At the heart of every artist is the drive and desire to create and to connect. Different artists do it in different media, and those who cross the boundaries to understand how different types of art bleed into each other have a wisdom that leads to work that can be richly resonant. Karel Barnoski’s latest effort, ‘Surrounded By Light’ is a prime example of an artist who focuses on a single instrument – in this case the piano – which somehow becomes a vessel for mapping out a tapestry of emotion.
Beginning with the bright, hopeful ‘Rise’, a little preamble to the proceedings, ‘Surrounded By Light’ locates Barnoski where he feels most alive: painting with the piano, coloring with the chords, and shading with the surety of his nimble fingers across the keys. The title track eases things into contemplative motion, slowing and distilling the proceedings to a wistful, almost bluesy territory – the place where music transforms into feelings, becoming more than the sum of the sound, and landing in a glorious mix of emotions – that precise moment before an abstract painting becomes a mess, stopping just short of that at the place of brilliance. Barnoski clips his songs at just the right ripe moment – a sign of maturity and genius in an all-too-often overwrought and overextended world.
Knowing when to pause and invoke silence is the unappreciated secret to so much of music, evidenced by ‘Grace’, where the space in-between the notes holds the exquisite tension and anticipation of promised release and elegant resolution. Another secret to great music is allowing the listener to make their own journey, leaving enough room in the songs and their titles to allow multiple readings to shade every experience differently. ‘Message’ might be a missive, a rumination, or a warning; ‘Drift’ could be a trip, a wave, a wind, or a loss.
Barnoski’s music evokes colors and light, shadows and shimmer, drawing a soundscape with strokes of sound that lift and bounce along as they do in ‘Held’ or undulate wildly and wonderfully as in ‘Sway’, each finding a way to sonically craft a world rich in texture and possibility.
When an artist so deftly creates music that merges and demands the conjuring of mental images, it creates a connection with the listener that pierces the heart in a way that a stand-alone image or song, taken on their own, can never quite achieve. ‘Surrounded By Light’ is that sort of music – it asks nothing from us other than to be heard – it is the plea and unanswered prayer of the artist – and the beauty of that, in the generosity of spirit and shared experience, is what touches me most here. It defies explanation and description – it can only be felt, as in the magical waves of ‘Mystic’ and the closing contemplative elegy of ‘Complete’.
I used to think that artists felt things differently from other people, that they somehow had access to deeper parts of the soul that the rest of us could never understand. As I listen to a song like ‘Self’ I’m no longer so certain we can separate and categorize people in such broad strokes – what I do know is that there are some works of art that speak to people in a universal way; they touch and tug at the heart because they evoke something primal at the core of being human.
