2025 Solo Release Series

Intro

Schultze dismantles, reconfigures, and reimagines the piano – analog, digital, automated.

In 2025, Stefan Schultze releases four solo works that investigate what the piano can be – and who or what gets to play it. These projects engage questions of identity and agency across acoustic, automated, and digital environments.

Stefan Schultze explores the piano as a versatile instrument with multiple identities – from acoustic resonance and mechanical precision to digital memory and virtual simulation. At the core lies the question of how different agents – human, mechanical, and digital – engage in musical interaction. He is particularly interested in the role of the human within these hybrid systems, and how music remains physically, sonically, and performatively tangible despite technological complexity.
His work spans improvisation, composition and sound-based performance. In projects like Hyperplexia, RadiKits, Boussole Animale, and his solo formats with prepared piano, Schultze investigates not only the instrument itself, but also its performative and social contexts. His artistic process is not solely structural or conceptual – it seeks musical expression that is embodied, present, and experientially immediate.
The 2025 releases reflect different angles of this inquiry – with player pianos, visual systems, remix strategies, and new forms of human-machine collaboration.
What can piano music be today – and what might it become?

Timeline

• 18.09.2025 – Glitch God (Come Hither)

• 16.10.2025 – Black MIDI Ballet

• 13.11.2025 – Tides

• 16.12.2025 – RMPX: BRKST01

Releases

1. GLITCH GOD (COME HITHER) – 18.09.2025

A self-playing and virtually expanded piano system interacts with a human improviser – across prepared keys, microtonal tuning, and custom-built sample libraries. An exploration of what the piano can be – culturally, physically, digitally.

Track Highlights: Glitch God · Palm · This File Knows Too Much · Crank, Crunch, Crack

9 tracks · 40 min · Hybrid compositional/improvisational

2. BLACK MIDI BALLET – 16.10.2025

A reflection on the Japanese Black MIDI subgenre with player piano, piano and virtual pianos. Includes a 3D MIDI-visual video + score follower. Hyper-notation meets post-digital virtuosity. Premiered at Moers Festival. Developed with Paul von Chamier (visual operator) and Falk Grieffenhagen (software development).

More information about this project is documented on a blog written for norient.com:

https://norient.com/stefan-schultze/exploring-black-midi-resolutions-techniques-and-thresholds

3. TIDES – 13.11.2025

A fully improvised album for piano and preparations. Tides channels the broader compositional and technological work into a raw, uninterrupted improvisational stream.

Track Highlights: Sanctum · Tide · Nomad

5 tracks · 35 min · Improvised solo piano album

4. RMPX / SHRD01 (SCHULTZE × DAYER) – 16.12.2025

Remix EP in breakcore/experimental style – reworking Glitch God material with digital fragmentation in collaboration between Stefan Schultze and Pierre Dayer.

Quotes

“Like performing open-heart surgery on a grandfather clock — in the best possible way. Beautiful, serious music by one of Europe’s most original jazz musicians.”
— Chris Elcombe, BBC Late Junction

“Stefan Schultze explores the 'unplayable' — confronting live piano with the hyper-complexity of pre-programmed systems and generative visuals. A stunning, disorienting storm of information for the senses.”
— Peter Kemper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung