Tone Glow 132: Kelly Moran

An interview with the New York-based composer and pianist about her formative music teachers, the Disklavier, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and her new album ‘Moves in the Field’

Kelly Moran

Photo by Brandon Bowen

Kelly Moran (b. 1988) is a New York-based composer and pianist who has spent her career excavating the sonic possibilities of the piano. It was at the University of Michigan where she became interested in prepared piano and other extended techniques for the instrument. In the past decade she has released numerous albums, including Optimist (2016), Bloodroot (2017), and Ultraviolet (2018), the latter of which was her first LP for Warp. More recently, she has released an EP titled Vesela (2023), and has a new full-length out on March 29th called Moves in the Field (2024). These two releases feature a deeper sensitivity to the piano, finding Moran showing more restraint than ever before while also exploring what can be done with the Disklavier. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Moran on March 14th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss the teachers who changed her life, the healing power of music, the benefits and limitations of acid trips, and more.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: How was being in the studio today?

Kelly Moran: It was okay. As soon as I got here, my computer charger died so I had to go to the Apple store and get a new one so I could connect my laptop to the Disklavier. I was like, of course this happens to me today. I’ve been practicing for my album release show and tour. I’ve been in post-production for my music video for the past week, so this is my first time practicing piano since I filmed that video. It’s really nice to go back to playing.

I saw you were on Instagram Live for a little bit. What’s it like performing live in that sort of setting?

You know, I honestly feel so uncomfortable going Live and I was so awkward (laughter). I did a Live once during lockdown and it was the week when everyone and their mom was going Live, and I played a concert from my bedroom. So many people tuned in and, for some reason, I wasn’t able to save it and I didn’t get to read the comments. So I feel this void where I did this Live once but I didn’t get to experience any of the fun stuff. I wanted to do another one and read the comments and engage with people more, so a couple weeks ago I almost spontaneously did it but I decided to wait until I had more songs out. I put out the video [for “Sodalis”] today and I wanted to drop a little Easter egg.

I’ve been absent on social media for a while. I used to be so much less self-conscious about sharing things; I used to be a lot more off the cuff on my stories. I overthink everything now and I’m trying not to. I’m forcing myself today to do something that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing because I’m trying to get my record out. My label was like, “You should show people peeks into your life!” And it’s hard because it doesn’t come naturally to me. When I’m alone in a room and addressing a camera, like when you finish playing a song and you don’t hear anyone clapping, it’s so awkward. It’s like, “Well, I hope you liked that!” (laughter). Hopefully people enjoyed it.

What is significant to you about having an audience when you’re performing? What does it provide for you?

It does everything for me. It completely changes everything, and it makes everything feel so special because I’m not just doing something for myself. That’s a theme I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout the past couple years. As an artist, sometimes it feels very self-centered because I’m channeling how I’m feeling and I’m making art and I’m trying to express something. I used to tell myself that if no one listened or came to my show, it was just the act of making it that was what this was for, but I think that was a cope for thinking that no one cared about me. Once people started listening to my music and coming out to my shows, I started to realize it was about connection and communion in a room. I’m doing this thing for you; I’m not just practicing for myself. I’m making these sounds in real time for you.

I play a lot of festivals, and I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m knocking people who trigger sounds and don’t play instruments live, but I feel like there is something to be said for when we’re in a room together and I am making the sound for you. You are hearing me craft it from the attack to its release, and you’re part of it because I’m feeling the energy of the room and that’s when I know when to lift the pedal up or release from a song or when to give more. You feel everything together, and I think that this collective feeling is what gives meaning to art and makes it powerful. That connection is so important for me. And so that’s why it’s so disappointing on Instagram Live—you can’t feel that energy.

Do you remember the first time you played in front of an audience and felt this joy in the communal aspect of performance?

I started playing piano when I was really young, and it’s funny because when family or friends would come over, my parents would say, “Kelly, go and play piano for us.” And so I would start playing and if I heard someone start talking I would turn around and give them a look like, “Excuse me, I’m doing this for you. I’m giving you my emotions and my talent, the least you can give me is your attention.” So very early on, I felt this urge where when I play, we’re doing this together. If you’re not with me, it’s not working. And you can just feel that energy. From a very young age, I was aware of how this was more meaningful as a collective experience.

