A short text by pianist Yannis Kyrimkyridis (aka Yann Keerim), who shares his thoughts on the artistic need for innovation and creating under “unknown” conditions.
“About a month after the release of my album Ionio, and after multiple listens in different situations, I started to realize that this work had given rise to new questions in my mind.
Perhaps these questions emerged because, for the first time, I was creating a complete work—an album, a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Or maybe it is only when something is completed and presented in its entirety that it can generate questions.
So, what are these questions?
Why did I create this work—or rather, why was this work created at that particular moment?
If I picture my state of mind on the day of the recording, I would say that the least likely thing was for Ionio to be created that day.
The events that had unfolded before I walked down the basement stairs of Zoodochou Pigis had left me extremely frustrated. The reason is not particularly important for the reader, but for the sake of documenting it in my personal journal, it was simply a transportation issue—something that anyone living in a city like Athens can understand as enough to disrupt their entire psychological state.
The idea my sound engineer collaborator, Dimitris Staikopoulos, and I had discussed was to create a sound environment in which I would immerse myself and improvise on the piano for an undefined duration.
Artists often feel the need to propose something new through their art. This necessity has often occupied my thoughts, and to be honest, there have been times when I have considered it even unnecessary for art itself.
Why do we feel the need to change something? What drives us to seek ways and ideas to innovate?
What is innovation, really? What is “different”? … And why does it need to exist?
Andrei Tarkovsky, in his book Sculpting in Time, is unequivocal. He does not believe that an artist creates only for themselves—art requires even the slightest response from someone.
If the director’s reasoning is true (which I personally embrace), then the need for artistic innovation may not stem solely from the creator’s desire but also from their belief that it serves a purpose, even for a single recipient.
Returning to the previous thought and getting closer to the question, “Why is the different, the new, necessary in art?”—perhaps the answer is simple.
Because it will likely be useful to someone.
Our idea, then, was to sonically capture the entire internal world of the piano, placing the microphones in such a way that they would pick up even the mechanical sounds produced when the hammer strikes the string to create a note. Within this new sonic environment, I would sit at the upright piano (from which we had even removed the wooden covers to allow the sound to travel freely to the microphones) and compose new music in real time—despite my unsettled psychological state.
Speaking of innovation in art, one aspect that intrigues me is the artist’s reaction to the unknown.
When you experiment with something for the first time, the unknown is constantly in front of you. For example, as I began recording Ionio, I heard in my headphones a very prominent sound—the piano’s mechanism itself. The “tak tak” that occurred every time I pressed a key and the hammer struck the string.
For the first time, I had the sense that I was dealing not with one instrument, but two: a percussion instrument and a string instrument. And the most peculiar thing was that as I lifted my fingers off the keys, the hammer, returning to its original position, created an additional percussive sound—slightly different from the previous one.
How do you handle this new reality, especially in an improvisation that is being recorded, where the composition is unfolding in real time?
Here, we are faced with an entirely new condition. The striking percussive sound of each note and the secondary percussive sound as the hammer resets both influence the flow of the piece and change everything.
A logical question from the reader might be:
“Why didn’t you stop the recording to familiarize yourself with this new condition, to make the unknown known, so you would be prepared?”
For some reason, I didn’t. In my view, improvisation in art and its documentation are much closer to real life.
We can perfect a composition or a recording, devote ample time to preparation and the ideal conditions—or we can surrender to the unknown of the moment and still create something meaningful.
Both states coexist in real life. There are things we prepare for so that we are ready when they happen, but at the same time, we face unknown situations daily that we must respond to.
And surely, even in our reaction to the unknown, some level of preparation always exists…”
