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Hi! I produced this recording and project, and it's so nice to see it on the front page of Hacker News this morning.

Let's talk about Kimiko Ishizaka, the pianist. She always insists on standing in the background, letting her projects be about Bach, and public domain, while she quietly delivers the most stunning performances of these works that one can imagine.

Kimiko is German-Japanese. She grew up performing in a trio with her brothers who are also both notable classical musicians in Germany. In addition to the Goldberg Variations, she has recorded the Well-Tempered Clavier I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPHIZw7HZq4), and The Art of the Fugue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrNDWqANCs) and released them into the public domain as well.

Then, in 2019, she did something completely new and released an album of her own, jazz-inspired compositions for solo piano called New Me! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph35hLwcckY&list=PLeWVBqJrTS...). She continues studying Jazz and is composing a cycle of songs (pop-jazz), and a series of ragtime pieces for piano.

Kimiko is very athletic, and has placed in the top-3 at the German nationals in both powelifting and olympic weightlifting. She has a room in her house which functions both as a piano practice room, and a gym. It is painted pink and decorated with Hello Kitty, because, well, she's a half-Japanese girl who loves Hello Kitty =)

The most amazing thing of all just happened to Kimiko, however. She gave birth to a beautiful son (https://twitter.com/KimikoIshizaka/status/127507285375949619...), just 5 days ago.

discuss

jacquesm|5 years ago

Thank you for this project and for putting the spotlight on this pianist. I listened to 'the new me' and it is very interesting how she did that and yet somehow there is a bit of Bach shining through here and there.

lordleft|5 years ago

Nina Simone is another musician who permeated her music with very clear influences from Bach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WHHW8PrF6Q

robertDouglass|5 years ago

Indeed! Especially in Blues Variations, which is - like the Golderg Variations - a theme-and-variation form. But like the WTC and AoF, it ends in a 4 voice fugue. All on a blues theme =)

dharma1|5 years ago

Her playing is awesome. Thank you both for producing this, and congrats on the addition to the family!

lordleft|5 years ago

Thank you for this project, and thank you for sharing more about Kimiko. Congrats to her for her new baby, and for her astonishing achievements. I will always support anything that brings Bach to more people.

pabs3|5 years ago

Can you talk about the production process for this project? What hardware and software was used for the recording (and mixing?) and the rendering of the video?

robertDouglass|5 years ago

First, the score was made with MuseScore. Then it was prepared as an iPad App by the MuseScore team who custom made the synchronization between the score and the music. I then recorded the iPad app as a video using the "Reflector" program for Mac OS X. The iPad app doesn't exist anymore because it was not compatible with new versions of IOS.

There's an article on the recording process here: https://opengoldbergvariations.org/news/recording-the-goldbe...

Anne-Marie Sylvestre used Pyramix as her DAW. I don't know more than that, though.