by Mike Telin

When composer/pianist Jerome Begin was in need of a pianist for a dance project he was working on, the Cleveland native was faced with a conundrum. “Being a pianist, I have never hired a pianist,” he said during a Zoom call.

After speaking to a number of acquaintances asking for recommendations, he decided to contact David Friend. “Jerome sent along some of the pieces and we set a time to meet at Juilliard where he teaches,” Friend recalled during that zoom conversation. “We played through some of the music and immediately everything felt great. And it’s continued to be a really good partnership.”

On Thursday, March 10 at the Bop Stop, David and Jerome will perform Post, a 50-minute set of pieces for solo piano with live processing that explore a different way of creating an uncanny valley-esque reality where human, acoustic and electronic- processed elements interact and overlap in hard-to-define, disorienting ways. The event, presented by No Exit, is free. [Read more…]