Reviews

Back in the late 1980s, Boston-based Greek-born, prolific pianist-composer-educator Pandelis Karayorgis (who co-runs the Driff Records label) and then-spouse, contemporary composer of mostly microtonal concert music Julia Werntz, were students in reed player Joe Maneri’s Microtonal Composition and Performance class at the New England Conservatory. Almost four decades later, they join forces to create a fully composed microtonal piano suite, the 80-minute Capricious Nocturnal Variations, which became the source material for Karayorgis' old modern jazz trio, with double bass player Nate McBride and drummer Randy Peterson, who expands its themes and special tuning. Karayorgis plays the grand piano tuned in the standard equal temperament, and a keyboard tuned to the twelve-note, microtonal scale used in Werntz’s suite, and the trio is joined on one piece by pianist and contemporary composer Eric Moe, who has worked before with Werntz and commissioned this suite. 

Capricious Nocturnal Variations was written in a nocturnal spirit (after some moon-gazing on a spring night), and it is structured in a classical theme and variations form, an introduction and theme followed by seven distinct variations. A certain, restless, and urgent friction is present within the early variations, resembling the tug-of-war between wakefulness and sleep on nights of insomnia. Eventually, this leads to two variations that embody the states of Non-REM sleep and REM sleep, just before the closing variation. The suite was premiered in February 2025 at the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival in Pittsburgh, and was recorded a month later at Firehouse 12, Studio in New Haven, Connecticut.

This complex yet compelling suite connects the rich world of microtonal melody and harmony, as used in contemporary music, with Maneri’s innovative and seminal approach to rhythm and musical form, and Karayorgis's own compositional ideas, expanding Lennie Tristano's improvisational strategies and Paul Bley's conception of the free jazz piano trio. Werntz was always fascinated by the expressive power of the intervallic combinations of microtonal music in melody and harmony, and by their ability to form melodic contours that feel natural and nuanced. Karayorgis' trio, which was active from 1997 to 2005, shines throughout this demanding suite and sounds eager to deep dive into these insightful, nocturnal-microtonal ideas and perform them with commanding, natural power.
Eyal Hareuveni, Percorsi Musicali, September 9, 2025