If we’re being honest, creativity can kill you. Instinctually, we all know this, and yet we tend to view art as a product of our highest nature responsible for bringing immeasurable beauty into the world. As a pianist-composer and finalist for DC Wammie Awards’ Best Classical Artist of 2022, Martin Graff would be the first to acknowledge that beauty. But as someone who felt the inexorable rush of knowing—from the very first time he laid hands on the keys at the age of 4—that he and the piano were “meant to be,” Graff can tell you that creativity and passion are extraordinarily powerful forces that need to be handled with care. For almost 17 years, in fact, he had to step away.
Trips for Piano, Graff’s collection of solo instrumental compositions, chronicles his return to music, along with his newfound experience of creation as a source of grounding, liberation, and joy. It took years for Graff to make it back to a state of flow, but Trips for Piano is the sound of realizing that what he felt during that initial love-at-first-sight encounter with the instrument never actually left him. And he wants to remind you that whatever resides in your essence will always be there for you to fall back on, too.
Artistry, Graff feels, belongs to all people—whether we identify as artists or not. And as far as he’s concerned, his music can only truly come to life when the listener brings their own personalized narrative arc to the experience, each piece meant to function as a catalyst for setting the audience’s imagination free. Trips for Piano: this music will take you places…
You can find Martin’s 2023 International Piano Competition performance here.