PALIMPSEST

After a ten-year hiatus, Levitation (pianist Stefan Rusconi and violinist Tobias Preisig) return with Palimpsest. A multiplex work where past and present collapse: between versions of the self, a dialogue between friends across time and loss, iterations of the project, and the organ as both repository of musical history and a frame for channeling the unsound.

The material was recorded in just 4 days at St. Gertrud Church in Hamburg, in cooperation with Kampnagel. The first batch alone in the empty church, the second in front of an audience of locals, 200 strong. The compositions were designed in a modular way, making the arrangements flexible and giving the duo freedomto reimagine them live. Every part of the organ and the entire church interior were miked, allowing for totalcontrol over sound definition and design once in the studio – and an immersive ATMOS mix. The final album is an 8-song distillate, drawn mostly from that night.

Palimpsest sounds like a conversation between three elements: air, light (fire), and earth. Mountainous, glacial. Everything held by the sheer physicality of the organ. If you've ever been to the Alps, you know the feeling offacing this formidable, awe-inspiring presence. Yet, against this overwhelming backdrop there is the shadowand light play: the tempestuous, restless spectacle of the heavens. Cloud mutations of sculptural lightness andthe sun wrapping its palm around the billowing shapes, reaching for impossible registers.