ELIZABETHTOWN — Piano by Nature falls into its 19th season with two concerts featuring Troy-based pianist/composer Sophia Vastek at 7 p.m. Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday, at the Historic Hand House, River Street, in Elizabethtown.
BACKSTORY
While many parents arrange piano lessons for their children, Vastek’s were quite the opposite. Born at Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George’s County, Maryland, her father was a career pianist in the Air Force Band. When she could sit upright, she started banging on keys and teaching herself.
“My parents were very adamant about not pushing me to play the piano, and so at a certain point I had to actually ask them for piano lessons because I was so interested. It was a kind of a very moot journey to playing the piano. It just kind of started happening,” she said.
Her first piano instructor was a family friend.
“My parents were really, really trying not to push it. It kind of went the opposite way for awhile. When it was apparent that I was very serious about this, I started taking more formal lessons with someone in the community,” she said.
Vastek earned performance degrees in piano at the Indiana University Jacob School of Music as an undergraduate and the Manhattan School of Music as a graduate student.
Vastek always wanted to be a performer, though she does teach privately.
“I never did any kind of education degree. I have always been performing from a pretty young age. There’s really no kind of easy path. It’s really just kind of doing it and putting yourself out there. I think I’ve been doing it long enough that you just kind of figure out the ways that work for you. But really it was just kind of doing it and performing as much as possible,” she said.
Her influences include Hania Rani, a Polish pianist and composer known for fusing jazz, classical and house music.
“Certainly, her music itself, and also in the way she moves from her classical training and started pushing boundaries in genres for herself and her music. I think I’ve also been on a very similar journey to her. It feels like we’re kind of on this parallel journey in a way. So, it’s been nice to see what she is doing in tandem to what I’ve been doing. So that’s been cool,” she said.
Everything that Vastek does begins and ends with piano.
“I write all of my own music that I perform. I occasionally do more classical recitals, but right now I’m doing mostly my own music and that music is kind of blended a little bit with electronic influences. But I would say a word that comes up a lot when other people are describing my music is cinematic. I think there’s kind of a film score quality to it,” she said.
Her compositions begin with noodling on her piano.
“It starts very much from a place of improvisation. Because I’m a performer first, I would say it’s very easy. I feel very comfortable at the piano, so I can just sit down and start moving my fingers in an easy way. I will listen for little things as I am improvising that will catch my ear. Once I get into something I am doing and I like it, I start trying to develop that specific idea. But it all starts I would say from a place of just improvising at the piano,” she said.
“Alight” is her latest release which features instrumentalists/collaborators Sam Torres (percussion), Clarice Jensen (cello), Spencer Zahn (electric bass), Evan Chapman (drums and electronics), Max Yassky (drums).
“I’m still kind of in the haze of album release right now. This album was quite a bit more collaborative than my previous album. My previous album was all solo piano. This one I brought on quite a few instrumentalists and collaborators. One of the big goals for this record was to really explore this expansion of sound that I had in mind for my music. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I feel it really opened up a world of sound that I have been trying to explore. So, there’s that,” she said.
At her Piano by Nature appearance, Vastek will perform heavily from her new album.
“I’ve been performing quite a bit as a solo performer with this music. Some of the songs, some of the pieces, I have just arranged or thought about a little bit differently, so it’s been really fun kind of experiment to re-imagine some of this music for just me for the solo settings. I’m also going to do some of my older music from my last record. So, it will be a little bit of a hodgepodge, but very much focused on the new music. Obviously, I will be playing the piano that they have there, but I’m also bringing my own upright piano that I travel with. Part of the visual of this concert is I’m going to be switching back and forth between the grand piano and the upright piano. It’s piano music, but different pianos quite literally,” she said.