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

The equal temperament tuning system is so ubiquitous in contemporary western music that when one hears differently tuned sounds, they may seem wrong or alien. But in fact, they’re simply vibrating at different frequencies. This recording involves the convergence of differing frequencies, both personal and musical. Julia Werntz teaches and composes microtonal music; if you’re learning about that topic in New England, you’ve probably taken one of her courses. Pandelis Karayorgis is a pianist, composer, improviser, and music teacher. He and Werntz once took the same course in microtonal composition and performance at the New England Conservatory in the late 1980s. They were also married around that time. They went in separate directions, both personally and musically, but their common interest in microtonality reunites them on Climbing To Sleep.

Karayorgis has operated in the realm of jazz. He has led bands, in which he plays conventionally tuned pianos, and co-led the label Driff with Jorrit Dijkstra. For this project, he, bassist Nate McBride, and drummer Randy Peterson recorded their interpretations on Werntz’s “Capricious Nocturnal Variations,” which they realized with a microtonal keyboard and a piano in equal temperament, as well as several pieces by Karayorgis that use the same instrumentation. In the middle of the album is classical pianist Eric Moe’s performance of the piece, once more on a microtonal keyboard. The album seems to trace an asymmetrical arc, diving deep into Werntz’s tone world and then pulling up and out of it near the end. But if you look at the composing credits, you’ll see that Werntz actually composed the second equal temperament piece, which also finishes the album, and that five of the trio performances were written by Karayorgis.

The trio approaches microtonal music with unsentimental respect. They’re not solely committed to the tuning’s mildly mind-altering effects; their allegiances to instant creation and a swinging rhythmic foundation also come into play. Karayorgis’ playing in this setting is a bit sparer than it usually is when playing his own music, but having an equal temperament piano on hand permits him to bulk up the sound as needed. McBride takes to this auditory environment with preternatural comfort. He sluices through Peterson’s ever-changing patterns and timbres like an otter sluicing through fast flowing water. But he also roots Karayorgis, spiking the pianist’s elaborations upon line and harmonic with a muscular throb. They successfully reconcile a keyboard language that stretches back to Andrew Hill and Bill Evans with the unusual contours of microtonality.

Moe’s performance of Werntz’s piece has an entirely different sense of motion, equally purposeful but ungrounded; it’s as though the music hovers just above the ground, affording the listener a vantage point to perceive its funhouse shapes and interlocking joints. Its place in the middle of the album asserts the centrality of Werntz’s tuning concerns, just as the trio’s interpretations demonstrate its malleability.
Bill Meyer, dustedmagazine, October 28, 2025, link