I’ve been a fan of Nahre Sol for a while now, and I wrote about her a couple of years ago as part of a roundup of YouTubers dedicated to explaining music in a substantial but accessible way. My take then:
The way classical musicians think and hear the world is not unfathomable to the uninitiated, but since Bernstein, few have even tried to bridge the gap. Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Nahre Sol steps in with “creative videos on music performance, practicing, and composition.” But they’re so much more. What makes Bach sound like Bach, or Debussy sound like Debussy? She helps us hear it, using low-jargon English, demonstrations and whimsical on-screen annotations. She takes her electric keyboard to unexpected locales and composes miniatures that are informed by her explorations of genres that she didn’t grow up with, such as funk, the blues, and bossa nova. At home she has a camera above her piano so we can watch her get things right and wrong, with explanations. Random appearances by her terrier Bobby add to the overall charm.
Nahre comes across as the coolest kind of curious outsider and she helps us forget the classical musicians who’ve looked down at popular genres. And in the years since, she’s added the PBS series Sound Field to her accomplishments. That said, she’s a rising star with all the classical bona fides. Watching her improvise in various modes and genres and hearing the way she approaches music has made me and I’m sure her 388,000 subscribers excited as can be to hear her original music formally recorded. Now that’s arrived with what appears to be her debut album Alice In Wonderland, a set of 10 solo works for piano. Actually the opening title track brings a second keyboard into the mix, a lovely bell-like electric sound that Nahre plays along with her concert grand, making contrasting timbres and a spectral loveliness that I would have to think sounds inviting to anybody. She’s released this one on video.
These are formally composed works, so don’t mistake their free, jazz-inflected passages for improv or their 3-5 minute length for pop informality. These bring refinement and structural integrity, while esthetically Nahre Sol takes a good deal of influence from the minimalists like Steve Reich and from the romantic modernists like Debussy and Satie. One of her signatures, which I noticed seeing her improvise in her videos, is playing with both hands overlapping over the keyboard, allowing her harmonies to be close and tense and while keeping the percussive, grooving quality in clear focus. “Salad Music” takes advantage of this, with its pulses and off-kilter accents. You can see it here in “Sideways” with its squirrelly rambles up and down the keyboard. It’s probably my favorite after a few listens.
Prepared piano is a technique with a long history in which objects are used on the piano strings to give certain notes various kinds of extra character, whether buzzing, muted or jangly. Sol’s “Caged” for prepared piano is the most abstract work here and with just two minutes of run time, I wish it went on a lot longer. It’s ideal new classical for novice ears, not too taxing but certainly challenging to the mind tuned to the standard scale and neat orderly music. Mostly, Sol’s music is sweetly harmonic with subtle shifts and modulations that keep things from ever getting soporifically pretty. You can stream the album, but I jumped over to Bandcamp to purchase it. By sharing her knowledge and spirit so freely, Nahre has given me vastly more value than I could possibly repay with a single album purchase. I’ll be looking forward to much more in the years to come.