A lot of early performance experiences as a soloist—performing at recitals or concerts in high school—really taught me so much about how prepared I was. I really internalized that music. It’s really different when you play something by yourself and then when you play it for someone else; your cortisol spikes and your body behaves a little bit differently, and it’s a true test for how well you can actually play when someone else is there. Like, I know I can run this set by myself, but when someone else is there, there’s a pressure there that I really thrive off of. I want to make it special for them too, you know?

This is interesting because when I listen to your music, there’s a certain severity there where I feel like I can understand the stakes at hand. Do you approach playing the piano with a perfectionist’s mindset? Are you striving to be the best possible pianist?

Definitely not. I do think I’m more like that now than I was back then. When I was younger, I was very driven to play piano but I didn’t have stage parents who put a lot of pressure on me. No one in my family was a musician; I kind of randomly asked my mom for a piano one day after I saw someone play one on TV. She just indulged me (laughter). I’ve always been very self-motivated to make music and I think a lot of it comes from the fact that music is a form of self-soothing for me. I had some turbulent events in my childhood and I found a lot of solace in playing the piano. It wasn’t so much a drive for achievement or perfectionism or anything—it was just really fun for me. When I was about 12 years old, I got my first job playing piano as an accompanist for a voice teacher. I was making like $10 an hour, which is so much in 2001.

And when you’re 12 years old, that amount is pretty amazing.

I was like, oh my god, this is so much money! I can get paid just doing this? Why would I do anything else? So from an early age, it was like, this is what I can do and it’s fun! But also, this voice teacher I worked for was like half voice teacher, half therapist. Her name is Lynn Winters. Students would come into her lessons and for the first half hour, they would just sit on the couch. These were girls who were kids and teenagers going through their most challenging years, and they would come in and cry about puberty or body issues or parent issues or boy issues. They would get all this stuff off their chest to their voice teacher, and Lynn was this safe adult for them. She was like a mother figure they could vent all their problems too.

So every Saturday, there would be around seven of these voice lessons at this teacher’s house and I would sit at the piano. Student after student would come in and they would vent and Lynn would process stuff with them. Then after that, they’d get up and sing and I would see that a weight would be lifted from these people. That experience taught me that music is also a form of healing. Music isn’t just a way for me to make money or have fun, it’s a way for people to process their feelings and feel safe and okay. To see how therapeutic this could be early on was like, wow, it’s fun and it feels good and it creates this healing space—all of those things were far more appealing to me than trying to be a concert pianist.

I was never the sort of student who played piano for eight hours a day and wanted to be a classical musician. I played too many other instruments to be able to do that. I sort of collected instruments as I was growing up; I started with piano but then I played clarinet, oboe, bass, guitar, accordion. I kept racking them up so I was always going from one to the other. I just loved music. Piano can be very isolating because you have to spend so much time alone working at it, but then all these other instruments gave me the ability to play with other people.

All of that is so amazing. It’s so amazing that your teacher did that. There’s so much trust she had in this process, and the fact you were able to sit in and see all this at 12 is mindblowing.

It was crazy because I went to school with a lot of these people. Some of them were my friends and some were people I didn’t know, but I was sitting at the piano overhearing everything. but it was funny because they came in and my role was to just be there as a silent support, and I would sit and nod along (laughter). It was so nice for people to open up so easily. I liked feeling like I could be part of that experience for them, and I think that was my first experience with therapy. I mean, at the time I didn’t know that but it was just so special.

This teacher meant so much to everybody. I remember one time, this girl came in and she was in 7th or 8th grade and was like, “I gained weight and my stomach is so fat.” Lynn Winters, the voice teacher, was one of the most beautiful, bright, and charismatic women. It was just how she carried herself. You could tell she didn’t give a fuck what people thought she looked like. And I’ll never forget this: she stands up and grabs her stomach fat and says, “Oh, you think you can’t be beautiful because you have a stomach? We are women. We are meant to bear life. Do you know why we have fat in our bellies? Because we carry life here! And you should be proud of that! Don’t ever let anyone make you feel ashamed of your body!”

And I’m just hearing this as a 12 year old and it was like, whoa. I grew up during a time when it was like 100-calorie snack pack this, Nicole Ritchie that. So to hear a woman just say, “We’re women! We’re supposed to have fat in our stomach!” was so inspiring. She had so much of an impact on me. And I think that’s why I’m so emotionally open—I’ve always thought of music as something safe. (As a side note, I don’t know many millennial women who escaped unscathed from the PTSD of growing up in the weight watchers/Paris Hilton era of pop culture.)

