Dustin O'Halloran
Piano Solos Vol. 2

On an evening that arrived too soon, amidst the folds of its slow passage, in the air of my apartment that did not warm November as it should have, I discovered this artist. Distracted reading gave way to arranging books, contemplating the placement of the sofa, and again, returning to the bookshelf, this time casting quick glances only at the titles, some of them heralds of memories that characterized the period. Memories that, strangely, I did not want to recall, I did not want them to insinuate themselves among these folds, between these unwilling, transitory moments.

Boredom was leading the dance. Only her. Any other thought, action, or even just awareness of it, on the sidelines, watching. And I did not want it. I did not want the mental torpor, the sleepiness of the intellect, the silence of dormant emotions (that evening, glowing embers beneath a thick layer of ash). Perhaps this blending of my feelings with the surrounding environment was waiting to be indulged. And if the often enveloping pleasure of reading was, at that moment, not comforting, only music could do something. Something that was written for headphone listening, a listening that offered a semblance of intimacy and isolation.

And then, Dustin O'Halloran.

Unheard of until then, the album had been lent to me by a friend, always attracted by artists (particularly of the keyboard) that tickled his melancholic and contemplative nature. But most importantly, I had come to learn of his name thanks to a splendid review here on DeBaser. I was struck by the beauty with which the emotions generated in the reviewer's soul had been described, how he had created a gallery of splendid and vivid images. Vivis, who wrote it, if not in exhibiting with the mastery of your prose, I can at least share the intensity of these emotions.

Emotions that are like the water of a not-too-large river. If a stone is thrown into it, the current is shaken and the peace of its banks broken. I hoped this listening would indeed be a stone, the largest possible, the most disturbing. Because certainly, the calm of that water was the perfect description of my mood that evening. A muddy, slow calm, the bottom was not visible, too much mud and debris on the surface.

I listened in one breath, amazed by everything, the sounds, the atmospheres, the precious moments of pleasure that created tributaries where only the mud, not the pure water impeded by it, flowed. And it was carried away, banished to remote places of my soul.

I, who love Chopin, the dreamy and evocative genius who had in the piano the instrument through which to flow the essence of romanticism in music, can only find a continuity, at least spiritual, in Dustin O'Halloran. And that's enough.

I hope Vivis takes up my personal exhortation to also review this "Piano Solos Vol. 2" (which I trust she has already listened to – perhaps not on such a complicated and brainy evening -). I mean to truly review (as she has proven to do matchlessly), more than, as I have done, attempt to describe through disordered and strange images my state of mind and how it was changed in one evening by the music of Dustin O'Halloran.

Ah, the calm of the river was slowly lost in the whirl that ultimately, inevitably, results in a tall and spectacular waterfall. It was not a mere stone that barely ripples.