Serj Tankian has released a 24-minute modern classical composition titled Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto on his own label, Serjical Strike Records. The piece comes accompanied by a self-produced video the System of a Down frontman made utilizing his own pictures and videos.
Tankian said that this project came from him “itching for a musical challenge” during the height of the pandemic. He added that “one night sitting in bed looking through different voice memos on the iPhone I realized I have this huge trove of short, special, unrealized musical ideas. Right then the thought of creating an epic piece utilizing them all made me smile. So I recorded them all and started arranging the instrumentation to create this incredibly unique musical experience. I mean, who the fuck listens to 24 minutes of music as one piece today?”
Watch the video for Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto below.
Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto’s release follows shortly after his critically-acclaimed rock EP, Elasticity, which was released in March via BMG/Alchemy Recordings. In an interview with Tankian earlier this year, he told us that while some songs on Elasticity were originally meant for his band, they “just couldn’t see eye to eye creatively and philosophically” so he went on to make a solo EP.
On July 9, Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto will be released as part of the Cool Gardens Poetry Suite, a collection of four cinematic works layered with spoken word by Tankian himself taken from the pages of his first published book of poetry, “Cool Gardens.”
The video for “Cinematic Piano Theme (With Poetry),” directed by David Bradford is out now.
See the Cool Gardens Poetry Suite tracklist below.
Cinematic Piano Theme (With Poetry)
Les Melodies (With Poetry)
Percussion (With Poetry)
Disarming Time: A Modern Piano Concerto (With Poetry)