CANCELLED: Tamar Halperin / Guy Sternberg

In a way, Erik Satie was a little too early for his time: when the Frenchman started composing music for the piano in 1880, no one understood what these spherical sounds were supposed to be. But Satie was already pointing towards the future sound worlds that would first feature dominantly in Minimal Music and then in the work of artists such as Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm and Ludovico Einaudi. Satie, of course, realised that the world didn’t understand him, and so he retreated from it.

When Satie died in 1925 as a result of alcoholism, friends found his apartment in a state of chaos: countless umbrellas everywhere and two grand pianos, one on top of the other, in the biggest room. The pianist Tamar Halperin and the producer Guy Sternberg found this image so compelling that they began taking Satie’s music apart and stacking it back together anew. A grand piano, harpsichord, glockenspiel, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer piano and, of course, a computer help them to present Satie’s sound world for contemporary ears.