keyboard works by Jack Dettling

"keyboard works," Jack Dettling’s second album on Populist Records (after Wolfgang von Schweinitz’s “Helmholtz-Funk”, which they recorded in collaboration with pianist Vicki Ray), is an exquisite assembly of their compositions for solo piano and for harpsichord tuned in just intonation. Contemplative, exploratory, imaginative, and introspective in nature, the pieces were beautifully performed by the composer and feature a playful, sonically rich, and somewhat transgressive approach to the intonation and mechanics of the instruments, sometimes in combination with electronic or recorded sound.

In Dettling’s own words, “this record is a collection of keyboard works written and revised between 2020 and 2024. They come from a time when, spending an unusual amount of time at home, I felt deeply engaged in both a physical exploration of my instruments and an intellectual exploration of the vast keyboard repertoire. I sat for many hours playing piano harmonics, tuning and re-tuning, discovering new music, and practicing pieces I hadn’t played in many years. Accordingly, many of these compositions are music about other music; ‘comma study’ and ‘neither/nor’ are explosions of single measures from sprawling and/or virtuosic works by Schumann and Debussy; ‘memory drawing’ is a sort of box with the sound of its own making which contains materials and impressions related to the process of composing other works from this time; underpinning all of these pieces is an effort to expose the subtle irregularities which are byproducts of the piano’s construction, its equal tempered tuning, its history and its object-hood. 

The harpsichord works are more exploratory with regard to microtonal tunings and formal applications of just intonation; they are rooted in fantasy, in the solitude of sitting for hours at an instrument. I imagine ‘window’ as a portal between the compositional modalities of 16th-century Italy and a 19th-century tuning system, two concurrent obsessions. The last work, ‘mirror play‘ is a response to sitting for photographs with my friend Paul Sepuya, who made the images for the record; I think of it like a kind of raga which explores an idiosyncratic tuning system, which is both a metaphorical and a physical space.”

Jack Dettling is a keyboard player, composer, and curator who resides in Los Angeles. Their interests include lesser-played Baroque repertoire, experimental works of the 20th-century, player pianos, analog synthesizers, historical and contemporary tuning systems, the intersection of ancient and modern literatures. They are a founder and artistic director of beauty salon, a space for intermedia installation and performance in Los Angeles. They hold degrees in piano performance and literature from Mannes College/The New School, contemporary piano performance from Manhattan School of Music, and piano performance and composition from CalArts, where they teach currently.


Jack is a keyboard player, composer, and curator who lives in Los Angeles.

jackdettling.com