unfolding
a journey through phases of life in ten tracks, featuring the sounds of piano, brass, electronics, orchestra, and chorus
1 All That Came Before Birth: Unfolding from all that came before
2 New Day Childhood: Improvising, rough imperfections full of life
3 Icarus Early teens: Struggling while trying to fly - how high?
4 Interlude Late teens: Reflecting, considering, and doubting, yet hopeful
5 Progression Early twenties: Relentless beat of society building, spirit yearning for release
6 Ascent Late twenties: Exploring identity, primal energy driving
7 No Script Early thirties: No more defining life by others’ rules - there is no script
8 Remembering Late thirties: Waves guiding back to breath - intuition resurfacing
9 Onward Early forties: Choosing optimism despite struggle
10 Atomsphere Late forties: Atomic and atmospheric, nothing to grasp - letting go
about the album
PLUNKING
I’ve been making music since I was about five, plunking out made-up tunes on an old upright piano while my mom cooked chicken and mashed potatoes, my little brothers crawling around, occasionally plunking along with me on the piano, toy xylophones and drums, and each other’s heads.
It didn’t occur to me that plunking out made-up tunes was in fact composing. I was just happy to hear the sounds. Some combinations of plunks sounded good, others, not so much. It's taken me over forty years to realize that that joy of discovery is enough - not just in music, but more generally in life. We have intuitions, we plunk around, we see how it goes.
As we grow up, we take on rules about the right way to do things. We gain acceptance, we feel safe, and sometimes stand out for following the rules. This can lead to good things like getting jobs and paying our bills. It can also come with a cost. We can forget that doing things that give us joy for the sake of doing them is a very gratifying way to be. And it’s easy to forget that perfection in any real sense is unachievable. We get hung up on whether we’re doing something right – rather than whether it gives us joy. And we forget that imperfections are full of life and are often beautiful.
This album, in large part, is about remembering that.
New Day is dedicated to every five-year-old kid plunking out made up stuff. I recorded it, as an adult, in a one-take improvisation. It’s raw. It is as if you’re sitting at the piano, hearing all the creaks, breaths and plunks. I debated whether to leave that all that in the track. I heard a recording of Glenn Gould once and was amazed that I could hear him humming along as he flawlessly played a Bach fugue. If Gould could leave in the hum, I can leave in the plunk!
WEAVING
Samples of the piano recording of New Day are woven through the album. They’re stretched, squashed, reversed, chopped, and spliced. In some cases, the layering of the piano and other sounds is like a dialog, and in others the layering is more textural. Many of the legato string sounds are not actually recordings of strings at all, but rather reversed, time-stretched samples of New Day.
You'll also hear brass punctuating key moments. Trumpet playing is something I’ve done since I was nine. It is a joy that I share with the love of my life, and my brothers and stepdad. Many are recordings of me playing an acoustic trumpet, while others are synthesized. The orchestral and choral sounds on the album are also synthesized throughout. Many bits of these sounds come and go, woven throughout tracks to unify the sound world of the album.
DISCOVERY
With synthesizers - especially modular and semi-modulars in all their forms - you can make epic chaos. Lots of traditional rules of music go out the window, and it’s beautiful! When I realized that patching synths was quite literally a way to conduct energy, I was hooked. What a playground for discovery! Often in synthesis, the fun happens when something unexpected emerges from something planned. It can be a very profound thing. You just have to listen and let go. So too in life!
EMERGENCE
While the album ended up having a unifying concept, it didn't start that way. It really began with a desire to boil down almost thirty hours of synthesizer improvisations into something easier to digest that held together well. I didn't have much of a plan beyond that initially.
I started by listening to all those improvised recordings over and over, noting parts that made me feel something. I gravitated to a few distinct kinds of sounds and made sketches of those sounds.
Some sounds felt more vertical: sparkles, drops, and some piano parts, while others felt more horizontal: smooth pads, buzzy pads, and vocal oohs and aahs. Capturing ideas this way, visually, inspired me to experiment with a few things; having vertical sounds emerge from other vertical sounds, laying vertical sounds on horizontal sounds, and having one kind of horizontal sound emerge from another.
I heard the piano as both vertical and horizontal, so there could be any combination of layering with other sounds, really. This was a bit of a lightbulb moment, as it resonated with the idea of having New Day recur throughout the album as connective tissue.
I put these symbolic sketches on a timeline to explore ways to structure the album in terms of the sounds themselves.
Independent of the sound sketching, I also created a timeline with text annotations. This helped me pull it all together and note how things might flow conceptually.
This was what sparked the idea to treat each track as a particular life phase. It helped me decide how emotions could be reflected in sound, layered, and put in order. It was a way to map the journey that unifies the album.
After this sketch served its purpose, I let the sounds to lead the way, unfolding as it would.
After this sketch served its purpose, I let the sounds to lead the way, unfolding as it would.
THANK YOU
My intent in putting this music into the world is to connect with you. I hope making a human connection through art provides some comfort.
Thank you for listening and for reading. I hope you experience all the beauty of life in all the ways it unfolds.
Jason Oliveira
March 2025
March 2025
ABOUT THE ALBUM ART
Like the music, the cover art for Unfolding is a layering of other material. I took the cave photograph at Sutro baths in San Francisco, and digitally superimposed a mixed media piece of mine called "Emergence".
