Pianist and composer and improviser Michael Gees is best known for his collaborations with the internationally-renowned tenor Christoph Prégardien. On this new Hybrid SACD, he brings his extraordinary skill as an improviser to the piano music of the maverick early 20th-century French composer Erik Satie.
Gees believes that music should never stay still, and that improvisation should not only be relevant to new music, but may also be used to re-interpret music from the past: “I encourage my listeners to think of “historical performances”: Once upon a time, it used to be expected and common practice that pianists would not just execute pieces but add variations extempore, that is, bring forth closely-tied improvisation.”
Pianist Michael Gees was born in Bielefeld in 1953. In 1961 he won the first prize at the Hamburg Steinway Composition and at the Student Competition hosted by the Salzburg Mozarteum, where he subsequently studied. He made his concert debut in his native Bielefeld in 1963. He studied with Seydlhofer and David at the Vienna Musikhochschule before pursuing his training in Detmold and Hannover. There, in addition to pursuing his pianistic career, he also devoted himself to jazz and composition. In 1986 Michael Gees appeared as composer, soloist and accompanist at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.
Gees has been working with Christoph Prégardien for several years now and has recorded several key works from the lieder repertoire with the great tenor. These include the acclaimed album ‘Between Life and Death’, released by Challenge Classics in late 2009 (CC72324).
