Pitchfork Music Festival London: Hania Rani

Surrender to the hypnotic trance of the extraordinary pianist, composer and vocalist’s music at an acoustic piano recital featuring new compositions. Hania Rani’s music grabs you – its gravitational force pulls you in and doesn’t let go. Rani has emerged as a genre-blending non-conformist renowned for interweaving classical, jazz and electronic influences. Born in 1990 in Gdańsk, Poland – a city known for the Solidarity resistance movement – Rani began playing the piano at the age of seven. She eventually trained as a classical pianist in Warsaw and later pursued studies in Berlin, where she began to explore electronic music. Rani constantly seeks the new in her work, challenging herself and her audience in an active process of renewal and regeneration. It’s a driving quality that she has brought to bear on a series of extraordinary albums for Gondwana Records, including solo piano albums like 2019’s Esja and 2023’s more electronically inclined Ghosts. Beautiful duo recordings with cellist and friend Dobrawa Czocher (Deutsche Grammophon) and several art installations similarly embody Rani’s artistic vision of renewal. Rani is also behind numerous award-winning film and theatre scores, most recently composing and recording the score for Joachim Trier’s film Sentimental Value. Her latest recording, Non Fiction: Piano Concerto in Four Movements (Decca Records), was recorded at Abbey Road’s Studio Two, with Hugh Tieppo-Brunt conducting an expanded 45-piece Manchester Collecti