Wow, she’s a legend.

She is. She’s really amazing. And that was my first job, and so I never wanted to do anything else. I felt like I hit a cheat code in a game (laughter).

You mentioned that playing piano was a solace for you because of some childhood turbulence. Did you talk with her personally too?

Yeah, definitely. She was a safe person for me to talk with about stuff going on in my life. And I think every kid has issues with their parents during their teenage years, so to have another person you can talk with who you know isn’t going to tell on you—that’s just really great to have. I’ve had every kind of music teacher, across the whole spectrum. She was my first truly impactful music teacher—a voice teacher, not one of my piano teachers—but I’ve had teachers who have literally stalked me and sexually harassed me and have said disgusting things to me, but I think because I experienced Lynn’s magic and drive so early on in my life, I never once questioned that I wouldn’t be able to make it in music. It was never like, oh these people are toxic and mean—there’s shitty people everywhere and in every profession, but there are really good people in music and they’re really special. The positives outweighed the negatives.

Who was the next teacher, then, who had the biggest impact on who you are? Who came next in this lineage?

Next in this lineage was this amazing piano teacher I had named Shiahnuo Wong. She really believed in me and got me to start taking piano lessons with her piano teacher from Manhattan School of Music, which was Phillip Kawin. He was a fantastic pianist and was known as the preeminent interpreter of Schumann. He was the best. He was kind of too good for me to be studying with him (laughter), but she got me to study with him. And in piano, that really helped my chops a lot as a classical musician.

The most formative was my professor in college, Stephen Rush, who taught me prepared piano and all contemporary repertoire. He was the big star of my tutelage journey. As a professor, he taught the most experimental courses, like stuff you couldn’t get away with now. He taught a class that was called “Four Crazies” and it was about Messiaen, Oliveros, Sun Ra, and Cage. He was just one of those people who were like, “I’m gonna show you the most fucked music and it’s gonna blow your mind.” (laughter). He was the teacher who exposed me to all the contemporary music that blew my mind and at the end of each school year, he did an illegal concert in the dance school and performed John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes. They didn’t let you prepare the pianos at the music school, but at the dance school you could, so he would do one there at night, and when I first heard him play, I was like, oh this is the coolest music I’ve ever heard. I wanted to learn everything that he knew.

He wasn’t a piano professor—he was in the music technology department—but his background was in piano and he had multiple piano degrees. I was studying classical piano and also technology at [University of] Michigan. And after my sophomore year, I had kind of finished all my piano credits, and so I was like, “I’ve done all my requirements, can I get credit to take piano lessons with this teacher who will teach me modern music?” I had three department heads who signed off on this request and the school said no! They said they didn’t think a student should be getting credit to learn this music. And I just wanted to learn contemporary piano music, I just wanted to learn music that had been written in the last 50 to 75 years, and they didn’t want to give me credit for that.

And so Stephen taught me—I didn’t get credit and he didn’t get paid. He did it out of the kindness of his heart. He said, “I can tell that you really want to learn this music and I have this very specific thing I can give, and you have an interest in it, so I’m gonna pass this knowledge to you.” He gave me free piano lessons for an entire year and at the end I had a recital where I played John Cage, George Crumb, John Adams. He was the one who taught me about all the extended piano techniques, and it was from studying with him that I was like, okay, fucking around with the piano is going to be my thing (laughter).

And I’ve mostly known you as a prepared pianist. Obviously you’re doing different things now, but what do you feel like is the arc of your career when thinking about these lessons you had with this teacher and then an album like Ultraviolet (2018)? How has your practice evolved?

Even though I played prepared piano music in college, I didn’t actually attempt to make any until 2016. And that was because, at the time, I had such a reverence for Cage and thought that if I did it, it’d be immediately compared to him. “I’ll just let him have that.” (laughter). There were so many other piano techniques I felt I could explore. During the first week of school, one of my professors was like, “Oh, you’re into EBows on guitars? You can put that on the piano!” I started realizing that you could generate sounds from inside the piano with the strings.

