Sheet music review "Lola Perrin is
a fine, original composer and I really enjoyed browsing among her
works. None of it is easy. Many individual movements are challenging, long and
complex. It is enormously resourceful and pianistic, attractive and lucid,
worthy of a champion to bring it to a wide audience. Someone could have a big
success with these suites. I’ll happily send the scores to someone truly
interested. (John York Piano Magazine)
Live performance review "Hauntingly compelling" (John Fordham, The Guardian)
Live performance review "Lola's solo piano set held the audience spellbound, and you could have heard a pin drop in Spitz. Lola's music is as much ambient as it is jazz; tellingly, her set opened with Brian Eno's "Forced to Choose", and her own "Perpetual Motion" suite has many of the same qualities, radiating a mesmeric sense of peace and calm. Parts of "Perpetual Motion" were accompanied by visuals by Thomas Gray, abstract images derived from natural forms such as animal fur, running water or grass blowing in the wind. This marriage of sound and visuals was as good as any I have seen, even the works of Philip Glass and Godfrey Reggio - praise indeed. (John Eyles)
Live performance review "Perrin's music is an immersive and meditative
experience. Utterly spellbinding and without a doubt one of my highlights of
the year." (Simon Wright MK Gallery)
"The Wind was an exhilarating event and I - along with
the rest of the audience - was truly engrossed in the film and Lola Perrin's
wonderful music." (Alistair Goolden, Bath Film Festival)
Live performance review I saw the 1927 silent classic, Wind at the weekend. It was showing as part of the Bath Film Festival and came with a wonderful live accompaniment by Lola Perrin. It was tremendously intense, the piano carrying us through the screen into the faces of the characters; the troubed Letty, the heartbroken Lige and the predatory Wirt. There was such momentum in the playing that it made it a real journey into the desperate heart of Letty who was played by Lillian Gish. In Bath, we don't often get the chance to see silent classics on the big screen (maybe the Bath Film Festival is the only time), so this was a real treat, especially with the fantastic score." (Colin Pantall)
Live performance review "LOLA PERRIN'S SET comprised three lengthy solo pieces - the
outer two being heard against film projections by Mahesh Mathai. The first of
these set the pattern for what was to follow - Mathai's evocative if detached
Cityscape images counterpoised with Perrin's lively blend of post-minimalist
figuration and a harmonic palette whose debt to Debussy and Ravel was deftly
underlined towards the close. The second piece, Magma, did without visuals in
its calm if moody evocation of someone 'left behind' during the summer-holiday
season. The third, Frailty, again combined with a film, East End 1, by Phil
Maxwell and Huzan Hashim - though this time the nature of the visuals, capturing
the pathos of its subjects with a gritty but revealing immediacy, drew from
Perrin a greater poignancy and expressive nuance. The combining of music and
images in such a way has been done to death this last decade, but the present
partnership evinced a thoughtful approach too often lacking in the medium.
(Richard Whitehouse, London Jazz Festival)
CD review "Lola Perrin's second album expands on the success of her debut, Perpetual Motion (Blue Planet, 2004), incorporating its Perpetual Motion Piano Suite III, plus two other suites. That use of "suites" may suggest that Perrin's music has affinities with classical piano music, and indeed she has drawn comparisons with Schubert, Debussy and Ravel, comparisons which she gladly accepts, although I find Perpetual Motion most reminiscent of Erik Satie. But that is not the whole story; there are also close affinities with the minimalism of Michael Nyman or Steve Reich, Brian Eno's ambient music, or chamber jazz players such as Keith Jarrett.However, most of all, Perrin‚s music is her own and she avoids any of the above labels by calling it "rave music for butterflies" which effectively conjures up its mood of tranquillity, combined with its affecting melodies and rhythms. It is music that tends to command attention. Recently when she played the last night of the London Jazz Festival to a crowded venue (Spitz, with a bar at the back, not noted for its silent, attentive audiences) she held the crowd spellbound and mesmerised.In concert, Perrin's playing is often accompanied by short films by the likes of Thomas Gray or Roberto Battista, and the sleeve of this CD carries still images from some of them. However, the music is not reliant on the visuals, and it's quite strong enough to stand alone. Perrin's compositions are often inspired by visual art; she was stimulated to write her Early One Sunday Morning Piano Suite by Edward Hopper's 1930 painting Early Sunday Morning of low sunlight on a row of shopfronts; the suite replicates the painting's mood of expectation, maybe even foreboding.The longest track here, one of two that are not parts of a suite, is "Barcelona: For Six Pianos". It is ambitious in its conception, and the multitracked piano parts combine effectively to yield a piece that will definitely appeal to lovers of minimalism. (John Eyles allaboutjazz.com)
Interview "OK, I really screwed up this time. I went to interview a
major modern pianist without having listened to her work or, indeed, to any
modern piano music. It’s people like me who give journalism a bad name.
As luck would have it though, a blagging tongue honed by dozens of tutes got me
halfway there, and Lola Perrin’s no-bullshit approach to music brought the
interview home.
So who is Lola Perrin? Perrin is the latest pianist to be supported by
Steinway, who are to pianos what Hattori Hanzo was to samurai swords. She is a
minimalist composer-pianist, with deep roots in jazz. She is collaborating with
the heavyweights of the art world - but more on that later. She is also,
endearingly, still just a little starstruck by her own rise.
