This time last month saw the untimely passing of Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington. In the wake of this, there’s been a wave of nostalgia and sadness. It has also shot attention in the directions of his surviving friends and family. For example, Chester’s son Jaime Bennington is an artist in his own right. He manages a website on which he displays his work through a number of mediums.
Most recently, he released a new EP by the name of “Reveries Op. 1 No. 4“. It serves as a calming collection of piano music worth listening to if you get the chance. It can all be found right here:
Here are his words in support of the effort:
Hello again! I took a much needed break from the rigorous upkeep of this website for the last month. To be honest, I ran out of ideas and I most definitely ran out of motivation. But I’m back and I have come bearing gifts! Below are the next installments of my Reveries compositions. This time around I have gone the whole nine yards to construct a collection of pieces, rather than one big one (although there is a lengthy piece at the end).
Fueled by my love for the incredible Dimitri Shostakovich, of which I have cultivated over the last six months through the systematic consumption of every symphony, brooding string quartet, and whimsical piano solo, I decided to sit down with my piano and have a conversation about what we wanted out of music. That conversation ended with the subsequent decision to write music that simply SOUNDED good. I purposely forced myself to stray away from any of the hard-wired academic prejudices that I had the tendency to fall back on.
These pieces took me far away from any notion of form, harmony, or time that I had so desperately wanted to control. Likewise, what came out of this experiment is something I feel is wholly different from anything I have written before! I would also like to mention that I took a large amount of time to properly record and perform these pieces (to the best of my ability considering the only microphone I own is on my phone). Which makes these compositions the first pieces of music I have devoted myself to interpreting since mid May.
With all of that being said I hope that you all enjoy!
P.s. The last piece is a piano solo that I wrote for my sister a while back on her birthday. It never saw the light of day because she is (was? still is?) too young to appreciate it in any capacity. Regardless, it is now available for public scrutiny! So I guess there really are only three pieces in this ‘collection’, but hey its still just as schizophrenic as all of the other pieces so why not include it? Am I right?
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