In college, I got really into building my own digital instruments from sampling extended piano techniques. So I would set up the mics and I would go inside the piano and pluck every single string, and then I’d map it to a MIDI controller so that the notes would correspond. I’d play a MIDI controller and it was triggering the inside of the piano and it would sound like I was plucking it, and I could play really fast and play these chords. So early on I thought, I could spend the rest of my life coming up with different ways to generate sound from a piano, just entertaining myself. I could put an EBow in the piano, I could pluck the strings, I could mute them, I could sample them, I could throw granular synthesis on them. I also had a phase where distorted piano was my favorite thing in the world, and it became an inside joke in one of my composition classes that it was my thing. It’s such a harmonically rich instrument and there are so many ways you can deconstruct it and filter it through so many things. I’m continuously inspired by it.

Growing up, when I was playing classical pieces, I’d be like, “This has been done before. Anybody could do this.” I wanted to do something different that was just for me - that interested me more. The other week, a friend texted me and asked how I was doing and I said, “I’m just busy making painstakingly neurotic player piano compositions.” You know, just normal well-adjusted human behavior (laughter).

You mentioned earlier that you played piano and then played all these other instruments as well. Do you feel like playing these other instruments shaped the way you approach piano? Like, if you hadn’t played these other instruments, do you feel like that would’ve affected your relationship with the piano, or do you think that’s entirely separate?

That’s definitely not separate at all. I started playing the string bass when I was in fourth grade and it was just because our orchestra needed a bass player and I was really tall, so I was like, sure (laughter). You can bow a double bass, and I remember eventually realizing, “Oh, I can also bow inside a piano.” There are certain things you learn with instruments that translate to others. Like, learning how to do harmonics on a string instrument helped me to do harmonics on the piano.

It’s funny—part of the reason I collected so many instruments growing up is because I don’t have the longest attention span. As much as I loved music, I could never practice the piano for more than an hour and a half without taking a break or doing something else. I loved to play piano and then play clarinet and then play the bass. It was fun to mix it up. And because piano was such a solitary activity, playing these other instruments gave me a chance to socialize and play with other people. I played in rock bands with other people, or played in symphony band and orchestra in school. It can be really isolating and lonely to be very serious about an instrument when you’re young. It’s not like you have to, but I ended up spending a lot of time by myself playing piano.

Do you feel like you still have this need to spend time playing with other people? Does this still hold true today?

I haven’t really had a lot of opportunities to play music with other people. In the last couple of years it’s been with FKA twigs and Lucinda Chua—our little trio performances. I’ve been so focused on this record, Moves in the Field (2024), that I haven’t had a lot of collaborative playing experiences. I would definitely like to, though.

Do you mind talking about playing with FKA twigs and Lucinda Chua?

Both of them are so utterly brilliant, each in their own right. I saw Lucinda a couple of weeks ago in New York and that was one of the most astonishing concerts I’ve ever been to. She’s so talented. Her voice and her lyrics and the feeling of her music is so beautiful. She’s a really incredible musician. She doesn’t read music—she’s a Suzuki student—so she’s really intuitive and it’s really fun working with her. She’s able to feel things so effortlessly. Just a lovely, lovely person.

And twigs is just, you know, one of the best singers in the world (laughter). She’s a very inspiring person to work with. The first time I worked with her was when we did Jimmy Fallon. They had this concept for the performance where twigs was gonna be pole dancing on top of the piano. They wanted a female pianist because they wanted to flip the trope of the sexy woman on top of the piano where there’s a man playing, and they were like, let’s have all women musicians instead. So that was the first time I got to do anything like that with her, and I remember the creative team gave me the brief of the performance. I remember opening it and thinking, holy fuck, she’s gonna be pole dancing on the piano I’m playing? I better strap in (laughter).

I remember seeing the performance treatment PDF and it was my first time seeing anything like that. The way her team had put together these ideas and fleshed out the concept, and there was the costuming and a storyline. It was a theatrical production, and I was so intrigued about it. She’s someone who thinks about every aspect of the performance—she considers the aesthetic, the outfit, the presentation. I have so much respect for how well-rounded she is and for all the thought that goes into all the art that she makes. It’s not just about the music or visuals; the entirety of the piece is the art. Does that make sense?

Yeah, for sure.

I’m sorry, I think my edible just hit (laughter).

I was actually really interested in talking with you about weed.

I already told the guy at the New York Times that I smoke weed. Like, I’m not proud of being a stoner, but I’m also a musician—I don’t think this should be controversial.

Oh yeah, I don’t think it’s controversial at all. Do you feel like being a stoner has an affect on the way you approach your music?

