• Hope Compact Disc

  Compact Disc (CD)

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  1) Prologue
  2) For the Koalas
  3) The End of the Decade
  4) Fight Not Flight
  5) Interlude
  6) Brightness in the Hills
  7) Searching for the Map
  8) Untitled
  9) For Now
  10) Over the River
  11) Emerging
  12) Hope
  
  All compositions by Nat Bartsch (control)
  
  Nat Bartsch—piano, synth, voice
  
  Kyla Matsuura-Miller—violin 1 Madeleine Jevons—violin 2 William Clark—viola
  James Morley—cello
  
  Luke Howard—electronic processing
  All compositions by Nat Bartsch (Control)
  
  Track 6 performed with Kyla Matsuura-Miller & James Morley’
  
  Recorded at Yamaha Premium Piano Centre, South Melbourne, Nov 2020 and Lukktone, Brunswick, Sept/Dec 2020
  Engineered and mixed by Luke Howard
  
  & Hadyn Buxton at Lukktone
  
  Except tracks 3 & 7 recorded at Woodshed Studios, Heidelberg on a 100 year old Wertheim upright piano, March 2020
  Engineered and mixed by Andrew Pollock
  
  Produced by Nat Bartsch & Luke Howard Mastered by Lachlan Carrick
  Additional engineering by Jeremy Hopkins & Ania Reynolds
  
  Cover photo: ‘Last Light, Hancock’s Lookout’ by John Hodgson
  Booklet photo by Brett Scapin
  Artwork by Luci Everett
  
  Pressed in Thornbury by Program Records
  
  Nat Bartsch plays Yamaha Pianos
  
  Luke Howard appears by courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited
  
  This album was created on the land of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay respect to theirs elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge sovereignty was never ceded.
  
  
  My album’s title is not just those four letters. It’s ‘hope’ as an abbreviation of both hopefulness and hopelessness, and this music explores the space between. It would have been insincere to claim the pieces I wrote in 2020 came from a wholly optimistic place.
  
  I have always written music with the intention to soothe. It started with the very first composition I wrote, for a friend undergoing cancer treatment. It continued with my gentle jazz ballads for Nat Bartsch Trio, and further evolved, with renewed purpose, in my Forever albums: lullabies that support people in all stages of life. This new album was designed as my next peaceful instalment – to inspire hope in an uncertain world – but took a slight detour.
  
  Hope, and its musical theme that bookends the album, was first developed in late 2019. It was just before the events that ultimately shaped this music. In January 2020, the Black Summer bushfires ravaged Australia. I wrote For the Koalas, The End of the Decade and Searching for the Map with the smell of smoke in my house from fires hundreds of kilometres away, feeling immense frustration at our inaction on climate change. Then, just a few weeks later, Fight Not Flight was sketched as I realised the Covid-19 pandemic was upon us.
  
  In the long months of lockdown that followed, Untitled, For Now, Brightness in the Hills and Over the River (my first string quartet) came to life. I found myself stretching my aesthetic, writing driving rhythms, faster tempos, percussive piano flourishes. Like all of us, I yearned for forward momentum and found it in the music I was writing (and the improvisations that grew from them). Then, as Melbourne’s second lockdown slowly lifted, my music returned to the slow and patient, with Emerging.
  
  After three aborted attempts to record, this music was finally captured at the end of 2020 as restrictions eased. The extra time I spent with these pieces in the end has hopefully led to a richer musical experience, and worth the wait. It is thanks to the skill of Luke Howard and Hadyn Buxton as engineers, the generosity of Yamaha Music Australia, and the hard-working string quartet that we could pull it off in unusual conditions.
  
  When I recorded my debut solo album Hometime in 2016, with Luke, my phone scrolled the headline that Trump had won the US election. Moments later, I learned my uncle was terminally ill. Luke asked, “do you wantto keep going?”. I thought for a moment, and then replied, “what else is there to do but make nice music for everyone?” It created a mission statement for me that has endured and become increasingly relevant. Now, as I write this, Trump is vacating the White House—but with a catastrophic legacy.
  
  By the time this album is released I hope the vaccines are reaching us all, and the music is marking the beginning of a post-Covid, post-Trump world. I hope things are rebalancing. I hope we are resuming focus on one of the most pressing issues of our lifetime: climate change.
  
  May this music inspire not only hope and healing, but action.
  
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• Hope 12" vinyl

  Record/Vinyl

  • 
  Made in Melbourne by Program Records. Independent release.
  
  
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