The Guardian March 2020

Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel album was widely praised for the fresh ideas it brought to the solo piano idiom. “It reflects Mr Taborn’s galactically-broad interests,” said the New York Times, “along with his multifaceted technique,” while the Guardian saluted Craig’s “genius (there is no other word for it)" and his “world of whispered, wide-spaced figures, ringing overtones, evaporating echoes and glowering contrapuntal cascades”. Over the last decade Taborn has continued to refine and develop his approach, reaching new high ground with Shadow Plays, a stunning live recital from Vienna’s Konzerthaus. In this fully improvised concert, recorded in March 2020, Craig explores sounds and silences, swirling colours, densities and forms, creating new music in the moment with both poetic imagination and an iron grip on his spontaneously generated material.