Spotted: Johannes Hirschmann – Fragments

Spotted: Johannes Hirschmann – Fragments

Today I’m introducing you to German pianist and composer Johannes Hirschmann currently loaded in Berlin and Paris. Johannes is classical trained on the piano but found interest in the modern improvisation. He has release two EPs before, and his debut album Fragments was released on the 19th of April.

Tell us something about the your album Fragments!
FRAGMENTS is my full-length debut album. I had released two EPs—’songs for jane’ and ‘For M. in Canada’, which were both improvised—a few years back, before I took a hiatus from my piano music and turned towards other projects for a while. It was in summer 2017 that I felt the urgent desire to record new pieces on the piano.

Of course, I had continuously improvised and recorded ideas that I had along the way. So I started by consciously working on these ideas. Some of them I developed into full pieces, some of them also remained thematic fragments (hence the name FRAGMENTS). And of course, improvisation has always remained a central element of my creative process. In fact, some of the pieces I consider best on the album were completely improvised.

However, I’d like the name FRAGMENTS also to be understood in a different way. Yes, it may be the musical fragments you can discover in the pieces. It may also be the shreds of thought we dwell on while we listen to music. Or it may be the memories we keep in our heads. The idea of ‘fragments’ is also reflected in the cover art. The pictures of the singles that are released from FRAGMENTS are superimposed and layered to form the cover art of the album itself.

Thank you for sharing with us Johannes!

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