Neil Pearlman: upcoming CD, videos, podcasts

Guest post

Note: Today we’ll hear from Neil Pearlman about his upcoming solo piano album (this week he’s taking pre-orders to help fund the final production). He also tells about his great podcast TradCafe, a new set of piano learning videos, and live events.

Next Monday we’ll visit Scotland again with photos and stories from Glencoe, and the following Monday a look at John Pursers 2d edition book, Scotland’s Music, plus special updates about what he’s been discovering and working on since the book came out!

—Ed

---

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend if you live in the United States and if not... well happy Monday to you anyway! I'm excited to be doing a guest post for this new Substack series, it's been great to read the articles and essays that my Dad has been publishing here so far. He invited me to do a guest post and let you all know about what I've been working on lately, so read on to learn about my upcoming solo piano album, my TradCafe video collaborations and podcasts as well as a new series of teaching videos I'll be putting out to learn piano accompaniment techniques. I'll also give you some updates on my touring plans for the coming year so that hopefully I can see some of you at some shows down the road!

Solo Piano Album

Over the last few years I have been slowly creating a set of piano interpretations and improvisations around traditional Scottish melodies, largely from the Gaelic song tradition but also including some bagpipe and fiddle tunes. This past summer I booked some time at Simpson Street Studios in Thropton, Northumberland to record on the beautiful Yamaha piano there and work with the great Ian Stephenson as both sound engineer and creative sounding board. I'm really excited about the music I recorded with him and currently have a Kickstarter campaign running for people to pre-order the album and help me pay for the final phases of album production and promotion. It runs until December 14th.

TradCafe Productions

Some of you may be familiar with my TradCafe podcast, which is a series of conversations and spontaneous musical collaborations with great traditional musicians from a variety of backgrounds. There are nearly 70 available so far. I have also started a TradCafe video series featuring higher production music collaborations that are filmed and recorded professionally. Several videos will be coming out this winter including a few solo piano videos in support of the upcoming album and a collaboration with the brilliant Galician duo PÄRBO. TradCafe has also expanded recently to become a (very small) label, which will put out my solo piano album as well as some of the audio tracks from the videos series as singles. Visit the link above to stay up to date on everything TradCafe!

Piano Accompaniment Videos

Starting in January, I am very excited to be launching a piano learning website offering videos, sheet music and audio tracks for my style of piano accompaniment. I'll be putting out a packet of materials for a new tune each month and people can subscribe monthly for the new materials as well as individually purchase lessons that have already been published. If this is interesting to you, just put your email down here and I'll send you a free sample lesson next month so you can see what you think!

Touring, recording and other projects

In the coming year I'm making plans to be on the road with the great Shetland fiddler Kevin Henderson quite a bit in support of our album Burden Lake, which came out just as the Covid lockdowns were beginning in 2020. We'll be touring in quite a few regions of the US and possibly more places than that so stay tuned for word on that. I'll also be doing some solo piano tours in support of the new album. I'll be playing locally here in Portland, ME most Fridays through the winter at Maine Craft Distilling's Funk Night and in January I'll be appearing at the Boston Celtic Music Festival with quite a few different acts. Finally, Dad and I will be getting a few chances to play together in early 2023 with a Feb 16th lunchtime concert in Portland and a late March trip to Wisconsin for a Scottish Country Dance weekend and possibly another gig or two. You can stay up on all my gigs and more by signing up for my monthly newsletter over at www.neilpearlman.com

Thanks for reading through all these updates, I hope you found some of these projects interesting and will follow up with some of the links provided here. Stay well and enjoy the end of the fall season!

-Neil