Of his solo piano sounds, Timothy Cooper says: "I love the piano's ability to create oceanic sound—a great wash of sustained sound that can seem at once infinite and intimate, with no borders or boundaries--only the presence of being... Sometimes my music has no definable beginnings, no absolute endings: only waves upon waves of sound headed as if for all shores, as in the music of dreams.

"It is this sense of musical sustainability that I wish to explore, to create: Sound that rolls out to the edge of a horizon-less horizon and into a space too vast to fully comprehend, like countless waves tossed and lost across midnight seas. The beauty of pure piano is that it's capable of opening up this epic, unending space, this magnificent place where tone is magnified, sustained, and amplified. This is the sound that I search for in my music: a sustained sound that moves like I imagine the universe moves--out towards its outer edges. It's there that I find refuge, absolute intimacy. It's there that I drink from the mysterious deep and float, for a time, incredibly free.

"No words can quite describe the sound of sound or the oceanic place that I wish my music to be. But it is my hope that I reveal the angels of my soul in sound."

Bio:

Timothy Cooper began his musical career as a chorister at the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, DC. As a soprano, he performed under the demanding direction of Dr. Paul S. Callaway, Richard Dirksen and David Koehring, singing a vast repertoire of sacred and choral works written by some of the world’s leading composers.  Among them were British composers Dr. Benjamin Britten and Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as 16th century English composers William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. He also performed the major works of contemporary American composers Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Dr. Leo Sowerby and Richard Dirksen. Together with the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, Cooper recorded several LP records and toured in the United States and abroad, singing at Westminster Abbey, King John’s College Cambridge, Coventry, Chichester and Canterbury cathedrals.

As a teenager he was influenced by the innovative music of the Sixties, including recording artist Ravi Shankar. He studied sitar until he took up acoustical piano while studying film directing and writing at the American Film Institute, Center for Advanced Film Studies in Los Angeles.

Over subsequent years, he developed his own pure piano style of improvisational composition, later influenced by acoustical artists Keith Jarrett, Liz Story, Will Ackerman, Philip Aaberg, and Suzanne Ciani. In 2001, greatly moved by the attacks on the World Trade Center, Cooper finally began recording his piano improvisations.