To celebrate Piano Day, the 88th day of the year, 2022 - Woodstock composer David Baron has made a playlist of pieces recorded in his Sun Mountain piano room overlooking the Ashokan reservoir in the Catskills. Much of this work performed on Steinway baby grand and captured directly on the legendary Nagra IVs tape machine.

“In early 2021 the pandemic had stretched on for about a year. I had spent a lot of the last year working with computers, zoom, Pro Tools, the internet. Endless screens. Cursors. Digital life.

I would sit down at my Steinway B at night. The stars would come out. I would disengage from the world of technology and enter the purely musical fantasy world. It felt like a return to how I learned to love music originally when my parents first brought home a piano. The excitement of discovery.

I decided to record my pieces directly without adornment. The Nagra 4s analog tape recorder is self-contained. No screens. High technology from the early seventies. Put on a reel of fresh tape and record. I placed two Neumann M49 tube microphones in front of the Steinway B and plugged them directly into the Nagra. No eq or added effects. No edits. No added reverb. Mics to tape.

I set out to make music that sounds free, emotional, and magical. It was a joy to record. A unmanipulated snapshot of time.”

David Baron, 2021