Piano, Plants and Me – Part Two

It’s been three-quarters of a year since my first article for Slowist about my ‘Waratah and Others’ piano and photography project. It has been an interesting nine months in many ways. I’ve made intermittent progress with the project, interspersed with various challenges, both personal and structural. Like most things in life, it hasn’t gone exactly to plan, but there have been silver linings, personal discoveries, and interesting side-tracks along the way.

Piano, plants and me: Louisa Billeter

The Great Lockdown of 2020 inspired chorister & pianist Louisa Billeter to undertake an epic piano project, recording a piano piece every day for a year and sharing the results each day on social media. This stunning effort led to a new project… combining Louisa’s interests of piano, photography and native Australian plants.

In this article we will learn of the path that led Louisa to ‘Waratah and others’ and look forward to an ongoing series of articles to accompany her on the journey as it unfolds, at its own perfect pace.

To Loop, or… not to Loop

A while back, I put a sticker on my looper pedal that reads “I am stupid” (referring to the pedal). I can admit now, it was a pretty passive-aggressive move.

Headzic – the ‘accidental musician’

John Shapter, performing as Headzic is the ‘accidental musician’, developing his ambient music style through clinical practice and mindful therapies.

Harold Budd, ‘soft pedal’ composer

Such a sparsely populated environment as the Mojave desert has clearly been a huge influence on Harold Budd’s style, which contains classical and jazz elements, though probably hews more closely to the modern ambient template (Budd prefers the term ‘soft pedal’).

Diary note 1/11/19: everyday mindfulness

Thoughts from a walk to the station in the morning, through wooded lanes. This is really ‘everyday’ mindfulness, as focus is not on a podcast or music, but what is going on around oneself, the sights, sounds, smells…