Luminance is pianist Marilyn Lerner’s solo debut on Ambiances Magnétiques. Recorded at Avatar in Quebec City, the work is a collection of improvisations that reveal the depth and breadth of Marilyn’s creative mind – a distillation of her influences from the jazz and classical worlds, along with a twist!Luminance has an extra dimension. A project borne out of the challenges and frustrations involved in miking and recording the acoustic piano, Marilyn decided to be creative with this problem, making it a strong feature of the work. By setting up different microphones in various configurations, and using the quality of sound as a springboard for her improvisations, Marilyn, an avid film enthusiast, has in effect, created a series of musical “scenes” each with different sonic lighting. In collaboration with the brilliant artist/sound engineer Steeve Lebrasseur, she has gone into the audio darkroom to sculpt and highlight, magnify, distort or just plain bring out the inherent sound qualities of this bourgeois parlour instrument, the piano. Microphones used in this work range from Neumanns to an RCA mike from the fifties to a 4″ speaker. Comprised of 16 tracks, the work ranges from pieces like Wolfen and Rife, (explorations of more classical and jazz-derived musical ideas and harmonic possibilities) to Codec Moment, which utilizes the pin-sized microphone on the Casio Palm Pilot and thereby distorts the sound to imitate an old man yodelling! In Plucky Marilyn plays pizzicato. Attends features the harmonic series found at various points along the low strings. With latex gloves on, Marilyn strokes the strings in Eerie and also in the rock-influenced piece Glovys. In Road Tango she uses the pedals to enhance the musical landscape. Marilyn’s approach to the piano is defined by her love of the qualities of sustain and resonance, of space as well as density. She moves effortlessly between the simple and complex to create a work of breadth, depth and imagination.

1. Plucky

2. Deluge

3. Rife

4. Tiny

5. Bordeaux

6. Codec Moment

7. Attends

8. Ombre

9. Road Tango

10. Cartoon Fest

11. Wolfen

12. Boum

13. La Boxe

14. Black Tulip

15. Glovys

16. Eerie