“When you remove these structures, you start to hear all the complex sonorities that the piano is capable of making, sonorities that you would never really notice if there was, say, an active melody occurring that draws your attention away from them.” — Quentin Tolimieri
Monochrome 16a (excerpt)
Yuko Zama (YZ): When did you compose these pieces, and when did you record them?
Quentin Tolimieri (QT): These are all newer pieces that I have been working on since the 2022 ‘Monochromes’ release, so they are all from 2023-2025, I’d say.
YZ: It sounds like you delved into a deeper and more focused area of piano sonority than you did on your previous Monochromes album. What did you particularly focus on for this collection of pieces this time?
QT: Yes, for these pieces I really wanted to discover new sonic possibilities and sonorities that the piano is capable of making. I think first and foremost, to do this I really had to reduce the material I was using to something as simple as possible, and really try to remove things like melody, harmony, rhythm, and even, as much as I could, formal development. All of these things lead the listener away, I think, from hearing the sound-in-and-of-itself that is occurring. They are all, in a way, kind of linguistic or syntactical structures that draw attention to themselves and away from the pure sound event that is occurring. (I think often of a Feldman quote, that I probably am misremembering, but it is something along the lines of saying that the problem with functional harmony is that it listens for you. I think maybe he was getting at a similar idea with this statement.) When you remove these structures, you start to hear all the complex sonorities that the piano is capable of making, sonorities that you would never really notice if there was, say, an active melody occurring that draws your attention away from them.
YZ: That's very interesting. Initially, I remember you naming most of the pieces on this album Pulse instead of Monochrome. Your focus on the pulse generated through the piano was very intense and almost hypnotizing. While listening to the entire album, I sometimes felt as if I were falling into the space between consciousness and sleep, where the air and sounds merged. It was a fascinating experience. Could you tell me about the process of creating these pieces?
QT: I wanted this process of discovering new sonorities to be driven primarily by the forms I was using. By which I mean, I wasn’t so much interested in coming up with interesting material per se, but rather with forms that allow for the material I was using to be revealed as interesting, if that makes any sense. Once, years ago, I had a composition teacher tell me that every 1st year composition student can come up with great material, write great melodies, interesting harmonies, etc. but that the real work in music takes place formally, and I think that for a lot of music that I like (although maybe not all) this is the case. I think of many Bach fugues, for example, where the fugal subject really isn’t all that inherently interesting, or pretty, and definitely isn’t naturally singable, but rather the formal processes at play in fugal counterpoint take this limited material and spin it out into something quite compelling. I think this is even more true for a lot of Beethoven. I really like this sense of form overwhelming material, so to speak. (A bit beyond the scope of this email, I guess, but I think even a case could be made, despite his probable protestations, of Cage being the final inheritor of this (mainly?) German tradition of form overwhelming material, but that is another story.)
YZ: What specific techniques did you use on the piano to achieve your goal?
QT: All of this is to say that I was trying to avoid any “tricks,” so to speak, in coming up with material. I didn’t use any preparations or inside the instrument playing, for example, both of which are always, in a way, inherently interesting. I wanted the forms themselves to reveal that the material is interesting. I also tried to stay away from any extreme registers, which are also always inherently interesting, although here I couldn’t help myself, I can’t resist the top octave of the instrument, I just like it too much. And the lower registers just have so much sonic information, harmonics, etc, that I couldn’t really stay away from them either. But I did work to try to use the middle register of the piano as much as possible.
I should say, the one sort of extended technique I did use on a few pieces was half pedaling, or moving slowly between no pedal to full pedal, and also placing weights on some keys so that their strings would ring sympathetically while playing. Both of these techniques can create interesting resonances within the piano I think (Track 3 is an example of this).
Monochrome 19a (excerpt)
YZ: What did you find as a surprise or unexpected factor while actually working on these recordings? QT: That is an interesting question. I actually think I had a kind of change in thinking, while working on these pieces, related to the notion of composing in series. By which I mean, it is very natural, for example, for painters to work in series, to paint the same subject multiple times, but in slightly varying ways (say, Monet’s haystacks, or Barnett Newman’s zips). As a composer, however, I often found myself having to choose one definitive version of a piece even though I might have a few slightly different versions of the same piece, all of which I might think work well. Previously, I always thought I had to choose one version of a piece and throw out the others, and so, with an album like 'Monochromes', for example, there was a kind of diversity of pieces and approaches throughout. With this recording, however, I ended up deciding to embrace this notion of series, thus pieces 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, etc. And I think (hope!) this ended up working well, lending the recording a kind of cohesion throughout.
(Interview conducted in January-February 2026)
‘Monochromes II’ is a collection of thirteen solo piano pieces written and performed by Berlin-based composer/pianist Quentin Tolimieri between 2023 and 2025. This is Tolimieri’s second release on elsewhere music, following the 2022 triple album ‘Monochromes’ (elsewhere 022-3).
In this new triple album, Tolimieri delves even deeper than in his earlier Monochrome pieces to explore the countless sonic possibilities and resonances that the piano can produce. Aiming to allow the inherently interesting qualities of the material itself to emerge naturally from the structure, he reduced the material to its simplest form by eliminating elements such as melody, harmony, rhythm, and formal development wherever possible. By stripping away hese normally fundamental elements, listeners are able to hear all the complex resonances the piano produces—all the sounds that would go unnoticed when overshadowed by active melodies. Several pieces use extended techniques, such as half-pedaling (moving slowly between no pedal and full pedal) and placing weights on some keys so their strings ring sympathetically while playing, which often create dazzlingly complex layers of sonorities within the piano.
Tolimieri used to believe that one should select one definitive version of a piece and discard the rest. This resulted in noticeable diversity in works and approaches on his previous album 'Monochromes'. For this new triple album, however, he decided to embrace the concept of a series. This approach worked successfully, giving the entire recording a consistent cohesion.
Monochrome 18b (excerpt)
*CD preorder and digital album are available here on the elsewhere site and Bandcamp (CD release: April 15, 2026)