I loved music before I ever had my mind altered by any substance. (in a cheeky tone) Music was my first mind-altering substance, you know? (laughter). I’m just the kind of person who likes to see and experience things from different emotional vantage points, and I do appreciate that I can appreciate art from these alternative perspectives.

Has it ever had a direct impact on any of the records you’ve made in a way you can trace?

…Yeah (laughter). I will say, I’ve had really positive experiences writing music on psychedelics. And I’m down to talk with you about this. When I made Ultraviolet, I initially made all the music when I was tripping on acid. I had taken three hits of acid and I had taken a lot because I really wanted to go deep and get lost inside my mind. I really needed a reset. I had been struggling to write music for this artist who was torturing me. They were telling me, “I don’t like this piece you’re writing, it’s no good. You can do better than this. This melody doesn’t have any direction.” It was like pulling teeth, and one day I needed to just turn my brain off and not think about any of it, just go to the forest and the beach and melt a little bit.

So I took three hits of acid and when I was in the woods, I was squatting down and listening to all the trees and the birds and thinking about how beautiful it is to listen to nature and when things weren’t trying hard and just existing. I had been trying so hard to make this music for this person and I needed to let this flow out of me. I needed to stop forcing it and just let go of all these expectations and goals with music. So I went back home and had everything set up and just started playing. And the first thing that I played was “Autowave.” Suddenly I started improvising and my brain started to improvise in a way where it felt like I was creating these song structures in real time. It wasn’t just aimless improvisation; I was coming back to ideas and expanding upon them. It really blew my mind open in a way that was very unique and kind of life-changing for me.

So I had this special experience and it was a one-time thing. I don’t take acid all the time to write music. There was one time where I was like, oh, let me take acid again and make another whole record. And it didn’t quite work like that—lightning didn’t strike twice. One thing I learned from this is that it’s not the drug doing that; you have to have something inside you. A substance is not gonna pull a great album out of you. Being vulnerable with yourself and going deep into your feelings—when you’re honest with yourself—is how you’re gonna pull out the best art and expression from yourself.

Right, and this makes so much sense given all the stress you had been feeling at the time.

All the circumstances were just right. It’s funny because the second time I took acid and made music—it was two years after I first did it—I remember being like, “I’m gonna make a ton of sick music today! Here we go!” I remember sitting at the piano and thinking, “When’s the brilliant spark of inspiration gonna come out?” And it didn’t! (laughter).

This is an incredible story.

I felt so stupid! So stupid. I really thought that I was this much of a savant that I could take this substance again and fart out a masterpiece because I was manifesting it. It doesn’t fucking happen like that! (laughter). So after that I was like, this is silly. I need to go back to a more sustainable method of composing that is not reliant on psychedelics. Then COVID hit a month later and, honestly, I started smoking way too much weed. I’m really proud of myself for how much I cut back because weed can absolutely be detrimental to your life. Every person who smokes needs to be honest about it because it is a drug at the end of the day, and any substance can be addictive. I believe anything in this world can be addictive if you try hard enough, you know?

During the pandemic, I was smoking way too much weed and it hurt my creative process. It can be fun, but when you’re relying on it as a crutch to get through the day, it’s not gonna give you good results. You have to work hard. Weed made me less motivated to finish the record because there were no tours or opportunities on the horizon during the pandemic. I think the most important ingredient for making good art is being emotionally in tune with yourself, which is why I had to find a different purpose and approach for this album.

When did the songs on Moves in the Field first originate? I know you got a Disklavier from Yamaha.

I started writing the record in 2019. I got signed to Warp in late 2017, put out my record in 2018, and then I was touring in all of 2019. I was touring with OPN in the beginning and then I was touring by myself all around the world. And for the first time I was like, oh my god I’m finally touring and my career is on the rise and it’s so great. And I played at all these festivals and I’m a pianist, so I tend to play earlier in the festival—I’m not, like, closing the night (laughter). But I loved it because I would play and then just chill and have fun. I would dance all night and end up partying, going to all these techno afterparties until the late hours. It rubbed off on me and I was like, “I want to make music that people can dance to!” Ultraviolet is all improv and very vibey but I wanted to bounce my head around and dance.