'There was this one time,' she says, 'when I was due to perform at the Teatro
dal Verme in Milan. That’s right next to La Scala! And a Bentley was to come
and pick us up from the airport, and we were going to stay in a five-star hotel
with a, erm, what do you call it?' - she tries to grab the word out of the air
in front of her - 'a butler.'
She started out on the piano at the age of four. The youngest of six
piano-playing siblings, she knew the instrument was hers by right - 'I hogged
it.' At 13, she was invited along to exhibition classes at the Royal College of
Music, and then they gave her the chance to become a concert pianist. She
turned it down.
The piano still haunted her. 'Music picks you,' she says. 'A born musician has
no choice. You’re completely miserable if you’re not doing it.' She read Music
at university, where she began to take theory very seriously indeed. 'You had
this linear progression from Baroque to Classical to Romantic to, erm, well I
suppose you’d call it Impressionism. And then you have Debussy. Debussy
destroyed the Western musical form.
'And after Debussy? 'I guess you could say that Duke Ellington was the next big
composer after Debussy.' For Perrin, jazz is the natural heir to the classical
tradition. The other modern schools squandered their heritage: 'studying a lot
of twentieth-century music was very distressing for me. Listening to much of
it, I feel like I’m being tortured - you can’t even tell where the end is, it’s
sadistic. And when it’s over, people applaud, but I bet they’re just glad it’s
finished.'
'I started to crave narrative,' she continues. 'And meaning. In my dreams, the
Cohen brothers would come along and make me a 10-minute film.' She began to
crave collaboration, too. As soon as she felt her style had matured, she began to
reach out to other artists. 'I had this sort of VIP list,' she explains, 'these
artists I admired and wrote to, and only Hanif Kureishi wrote back.
' The riotously successful novelist and scriptwriter’s reply was the start of
an intense exchange of emails like something out of a South American novel. 'He
said, ‘I love your tunes.’ And I said, ‘I would love to work with your work.’”
Soon, he began sending her Word documents with no explanation, and she began to
take them as her inspiration. They only met each other face to face two years
later, at a performance of her adaptation of his short story The Dogs. 'I was
so excited,' she remembers, 'that I couldn’t sleep.'
'The first thing he said was ‘we’re going to do The Turd.’ He wasn’t smiling. I
remember thinking, ‘I’m a minimalist. I don’t think I can write about turds.’
Luckily it turned out he was joking.' Since then, the composer and the writer
have appeared together onstage at Latitude Festival. Their creative
relationship looks set to continue. I hope they fall in love.
Her dream, however, is to write a score for multiple pianos. How many pianos?
'Many. I’ve already done six. It sounds...like an aural jigsaw.' She vents a
shuddering breath, and her eyes close. 'It feels so good. It’s the most expressive
instrument.' After the interview, I watch Perrin in concert at my local
literary festival. She’s doing things to the Baptist church piano that have
never been done to it before. Keys used to banging out 'When I Needed a
Neighbour' and 'Shine Jesus, Shine' are being teased into an electrical storm
of shimmering riffs and growling basslines. I find myself wondering if some of
this music will linger in the piano and make all the Baptists cry come Sunday
morning.
And the music sounds everything that minimalist jazz shouldn’t. It’s
expressive, tempestuous, eminently listenable, occasionally a bit naive, yes,
but above all this is music with something to say. Like Perrin herself. The
music starts to make sense when you’ve met its composer, for there seems to be
little difference between her art and her life. I begin to wonder if I didn’t
meet the woman and the music the right way round after all..." (Oliver Moody, Cherwell Magazine)
CD review "Pianist Lola Perrin doesn't rush things. The double album By
Peculiar Grace and other loves is only her third release, the first two
having appeared in 2004 and 2006.
As on those earlier releases, she composes and performs all the music.
Classically trained from the age of four, she wrote her first pieces at 14, and
though she later became a jazz fan, citing Bill Evans, Chick Corea and Keith
Jarrett as favourite pianists, she shows no inclination to improvise.
Her compositions have drawn comparisons with Debussy and Ravel, but there are
telltale trademarks that show a clearer debt to minimalism – her strong sense
of rhythm and penchant for distinctive melodies displays the influence of Reich
and Nyman, both of whom she admires.
Key to her interpretations of the compositions is Perrin's ability to subtly
vary her touch and to smoothly move through a wide dynamic range, seamlessly
shifting from delicate understatement to percussive chords and back again,
taking listeners through as broad a range of emotions. Recorded in February
this year on a Steinway Model D concert grand at Peter Gabriel's Real World
Studios, By Peculiar Grace and other loves was originally considered
for release as separate single albums, which is reflected in the music on the
two discs.
The first, By Peculiar Grace, bringing together ten pieces chosen by
Perrin's friends and fans, makes an ideal introduction to her work, both
emphasising its variety and highlighting the common threads running through it.
With its undulating peaks and troughs, this music has a narrative quality,
frequently sounding like a soundtrack in search of a film (Perrin has indeed
written soundtracks and often uses short films in her performances), a quality
also apparent on the second disc.
On the Gradient Road, twelve short compositions that together form a portrait
of a musician friend of the composer's who died suddenly at the age of 43, is a
fine example of the longer piano suites that have formed the bulk of her work.
Despite the sad subject matter it's neither mournful nor solemn, but
celebratory and uplifting – adjectives that apply well to Lola Perrin's work as
a whole." (John Eyles Paris Transatlantic Magazine)
