Martin Graff is a composer-pianist out of Arlington, Virginia and a finalist for best classical artist in both the 2023 Charleston International Piano Competition and the 2022 DC Wammie Awards.
At four, his family inherited an old, anonymous piano, and Marty surged with an uncontainable energy to climb onto the bench and dig his hands into those eight-eight bits of clay, instinctually molding them into little aural landscapes. Crude and square at first; at last, faceted gems after a lifetime of practice, polish, and love.
Trips for Piano is the resulting collection of evocative pieces made to move the soul and light the imagination...
Playing the piano is a long-term relationship. A commitment to excellence. The ultimate focus for arestless light.
It’s going all in with your whole mind, core, four limbs, and ten fingers: first exploding into a cheetah sprint, then sticking a butterfly landing on a wisp of grass.
It’s a transcendental marriage of heart and mechanics that conjures rainbows from strokes of black and white and raises glorious mountain ranges out of the ordinary floor beneath.
Making this music is the opposite of death, like the centrifugal force around the sharpest bend of the greatest roller coaster. A reharmonizing of my most tumultuous internal cacophonies and maybe yours.
So, join me on this affecting sonic excursion. While there are titles and themes to guide your way, you are free to travel anywhere the notes take you. The point is to set mind in motion. Toward what and to what end is for you to decide as you lose yourself in the resonance of these evocative piano pieces made to move the soul and light the imagination…
—Martin Graff