What is there left to say?
I often find myself asking that question as I close my eyes and shift to a different zone while listening to this beautiful piece of music called Cone of Silence released by Tamas Szigyarto in January 2024.
What can you say in a review that hasn't already been said? I could break down every track, and offer up some sort of expressive recommendation for readers that readers should listen to all of it because it's so well made. I want people to find new ways to use this form of piano music as it beats between the subtle and the chaotic for our enjoyment. That's always such a big part of putting out your own music. You want people to feel something similar to what you felt when you wrote it.
Recently, during a conversation with a jazz bass player I know, he said that deep jazz players don't release new albums as much as they display the works of the "jazz cats" that came before them. It makes sense as so much of the early forms of the music can only be read to be learned at all. I feel it's similar to piano virtuosos as well. Why release an album of original music when you can just as easily impress others with the works of Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Granados, or Bach?
Luckily there are still players out there like Robert Glasper, Diana Krall, Matteo Ramon Arevalos, and of course, Tamas Szigyarto who want to help us understand the way they see the world through their music. What was the solitude like during the restrictions caused by COVID-19 back in 2020? What is there left to say about that period of time? As far as Szigyarto is concerned, there is quite a bit left to bring out of himself and right into us.
The feeling that I get when I turn on Cone of Silence is the thought that someone is working through something on his piano. I can see how day after day, Szigyarto awakens with little to do in his city and decides to write more and more. I see a man awakening to the nothingness outside save for the resurgence of nature we've quickly forgotten about, and he writes. He writes about the forgotten world. He writes about being alone. He writes about spending days without anyone else around. It becomes so easy to believe and embrace yourself every time you listen to Cone of Silence.
My advice is to breathe deep, turn on this 30-minute piano suite, and let yourself understand these new tracks from Tamas Szigyarto. Remember whomever you loved and lost in that period as you close your eyes and let the music happen to you. That's what there is to say about it. Cone of Silence is about memory, loneliness, and the hope to be out of that silence one day. When I turn it on, I feel the old me and see how it measures up to the new me it's replaced. Thank you, Tamas Szigyarto for your musical efforts.