOM, the phrase, The Seven Last Words of Christ kept running through my mind. I didn’t know what those words were or why the phrase kept coming up. I called a friend of mine who was pretty knowledgable about these things and she sent them to me – Christ’s parting 7 last phrases uttered from the cross.

As in all of my recordings, the final musical outcome and selected repertoire is always a surprise.I know enough to be ready for anything. So many times in my musical life I’ve been overtaken with music that has to sing and have it’s own voice when it feels the time is at hand, without regard for any conscious earthly plans I have. I did have a thought to perhaps do an improvisation on The Seven Last Words of Christ, but when – I had no idea.

So, on the day of the first session , after playing some Chopin, I took a break and I felt the Improvisations were ready. What I didn’t know was that when I started to play, I would be completely possessed by that moment. Without stopping at all the Seven Last Words had spoken.

ON FREEDOM – Is an improvisation reflecting the inner freedom I allowed myself in releasing a recording of Chopin’s beautiful music and my own on one disc .The music I love so much, the Chopin, recreating and interpreting its beauty and secrets, and the spontaneous music that overtakes my spirit.

ON JOY AND SORROW - This improvisation was inspired by the writings of Kalil Gibran’s The Prophet which always awakens the deep meaning of the power of words in poetry.

This recording marked a significant direction my musical life would continue to take. A combination of recreating and interpreting written music as composers wish to the best of my abilities, and allowing The hidden music within me to have a life as well.