Memories of Utopia
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Dear Listener,
In 1993 I recorded my first CD of original piano solos. I dedicated this music to the loyal commuters and customers who heard bits and pieces of my playing in the Grand Hyatt Hotel lobby above Grand Central Station. Each day, they traversed the lobby of the hotel, taking shortcuts to the trains, their offices, their lives. Often, they remarked that they wished they could stay the entire morning and listen to the music. They said they wanted a CD to take home. And so I thought, why not? I took a deep breath and borrowed some money. I took a few days off from my piano job, rented studio time, and voila! On a chilly spring day a UPS truck rumbled down my street and delivered "Heal of the Hand" -- box after box. The UPS man was not pleased and neither was I. A ridiculous mistake had been made! Why had I ordered so many, when all I needed was a hundred or so to sell by the piano at the Hyatt..."Don't worry," my roommate said. "They'll be gone in no time!" But we had a decorating nightmare on our hands. We were neat freaks and couldn't allow big brown boxes to litter our nouveau chic Victorian apartment. In the nick of time, our creative instincts kicked in. We discovered that eight boxes stacked in a rectangle made for a decent coffee table; we put a pretty cloth over it. We hid the CDs everywhere we could - under the beds, under the sofa, in the closets. Whenever I needed to open a new box, all I had to do was look under a piece of furniture, or up high on a book shelf. One day, several months later, while looking for a new box to open, I began to panic. I couldn't find one. It took me over an hour to figure out what had happened. I'd neglected to notice the missing coffee table or the empty space at the back of the closet. They were all gone. Every single CD had been sold. I met with the folks at North Star Music around this time, and they released "Heal of the Hand" on a national level. They were executives with distribution and a marketing department and my music was in capable hands. But I will always remember the hotel strangers, on their way to places invisible to me, to convince me to launch my career a a recording and touring artist. They listened to me. I listened to them. And what a difference that has made in my life. Sometimes a good look back can help you move onward, and so here I am -- ten years later --marking a retrospective recording. I've re-recorded a number of works for this CD from the past ten years. You'll hear some of these compositions as solo piano arrangements for the first time, stripped down to their purest forms. There are new pieces too, and I hope you enjoy them. So, here's to the past ten years; they've been full of adventure and surprises. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there, and most of all, for listening.
All the best,
Robin Spielberg
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