NILS FRAHM has announced the release of a new CD of solo piano music, Night & Day, to be released by LEITER, the label he runs with his manager, Felix Grimm, on May 9, 2025.
Containing all eleven tracks from both last March’s mini-album, Day, and a second, Night - which will be released on vinyl and via all digital platforms the same day - it follows Frahm’s latest live album, Paris, which was released in December last year. In the meantime, he will continue with his almost three-year world tour, finally concluding this spring with shows in Australia, America and Canada.
Night & Day’s tracks are a reminder that, though he’s since become celebrated for the intricately arranged approach of his most commercially successful, multi-instrumental albums, Frahm first made his name with similarly meditative piano compositions on collections like 2009’s The Bells, 2011’s Felt and 2012’s Screws. Recorded in Majorca, far away from his studio in the German capital’s famed Funkhaus complex, Day provides six tracks, three over the sixminute mark.
There are muffled pedal creaks on the cyclical, quietly jazzy ‘You Name It’ or, during the palliative ripples of ‘Butter Notes’’arpeggios, the sound of dogs barking in the streets outside. Night adds another five tracks, opening at a glacial pace with ‘Wesen’, conjuring images of Frahm, lit only by a candle, huddled over his instrument, playing for the sheer companionship that it offers.
And the album closes with ‘Canton’, its delicious airiness perhaps the record’s equivalent of a glimpse of dawn. It’s a perfect conclusion to a typically beguiling collection that, as always, points to a musical character that is immediately, distinctively Frahm’s. It also highlights why the German pianist has continued throughout his career to return loyally to the piano as his first love.
After all, it’s notable that, even during his recent, expansive live performances, which find him leaping between multiple keyboards, synths, and even a glass harmonica, Frahm has always made space for such works. Today, he remains a prolific master of affecting simplicity, tenderness and romance, and as capable as ever of unforgettable, epigrammatic succinctness.
