Pieces of Sanity

New York City-based pianist Tim Chernikoff presents his debut album of original music and arrangements for Jazz piano trio, in an exciting collaboration with brilliant NYC-residing musicians Kenneth Salters and Jakob Dreyer.  

 

In “Pieces of Sanity,” Chernikoff presents a culmination of compositional evolution spanning over 15 years and taking place on 3 distinct regions of the United States landmass.  With works taking inspiration from from the likes of Miles Davis, Tigran Hamasyan, Frank Zappa and Cecil Taylor among many others, Chernikoff has developed a compositional and improvisational palette that takes the listener through a deeply rhythmic and rhapsodic journey into the life of the mind, navigating emotions ranging from joy to sorrow, relief, trepidation, irritation, sarcastic irony, crassness and even comic relief.

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About his mix of material, Chernikoff comments: “I wanted to span a wide gamut of emotions and attitudes, as well as find the things I held most true, both in the information of my experiences and from absorbing the works of my jazz heroes and the American Songbook.  This music came out of a struggle to keep myself sane throughout my musical upbringing and transition into adulthood, always thousands of miles from my home yet still in the same supposed country.”

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Tim migrated across the United States from his hometown in the Bay Area, to North Texas in 2007 and later New York City in 2011, to pursue the development of his improvisational concept, after displaying significant promise as a young pianist in his high school and early college years in Palo Alto, California.  Throughout his 15-year journey towards a full length album recording, he formed an ability to fuse fire-and-brimstone musical training  at North Texas University, with the Redwood-rooted intellectual curiosity he found in the Stanford Bay Area Peninsula, meeting the sun-hot New York scene in full force with an arsenal of tools to be fully forged after ten years in the Big Apple. 

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“Pieces of Sanity” is a pit stop in the studio at the end of a 15-year musical odyssey, a recipe for the edification of human beings living through the 21st century.  Every performance is a brand new iteration of that journey, edified by the contributions of his bandmates Salters and Dreyer.

 

The release date is scheduled for September 24, 2021, and will be followed by a release show and touring, as venues open up after the Coronavirus Pandemic subsides.  15% of proceeds from album sales will go directly towards pandemic assistance.