The second half of Chad Lawson’s upcoming album You Finally Knew is due September 11th via Decca Records; pre save the album HERE. The release follows the album’s first half, Stay, earlier this year.
The pianist and composer also today shares his new single ‘Waltz in B Minor’. You can listen HERE. The accompanying video will be released soon.
‘Waltz in B Minor’ follows Lawson’s recent single ‘Prelude in D Major’. Explaining his process for both tracks, Lawson says: “I sat without pencil and paper and sang each part before placing a single finger on a piano key. If I could not sing the melody and retain it in my ear, it didn’t make the cut. Only after the melody had become so ingrained in memory did I dare commit it to paper. Once the melody was in place, the chords and flourishes practically painted themselves.” Kathy Parsons, writing for Mainly Piano, says that “Prelude” “hints at the grace and emotional depth of the music of Chopin, but remains very much in the present.”
Lawson places melody at the center of You Finally Knew, with the question of whether he could “write such a lyric that would resonate regardless of instrumentation” leading his approach to the record. “‘Prelude in D Major’ and ‘Waltz in B Minor’ are an homage to the masters that so eloquently showed us the importance of a motif; how substance lies within a theme and how a simple melody will always be the heart of every song, regardless of instrument,” he says.
A former jazz musician who spent two years touring stadiums as part of Julio Iglesias’ live band, Lawson began his solo career in 2009 when the stress took a toll on his own health. He wrote his debut solo piano album, Set On A Hill, while suffering from ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition that had left him bedridden. In 2011, his album The Piano attracted mainstream media attention in the US. Two years later, Chad repeated the feat with The Bach Variations. Today, Lawson has racked up millions of streams across platforms and is a staple of some of the world’s most popular playlists, introducing new generations to classical music with contemporary techniques and modern-day interpretations.
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