So initially, I set out to make a record that was propulsive and poppy. It was prepared piano and electronics, and it was going to be more loop-based and rhythmic and dance-y. I made four tracks in that vein and then the pandemic hit, and once it hit, my ability to write for prepared piano just disintegrated. Maybe because I had been working with it too much or it was too familiar, but I wasn’t feeling inspired by it anymore. And I was like, ugh, my entire life stopped. I was supposed to go to Coachella with FKA twigs in 2020—that’s what COVID took from me! And I’m sitting at home, and I’m living with my mom at the time because prior to COVID, my parents got a divorce. It was just messy shit. I was regressing the fuck out and I was… trying to write clubby piano music? Like no, this is not happening (laughter). I was going to make my great techno record in my bedroom with my mom in the next room over, while there’s a pandemic? Yeah, the inspiration just died (laughter).

But prior to COVID hitting, Yamaha loaned me a Disklavier. I was writing a duet for myself and Missy Mazzoli and I asked them—I’m such a brat (laughter)—for this piano because I thought it’d be great to hear these two pianos in real time. So they loaned me this Disklavier for a month, and then the pandemic hit and they were like, “Just hold onto that, we’re not gonna need it anytime soon.”

Wow, that’s perfect.

It was perfect! I was stuck in isolation, but I now had a duet partner. I had been writing these very loop-based prepared piano pieces and I thought, let me see how they sound on the Disklavier. And once I started doing that, I was like, oh this is cool, this is the next year of my life. This is the new spiral we’re going down (laughter). In a good way.

What was the first piece you finished that ended up on the album?

There were two. It was “Don’t Trust Mirrors,” because that was the duet I wrote for myself and Missy. And then “Sodalis (II),” which I just released today. I remember when I did the Disklavier arrangement for that, I thought it was cool because I felt I could arrange the entire range of the piano. I could have the bass doubled and I could have the entire instrument resonating. I never looked back.

How do you feel like the Disklavier pushed you in ways that previous interactions with the piano hadn’t?

Getting to experience yourself as a musician from the perspective of a listener is so trippy.

Whoa, yeah.

It’s so insane to sit at the piano and play, and then walk to the other side of the room and press play and listen to myself. I’d be like, whoa, I sound like that? Crazy. It’s quite humbling to work with the Disklavier. I learned that it’s so easy to get carried away. You can bang the hell out of your instrument because it feels good and cathartic, but sometimes the things that feel really good to play don’t always sound the best to the listener. Playing with the Disklavier has really taught me the power of restraint and subtlety, and it’s given me a lot to think about in terms of expressive nuance. It made me such a more sensitive listener and performer.

Are there any specific songs on the album that represent this restraint? I feel like “It’s Okay to Disappear” maybe captures that.

“Don’t Trust Mirrors,” definitely. And you’re right, “It’s Okay to Disappear” for sure. And “Hypno” as well. The arrangement I currently have for it is so delicate. The more delicate that song becomes, the more beautiful it is. And another thing that’s rubbed off on me are the Sakamoto projects I’ve been doing.

I was just about to ask about that. So much of his piano work is powerful because of that restraint, because of their delicate nature.

Exactly. Learning his music was an exercise in restraint in control. It had a really big impact on me for sure. It’s funny, there would be times when I’m learning his pieces and I’d listen back to his recordings and I’d be like, “Oh god I’m playing this twice as fast as him, I need to slow the fuck down.” (laughter). I thought I was playing it slow enough but it was actually so much slower. Or I would learn it and be like, “He’s playing it so soft, I need to play this 20 times softer.” And it was the right call—that sensitivity is so powerful.

The time I started learning his music was around the same time that everything with Israel and Palestine was getting more fucked up. My best friend in the world is Palestinian and her family had to flee Palestine for Egypt, and this is just an issue that I have cared about for a long time. I’m online—as are you—and finally seeing it come to a head in the public consciousness… you know, I’m a sensitive person and I don’t like genocide, and I would just be on the train reading about everything inhumane that Israel was doing in Gaza. And I would get to the studio and play this beautiful music. When I was learning his music at this time, I felt like I was witnessing the absolute worst of humanity, and then I would go into the studio and had to play the most gentle, sensitive music that I possibly could. To me, this music represents the best of what humanity is—it’s pure beauty, vulnerability, and emotion. In a world that’s increasingly horrific and violent, Sakamoto’s music made me want to be an even softer, gentler, kinder person. That’s what it demanded of me.

That makes a lot of sense. What was it like to release the Vesela EP (2023)? And I remember you had the show at Pioneer Works. I remember I tweeted and asked that you play the most challenging piece or something.

