Marta Sánchez For the Space You Left

This solo prepared piano record grew out of periods of isolation and solitude, shaped by two very different emotional landscapes. The music began in 2017 during a residency at MacDowell, where I applied with the intention of experimenting with piano preparation and confronting a long standing fear: playing solo piano. I had always been uncomfortable exposing myself alone at the instrument, and creating a solo project felt like the most direct way to face that fear — and grow through it. At the time, I was interested in translating my compositional language — built around layers, interlocking rhythms, and counterpoint — into a single timbre. Preparation became the solution: by altering the piano’s sound, I could create multiple internal voices, transforming one instrument into a small ecosystem of contrasting textures. MacDowell was an intense and solitary experience. I lived alone in a remote cabin, surrounded by woods and snowstorms, often spending entire days without seeing anyone. That isolation, combined with a sense of vulnerability and self-doubt, deeply informed the music written there. The pieces from that period carry a quiet melancholy, fragility, and a raw openness.
After the residency, I became absorbed in writing for other projects — ensemble music, quintet work — and the solo pieces remained unfinished. It wasn’t until the beginning of the pandemic that this music truly resumed. In those first weeks of lockdown, I texted a close friend suggesting that this was the moment to finally focus on our solo projects. We challenged each other to write one piece a week, keeping one another accountable and creatively energized during an uncertain time. Once again, I was writing in isolation, but the emotional context had shifted: the music composed during this period reflects a more intense inner world, shaped by loss, love, uncertainty, and existential questions. If the MacDowell pieces emerge from loneliness and lack of confidence, the pandemic pieces come from emotional saturation — obsessive cycles, abstraction, and a heightened interior life. Together, the album traces two forms of solitude, processed through different emotional lenses. During the early stages, each piece was written with a highly specific and complex piano preparation. However, after performing the music live for the first time, it became clear that changing preparations between pieces was impractical, often requiring long pauses. In response, I re-imagined the setup and arrived at a simpler, flexible preparation that could serve most of the repertoire with only minimal adjustments. Out of respect for the instruments and the concerns of venues, all preparations use gentle, non-invasive materials such as paper, Blu-Tack, and tape.