Opus Seven Thoughts (2021)

Alain Lefèvre is a story-teller. A story-teller who uses the piano to play a multitude of roles. These characters perform the chapters of an imaginary novel set to music in which the author lets us discover for ourselves how the story ends.

Clara Wieck, who in 1840 was to become Clara Schumann, was a signicant gure in the lives both of her husband Robert and of Johannes Brahms, to whom the Schumanns became mentors.

Composer Douglas J. Cuomo’s new piece, Seven Limbs, is unique and unusual. The suite features the simultaneous performance of inspired improvisations by guitar genius Nels Cline and meticulously-notated music performed by the Grammy-nominated Aizuri Quartet. Inspired by an ancient Buddhist prayer, also called Seven Limbs, it is music of great power that is put in service to a spiritual ideal, in the tradition of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and the music of Arvo Pärt.