Brian Harnetty - Eight

From Many Hands Volume II (2020)

Careworn, delicate, intricate, tender, quiet: even the loud parts are gentle and under this spell. Many Hands is the second volume in a series of piano works for multiple players. If the first volume was inspired by the landscapes and labor of Appalachian Ohio, the theme of labor is shared here, with a special focus on “care labor”: the work done quietly and selflessly by unnoticed parents and nurses and social workers and teachers and artists, too.

This concern for care labor is not structurally built into the music; it was just on my mind at the time of composing. And it is on my mind now during the Covid-19 quarantine as I think of my own family, and of the work happening all over the world both out in the open of our hospitals and behind the hidden walls of our homes.

In fact, the image on the cover of the recording––of two hands, side by side––is of my hand and my father’s hand from around 1979, and it reminds me of the endless and overwhelming and grueling and honorable and magical work of parenting. It also reminds me of my father's once great physical strength, now tempered as he approaches 90, and how he is now counted among the most vulnerable in these times. Ideally, this is how I would love to see our society structured: with the most vulnerable placed at the center, protected and cared for, and the care would radiate out in circles and rings of strength and support.

Видео Brian Harnetty - Eight канала Lazy Guy Called Bod