J.S. Bach / Dan Tepfer - Inventions / Reinventions

On his new album Inventions / Reinventions, pianist-composer Dan Tepfer performs each of Bach’s beloved 15 Two Part Inventions interleaved in chromatic sequence by 9 of his own free improvisations in the “missing” keys to create a new full, and fully transporting 24-key experience, a 55-minute mix of the timeless and the contemporary. 300 years ago in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach initially composed his Two Part Inventions as keyboard exercises for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

While remaining essential studies for burgeoning musicians, these pieces have also long been cherished by generations of music lovers, and recorded by iconic pianists. Tepfer captured Inventions / Reinventions in nighttime recording sessions that he engineered himself in an intimate salon next door to the Paris apartment where he grew up. His improvisations explore the narrative structure Tepfer divined in Bach’s inventions, where the hero, a musical idea, starts off in the home key, goes through wild harmonic adventures through foreign keys, and finally makes it back home.

What Tepfer finds fascinating is that Bach plays out this dense musical narrative in just a couple minutes. Dan’s longer, free improvisations get at what he hears as Bach’s powerful subsurface, the mechanisms at play deep below. Tepfer sees classical and jazz, which most consider to be so different, as two sides of the same coin. Playing Bach alongside his own free improvisations is a meditative journey for him, and he hopes “when people who listen to the album hear music that was composed 300 years ago juxtaposed with music that was just improvised in the 21st century, they feel the kinship between the two.”