Hooper-Williams: The Book of Fixed Stars Charlie Hooper-Williams

• Charlie Hooper-Williams: Emma:
• 1 Hooper-Williams: Emma 04:14
• Astronomia:
• 2 Hooper-Williams: Astronomia 05:40
• February Clears Up:
• 3 Hooper-Williams: February Clears Up 03:06
• Cloudgazing:
• 4 Hooper-Williams: Cloudgazing 04:28
• Été aux Mûriers:
• 5 Hooper-Williams: Été aux Mûriers 05:28
• The Sea Was Never Blue:
• 6 Hooper-Williams: The Sea Was Never Blue 06:48
• Aubrey's Dance:
• 7 Hooper-Williams: Aubrey's Dance 02:58
• Sailing the Farm:
• 8 Hooper-Williams: Sailing the Farm 05:22
• Total Runtime 38:04

Info for Hooper-Williams: The Book of Fixed Stars

The album builds on Hooper-Williams’ growing reputation for immersive live shows that combine piano with generative visuals and custom-built instruments. Here, he brings that energy into the studio, expanding the piano with strings and electronics to create a sound that is both direct and wide-ranging.

Collaborators include international bestselling author and violist Emma Hooper and award-winning screen composer Jim Cornick (electronics). The record was tracked at Hooper-Williams’ own converted schoolhouse studio in Somerset and mixed/mastered by Martyn Heyne at Lichte Studio , Berlin.

Charlie Hooper-Williams, piano
Additional musicians:
Emma Hooper, viola
Jim Cornick, electronics (Sailing the Farm)

Charlie Hooper-Williams
Composer and pianist Charlie Hooper-Williams performs “beautiful” (Times Radio), “soulful, richly layered” (Nick Smithson) music which is “masterfully understated and laced with a magnetic sense of melody” (Archodia).

A prizewinning former concert pianist, he combines intricate, virtuosic textures with soaring, stirring melodies. Originally from the pine woods of Minnesota’s Iron Range, he grew up near Chicago, studied at the University of Cambridge Centre for Music and Science, and now makes his home in Bath.

Hooper-Williams adds to the piano a set of custom-built machines which create new sounds: his “harmonics machine”, and “infinite resonator” shape the instrument’s traditional sound into something new, beautiful and exciting.

In his youth as a classical pianist, Hooper-Williams was a prizewinner at the International Shostakovich Piano Competition. Upon leaving that rarified world he toured with several bands, performing from SXSW and CMJ festivals to London’s Cafe Oto, and collaborated with multi-Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird. He has performed works by Rzewski and Corigliano, including city-level premieres. He briefly stepped into the tech industry to help develop the app Shazam, after which he returned to music, now composing his own works.

This album contains no booklet.