To play the one that scares you.

What did you end up playing?

I ended up playing “Energy Flow” and that one is so scary to play. Some of the sheet music I have differs from what is on his recordings, but the sheet music I have for that, the right hand is playing a very simple melody and the left hand is playing a chord or an interval with every note that the right hand is playing. It’s changing the interval or chord on every note, and so you’re changing your hand position. It’s very subtle. He’s changing the harmony and the voice leading and it sounds so simple but it’s so hard and it’s so scary to play for that reason. The intro for that song is so scary because I have to be so careful with my shifts, but when I get it, it’s so satisfying. And so I knew I could do it on my own, but going back to what I said earlier, playing it at the show was the true test of how much I had internalized the music.

I do have to ask about the music video for “Butterfly Phase.” For that you got [figure skater] Liz Schmidt. How’d you come up with the idea for this video? I’m just thinking about what you said earlier with FKA twigs, about this whole idea of having a complete vision of the artistry. I really feel like that’s true with this new album for you.

It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to have someone skate to my music. I’ve always been a big fan of skating. Growing up, my best friend Gillian was a figure skater and I would go to her competitions to support her and I would fantasize, like, “I wish I could do that.” I love that it’s a sport that combines athleticism with creativity, and there’s music! It’s a performance—it’s theatrical and fun—but it’s also beautiful. I’ve always been a really bad dancer and badly coordinated, so I really admire and respect people who can do beautiful things with their bodies. And so I love working with people who can. I love watching dancers and skaters, and I’ve worked a lot with dancers as well. I started getting back into figure skating in 2018. I’ve always been an ambient fan of figure skating, but I became feral again in 2018 (laughter).

What sparked that?

The Olympics that year. Yuzuru Hanyu won his second Olympic gold medal on my birthday, so that was really exciting for me. For the ladies’ competition that year, it was a real Sophie’s choice between the first and second, who are both from Russia. The girl that got second lost by a point and she was my girl. It was just a dramatic Russian tragedy. Anyways, it got me interested in the sport again and I started following it. Ever since the Olympics, I’d watch skating with my friends and they’d be like, “Someone should skate to your music.” And I’d be like, “Obviously I’d love that.”

When I started this record, it was in quarantine and I was watching so much figure skating. I joined a Patreon group of skating fans. We would get together on Zoom, not once but twice a week for two hours and watch skating videos together. It was this community of intense skating nerds.

In 2021, I went to a clinic in New Jersey because this choreographer, Benoît Richaud, was doing a master class. He became super famous after the 2022 Olympics because the girl who got bronze had her programs choreographed by him. He’s known for being the most avant-garde choreographer in figure skating, and my friends and I drove to his skating clinic in New Jersey. I went with my skating friends from New York and we saw this girl in the class and she was amazing, and we were like, who is she? And skaters can be so intimidating because they’re so beautiful and fit and you think they’re gonna be mean. I was so scared to talk to Liz because I had never seen anyone look so graceful.

Afterwards I said hi to her and she was the sweetest person ever. We started talking about music and when she heard I was a musician, she became very interested in working together. I ended up giving her a ride back to the city, and in our car ride she starts talking about how much she loves FKA twigs and I told her that I play piano for her sometimes, and so it was this meeting where she was like, “A lot of the music I’m into, you’re into, and you love skating too—let’s be friends.” So we just hit it off.

When Benoît came to New York, I dm’d him and told him I was a musician. We started talking about me doing music for his skaters. He was teaching here for a week and I went and saw him, and I was like, (sheepishly) “Do you wanna choreograph this music video, haha.” And he was like, “I don’t think I have any time to do that.” And I was like, “Please? There are no rules, you can do whatever you want.” And then the next day he texts us and says, “I have icetime at 4:30,” so Liz and I just dropped everything we were doing and drove to New Jersey to see him.

He basically did it as a passion project because he said that when he choreographs for skaters, he has to follow so many rules because there has to be this many spins and this many jumps and a step sequence. He was kind of complaining about having to follow all these rules and how limiting it was, and we gave him total freedom to do whatever he wanted. And he agreed because it was just going to be pure art.

I remember when he was working with Liz, he wanted her costume to be like no costume. He wanted her to wear a nude bra and boy shorts. I remember thinking, like, give her an outfit dude. There were a bunch of costume ideas for her and then the day of the shoot, we tested all of them out and the one he suggested was the best because, well, she looks almost naked, but because of that you’re able to focus on her amazing body lines—you’re not distracted by a costume.

