"BLUE"
GENE TYRANNY, composer, pianist, teacher and writer is known equally for
his inventive compositions for keyboards and electronics and for his inspired,
theatrical performances of other composers' works (e.g. as "Buddy, the
world's greatest piano player" in Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives.)
BIOGRAPHY
TITLES
"Blue" Gene Tyranny's web page: http://members.aol.com/bluegenet
PRESS
"As a guiding light for those concerned about the future of music, his ideas are fascinating, and, for the open-minded listener, liberating." — Peter Burwasser, Fanfare magazine
"With virtuosic technical ability, Tyranny counterbalances moods with ease and rapidity ... Tyranny has the soul of a beatnik poet, who without refuge in standard punctuation or the customary structural restraints of narrative expresses his innermost emotional concerns ... one of new music's most compelling practitioners." — Michael Kuelker, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Tyranny is plainly a very fine pianist and composer ... humorous, without being flippant or self-consciously urbane, and wonderfully evocative, Tyranny creates a head music which doesn't exclude the heart ... Tyranny assiduously avoids conventional ideas of structure and narrative ..." --Josef Woodard, Jazziz magazine
"This guided, if unordinary, journey evoked a myriad of images ... Tyranny has the ability to make his listeners anticipate ... tension and excitement build in his music. The thing is, you don't always hear the notes you expect ... I looked around, watching Tyranny's entranced listeners ... I was transplanted into another culture, accompanied by no guide to explain the local customs or language." — Debra Bresnan, The Woodstock Times
"The most original aspect of Tyranny's works is the way they create continuity: they're tonal, yet rigorously asymmetrical. They satisfy the ear without letting it take anything for granted. They evolve, not with the cyclic predictability of everyday life, but with the labyrinthine irreversibility of deep psychic forces. They say what they have to say perfectly. You sense the form in retrospect, but with no disturbing hint of any deliberate construction. a thunder of tremolos ... before returning to a surface as undisturbed as a forest pond ... I've raved about Tyranny before. God forbid that, in this society, we should call a Mozart a Mozart while he's still alive ... God plays the piano through this man. Science cannot explain the speed with which trillions of inspired brain impulses zip through his ... hands, resulting in note-perfect works ... the 1988 Kitchen improv-with-delay ... I called 'the most inspired piano performance I've ever heard.' It still is. At his schmaltziest ... he's like Keith Jarrett on an extremely good day. At his best, it's like listening to Ives improvise 'Hawthorne' from the Concord Sonata. " — Kyle Gann, The Village Voice
"Basically I'm in awe of them (keyboardists) -- particularly 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, who's just a complete genius; he can really do anything. When you're doing a session with him, he has so many ideas that we just sit around all afternoon and he'll go 'well, on the other hand, you could do it like this', and he'll go off on a completely different tangent. The way he plays is so complex and majestic; it's like watching a huge ocean liner pull out." — Laurie Anderson interview, Keyboard magazine