Otherworldly Compositions for Player Piano

Radio Feature "Freed from worrying about whether performers could actually perform the music, Nancarrow developed a body of work that is like no other."

A Photographer's Tribute
Photos by John Fago, who reflects upon his encounters with the composer.

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EVER HEARD OF THE COMPOSER CONLON NANCARROW? Probably not. His isn't exactly a household name. But Nancarrow - who died in August, 1997 - inspired a generation of composers. He wrote music that was incredibly complex - so complex, in fact, that human beings simply couldn't play it. And because performers couldn't play what Nancarrow was writing, he began creating music expressly for an instrument that requires no human hand. It's an instrument that seems to fit better in pizza parlors and shoot-'em-up saloons in old Westerns than in serious classical music: the player piano.