Joep Beving
29jun7:00 pmJoep BevingSpecial Tour Event!
Price
$55 and $35, students $10 (plus applicable fee)
Time
June 29, 2024 7:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
Location
Main Stage
Event Details
Saturday, June 29 | 7:00PM KCP Presents Performing Arts Series and Highland Center for the Arts are pleased to collaborate in the presentation of Dutch composer and pianist, Joep Beving, as
Event Details
Saturday, June 29 | 7:00PM
KCP Presents Performing Arts Series and Highland Center for the Arts are pleased to collaborate in the presentation of Dutch composer and pianist, Joep Beving, as part of his eight-city U.S. tour at the Highland Center for the Arts.
Based in Amsterdam, Beving considers his work simple music for complex emotions. Given the sparse, emotionally vulnerable nature of his sound, his physically imposing appearance (six-foot ten height with long hair and a beard) stands in sharp contrast to his languid, haunting creations.
Beving says that, while his music uses a “classical vocabulary,” it is aimed more at a pop audience. “It’s chill-out, mood-type music for people to calm down and feel comforted, like being in a bubble, protected.” His influences include Philip Glass, the American minimalist composer – and his success has been nothing short of phenomenal.
In 2017, Beving performed and recorded his first album, Solipsism, for the enjoyment of his family. Then, partly for fun, he made it available on Spotify. More than 85 million people listened. He never imagined that the contemplative, atmospheric piano tunes would draw such a vast audience worldwide. But such was his popularity that four record companies were soon fighting over him, and he has now been signed by Deutsche Grammophon (DG). A follow-up album, Prehension, was released, again to popular acclaim. Speaking to the London Observer, Beving said: “It’s overwhelming. Very surreal.”
Christian Badzura, a DG senior executive in Germany, said Beving has become “one of the most listened-to living pianists in the world” and the 85 million streaming count was very impressive. “It proves,” he said, “that if you compose good music you have the chance to connect with people immediately. The music does the talking.
Badzura said the simplicity of Beving’s music leaves “so much space for the imagination and the mind to travel. It’s brilliantly done. This music gives you the opportunity to slow down, contemplate and listen to melody again. It’s just an upright piano. But the way it’s recorded, engineered and mixed, it sounds so big.
Where once Beving’s goal was to hit as many notes per minute as physically possible, his style of playing has changed over the years, searching for a particular aesthetic essence. His path was illuminated by a piano that Beving inherited from his grandmother when she passed away in 2009. This German instrument insisted on a gentler touch and a gracious pace, which eventually led Beving to adapt to a more classical vocabulary to tell his story.
Beving’s U.S. tour consists of a special appearance at the Montreal Jazz Festival – and only six additional dates – in Chicago, Boston, Washington, Minneapolis, Toronto – and Greensboro.
Delicate melodies tap into something deep and universal.
“Beving closed his show with two contrasting – but equally arresting – pieces. In For Steven, the pianist’s touch was so light that the notes kept disappearing into silence like half-remembered thoughts, while the rippling cascades in Hanging D allowed us glimpses of the virtuosity Beving generally keeps in check, lest it interfere with the emotional connection that lies at the heart of his music.”
– The Sydney Morning Herald
“One of the most beautiful and inspiring aspects of that night was the reminder that simplicity— here in the form of just a man and in his piano — can be the best vehicle for staying present and existing in the music if one allows themselves to do so.”
– Music in San Francisco
more