Each flows into the other

Bryan Christian’s Each flows into the other, performed by R. Andrew Lee, is a musical exploration of sound and space.

"Over the course of two luxurious hours, Lee’s delicate playing—gently ringing chords and cascading, melodic lines—float over a series of glissing electronic drones that descend microscopically in a steady, oddly soothing drift. Lee’s heavily improvised part sticks to a diatonic system, while the electronic component—distant but inescapable, with the embedded harmonic series stretched like taffy—embraces a spectral approach. The electronics are larded with microtones that unfold glacially, producing unexpected overtones in concert with the ringing piano notes. The work eschews any clear narrative path, instead presenting itself as a kind of floating sound installation—constantly producing strange sonic confluences that ooze like molasses but sparkle like crystal."
- Peter Margasak, Best of Bandcamp

Listen to excerpts below or stream the entire album

Each flows into the other is less of a journey more of an environment, constructing a sound world around the listener rather than taking the listener from one place to another. This allows the listener to remain stationery, to notice more, to listen in new and different ways. After hearing this performance, the listener will find their ears more attuned to sounds that are not conventionally “musical”: the hum of a refrigerator engine, car tires on slick pavement. But the piece itself is undeniably musical, as piano chords collide and coalesce with warm electronics, gliding along as slowly as melting ice. The piano and electronics interact in a sort of feedback loop in which, as the title suggests, it’s never quite clear where one begins and the other ends.
- Rebecca Lentjes, liner notes for the album

Images from a performance at the Washington National Cathedral on February 11, 2020. The audience was encouraged to move around the space to explore both its visual and acoustical richness.

Bryan Christian Bio

Bryan Christian is a composer and data scientist based in the Washington D.C. metro area. His music focuses on the intersection of radiant harmonic landscapes, glacial pacing, and advanced analytics. Christian’s work is heavily influenced by spectral thinking, which focuses on sound color and change as a principal element of music, yet he also has a deep love for resonant major and minor harmonies. Leveraging his data-driven background, Christian weaves these disparate sound worlds together to create a harmonic language entirely his own — both new and old. The slow pacing commonly found throughout Christian’s music is also deliberate: it invites listeners to aurally zoom in and explore the most minute changes and interrelationships between the nuanced sounds.

Christian has received commissions from the New Music USA, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Lorelei Ensemble, the E-MEX Ensemble, the Aurora Borealis Duo, the Playground Ensemble, Festival Les Musicales, the Juventus Festival, the Monadnock Music Festival, and several solo performers. Christian was also the recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship to Estonia.

Christian holds a PhD in Music Composition from Duke University and additional degrees from the University of California San Diego, the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Christian is an MBA Candidate at Georgetown University and a data scientist at the largest credit union in the world where he serves over 8 million members. In this role, Christian uses advanced analytics and modeling to better understand human behavior, complex patterns, and life-cycles, which in many ways is not dissimilar from his approach to composition.

R. Andrew Lee Bio

Pianist R. Andrew Lee is one of the foremost interpreters of minimal music. He has been described as having “sterling technique” (Pitchfork) and “consistently impressive solo releases” (New York Times), and his CD, Eva-Maria Houben: Piano Music, was chosen by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as one of the Top 10 Classical Recordings of 2013. He has recorded 15 albums for Irritable Hedgehog, Recital, and Unseen Worlds including the premiere recording of Dennis Johnson’s 5-hour minimalist epic, November (Best Classical Album of 2013, Time Out New York), and a 3.5-hour commissioned work from composer Randy Gibson (Best Classical Album of 2017, Textura).

Lee has performed in a number of venues and festivals dedicated to experimental music around the world, including the Skanu Mezs Festival (Riga, Latvia), Unsound Festival (Krakow, Poland), Café OTO (London), ISSUE Project Room (New York), Roulette (New York), Constellation (Chicago), and The Wild Beast (Los Angeles).

The intersection of minimal music and temporality is a primary research interest for Lee. As such, he has presented papers and lecture-recitals at several international conferences, most recently the Sixth International Conference on Minimalist Music (University of Tennessee) and Time’s Excesses and Eccentricities in Music, Literature and Art (Université de Caen Basse-Normandie). His writing has been published by Divergence Press.

Lee currently teaches at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and was most recently Artist-in-Residence at Avila University. Lee received his DMA in Piano Performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, where he studied under the direction of Prof. John McIntyre.