Is there anything we didn’t talk about today that you wanted to mention? Is there a question you always wanted to be asked?

A question that I’ve always wanted to be asked? “How does she do it?” (laughter). I’m just kidding. Oh wait, I did want to tell you one other thing about the acid stuff. You know how I tried it a second time thinking, “Oh yeah, let’s cook up another masterpiece,” but then failed. So after that, I thought, okay I get it, I need to actually do the work to make good music. So when I made Moves in the Field, I knew I had to put in a lot of effort. It was a really effortful album. And a lot of that was from me exploring the Disklavier, and that was a whole process in and of itself because I was learning its limits and what I could do with it.

I didn’t try to do acid for a very long time until last summer. I wrote “Vesela” and “Soft Focus” with the help of psychedelics. In summer of last year, I was dating this guy and it was one of those 0-to-100 things. And then he dumped me in the cruelest way.

How so?

It was out of nowhere. We were dating for a few months and he had been saying that he was falling in love with me and that he wanted me to move in and have his kids. He really put me on a pedestal. It was intense. And then one day he calls me and says, “I think this is moving too fast. Sorry, maybe in six months I’ll be ready, I just can’t do this right now, work is too busy.” And then he hung up on me, and when I tried to call him back, he had blocked my number.

Oh my god.

No one’s ever said “bye” to me and blocked my number. It was shocking. I had never been so swept off my feet and then tossed into the dumpster immediately after. And I was so distraught. Even though he ended up being an asshole, I liked him so much and we had so much chemistry, and it had been so long since I felt like that for someone. I’m at an age now where I want to settle down, you know? I’m 36! I’m ready! And it was just really disappointing and hard to get over at first. I had made myself super vulnerable and was so kind to this person, and I was so devastated by how terribly they treated me, but the twisted part of my brain was like, well, this is traumatic but how about we lean into this? Let’s exploit how fucked up you feel right now and see if we can pull something positive from it.

I thought that I could go about this in two ways. I could smoke myself into oblivion and eat a tub of ice cream while watching The Real Housewives to prevent myself from feeling anything, or I could get into the studio and sublimate these feelings at the piano. And so I took some acid knowing that I was going to feel really heartbroken and sad. Instead of running away from my feelings, instead of numbing myself, I wanted to feel more of this pain. I wanted to allow myself to cry and for my body to feel like shit and get it all out. And I wanted to do that with music. I had a day where I recorded with the Disklavier and it was really intense. I was really going into the piano, just physically getting my feelings out by playing super intensely, and I would play these sculptural tremolo sounds. And I would record them, sit back, and just listen to the piano play it back. I felt like I was hearing my pain refracted at me.

It was during that session that I really wanted to write music that could surround me in a blanket of comfort. I was not okay and I wanted to be surrounded by music that made me feel okay. So in that session, I wrote “Vesela” and “Soft Focus.” And so this did all happen again, but I had to be…

There was this intention there.

Yeah. And the intention wasn’t to make a record, it was to feel the pain as deeply as I could and have something cathartic happen to express how heartbroken I felt. With “Soft Focus,” I think about the melody as two people. There’s an interval with these two notes that gets spaced out until they’re as far as they can be—on the opposite ends of the piano.

This goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, of how the piano was able to be this therapeutic instrument. It created this space for you.

Yeah. And the reason that I called it Vesela is because, during my trip, I was thinking about the fact that the piano is a vessel. I’m banging into this instrument and processing my pain through it and I was thinking that this instrument is a vessel of healing. And I kept thinking “vesela” because I tend to feminize things a lot. I kept saying it over and over and then I laughed hysterically and was like, okay, that’s the name (laughter). This experience made me realize that no matter how devastated I feel from something, I always have the piano to help me heal and process what I’m going through.

There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

Wow. That’s a great question. (pauses to think for a long time). I don’t know why I’m taking so long to answer this. It’s a really good question but—

You can take your time.

(pauses to think). One of my first instincts, and I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate it, was to say that I love that I never give up hope. No matter how dark or hopeless something can feel, I always believe that I will find a way through. That’s something I love about myself.

Kelly Moran’s new album, Moves in the Field, can be purchased at the Warp website and at Bandcamp.

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Thank you for reading the 132nd issue of Tone Glow. Figure skating nerds rise up.

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