Francesco Tristano

Francesco Tristano maintains an expansive professional life that encompasses piano performance, original composition, and club DJ sets, moving freely among interpretations of classical repertoire and jazz alongside his own excursions into techno and other forms of experimental electronics. Baroque repertoire occupies a prominent place in his classical activities, above all the keyboard works of J.S. Bach together with pieces by Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, and Vivaldi. At the same time he regularly appears in programs devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, presenting scores by Berio, Cage, and Stravinsky as well as his own creations. Many of his written works, both in the classical domain and in jazz, have arisen from partnerships with the pianist and composer Rami Khalifé. Exposure to club culture during his university years prompted him to create piano adaptations of techno pieces; shortly afterward he began collaborating with leading figures in the genre, among them Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald. Drawn especially to music in which rhythm and harmony stand out, he identifies shared territory between classical traditions and dance-floor material and feels comfortable releasing on both Deutsche Grammophon and the labels Transmat and Get Physical Music. His 2007 album Not for Piano marked the first occasion on which he merged jazz, classical, and electronic elements within a single project, an approach he continued while performing with the ensemble Aufgang. Surface Tension, issued in 2016, carried the strongest techno imprint of any of his recordings, whereas On Early Music, released in 2022, signaled a return to Renaissance and Baroque sources.

Francesco Tristano, who records under the surname Schlimé, entered the world in Luxembourg City on September 16, 1981. Piano lessons began at the age of five, and by thirteen he had already presented a public recital consisting of his own compositions. He pursued formal training at the conservatories of Luxembourg and Paris as well as at prominent academies in Riga and Brussels. In 1998 he moved to New York City to enroll at Juilliard, completing a bachelor’s degree in 2002 and a master’s degree in 2003; his principal teachers included David Dubal, Jerome Lowenthal, and Jacob Lateiner, and he also participated in master classes led by the Bach specialist Rosalyn Tureck. Additional studies took him to the Escola Superior de Musica in Catalonia, Spain, where he worked with Jordi Camell.

While still a student he simultaneously developed his performing career. His first appearance in the United States occurred in 2000, when he performed with the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev. The next year he established the New Bach Players, an ensemble with which he has since appeared frequently as both soloist and conductor. During the same period he became immersed in New York’s nightlife and developed a deep interest in techno and electronic music. The year 2004 proved decisive: CD Accord issued his widely praised two-disc recording of the complete Bach keyboard concertos with the New Bach Players, and he received first prize at the International Contemporary Piano Competition in Orleans, France.

In 2005, together with Khalifé and Aymeric Westrich, he formed the group Aufgang; their inaugural concert took place that June at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. A 2006 PentaTone release featuring his accounts of the Prokofiev Fifth Concerto, the Ravel G-major Concerto, and his own 3 Improvisations was selected as an Editor’s Choice by Gramophone Magazine. Later the same year the French label InFiné issued his piano version of Derrick May’s landmark Detroit techno track “Strings of Life.” The interpretation appeared on the 2007 album Not for Piano, produced by the Mexican electronic musician Murcof and containing further reworkings of material by Autechre and Jeff Mills. Carl Craig’s remix of the track “The Melody,” originally written by Khalifé, enjoyed club success and was featured on Craig’s own Sessions collection. Tristano’s second full-length for InFiné, the more experimental Auricle / Bio / On, received final editing from Moritz von Oswald and reached stores near the close of 2008.

Two albums and several singles by Aufgang appeared on InFiné, beginning with the trio’s self-titled debut in 2009. Tristano’s third solo outing for the label, Idiosynkrasia, wove together his interests in minimal techno, classical music, and jazz. His association with Deutsche Grammophon commenced in 2011 with the release of bachCage, followed by Long Walk in 2012 and, in 2014, Scandale, a joint recording with pianist Alice Sara Ott. Work with Get Physical Music began the same year, first with the EP Piano, Hats & Stabs and then with the limited-edition 12-inch Luder_Pre, made in tandem with Craig. After the 2015 EP Body Vanquish, credited with P41, Get Physical issued his debut DJ mix, Body Language, Vol. XVI. Also in 2015 he released the more jazz-oriented Afrodiziak, recorded with percussionists Bachar Khalifé and Pascal Schumacher. Late in 2016 Transmat, the label founded by Derrick May, brought out Surface Tension, an album that contained four collaborations with May as well as Tristano’s reworking of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.” He contributed arrangements, orchestrations, and performances to Craig’s 2017 album Versus, which also featured Les Siècles Orchestra under the direction of François-Xavier Roth. His first project for Sony Classical, Piano Circle Songs, appeared in 2017 and included joint performances with Chilly Gonzales, an artist whose career likewise spans classical, pop, and electronic spheres. Tokyo Stories, released in 2019, offered an atmospheric tribute to the Japanese capital. In 2022 Tristano revisited his earliest musical passions on On Early Music, an album devoted to compositions by Frescobaldi, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, and additional early masters.