The album’s pacing varies enough to keep one’s attention, and the prepared piano never overshadows the real preparations: the compositions.  Full text...

Room to Expand is a thoroughly enjoyable recording featuring a wide range of emotional expression and technical wherewithal.   Full text...

Much of the music on Room To Expand is not experimental, but something more like play. This play has its base in a grounded and simple rhythm that keeps the music moving in a constant direction, a game of tag, and from this basic premise other rules can be created or destroyed, freeze tag, TV tag, until the collective inventive spirit of the song creates new games in itself, maybe losing that first game of tag, maybe not, but the movement of the music reaches Calvinball proportions, creating as it sees fit, destroying, merging, and doing whatever seems to work.   Full text...

The compositions, fluttering modern piano pieces that would often seem straight-forward and unremarkable on their own (or even accompanied, as here, by occasional strings, horns, or hand percussion) are often revealed to clutch their preparations at their crux, the modifications either transforming the works into textural studies or furnishing a key moment upon which the composition pivots.  Full text...