Tanya Ekanayaka's debut album “Reinventions: Rhapsodies for Piano” draws great reviews

Tanya Ekanayaka, Sri Lanka’s linguist-musicologist-pianist-composer based in Edinburgh is getting great reviews for and made it to the Naxos Critics Choice page in December 2015 with her debut album “Reinventions: Rhapsodies for Piano”.

The album was composed, performed and produced in its entirety by her. While Tanya’s compositions are solid in their classically-influenced structure, and brilliant in their performance, they are also uniquely endearing and nostalgic in their Lankanisms.

“So far, my works have evolved spontaneously when I am at the piano and have remained frozen in my memory thereafter,” she says, describing what seems like an instinctive process of ‘receiving’ compositions. “They are not written down in any way.”

Despite the seemingly mystical (hence “Rhapsodies”) nature of the process, Tanya points very confidently to “a musical principle” which forms the basis of the compositions in this album.

This principle, which is explained in detail in the album booklet, is a short and clear motif in each composition that brings together tonal centres of a number of well-known classical pieces which she may put together for a particular performance.

These pieces include works by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy and a host of other loved composers, and so “each of my works may serve to facilitate connectivity between other potentially diverse works of a performance,” she explains.

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