Fall Update & Six Months of TTWW
Hi everybody,
Incredibly, this weekend, it will have been six months since The Trouble With Wilderness was released this spring. I'm enormously proud of this record—it was hard to make, and it's been enormously gratifying to hear from all of you who have been diving into its twelve songs over the last six months. (If you haven't checked it out yet, you can listen to the record on the platform of your choice here and read all about it here. And, importantly, you can/should buy it on CD or vinyl here!)
I put together a page that pulls together a bunch of the nice and interesting things people have written/said about TTWW in the time since its release, in case any of you want to poke through that at your leisure—that's HERE. A few of my favorite features are this episode of the excellent NHPR radio show Outside/In that featured the album and the essay that inspired it, this email co-interview I did with my friend Boyce Upholt, and this great, rambling chat I had with a Canadian forester on his podcast in June.
I've been busy in the time since I last wrote to all of you: for one thing, I had a brilliant time exploring the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas as a Tallgrass Prairie artist-in-residence this summer, meaning that I'm somehow leaving 2021 with even more songs about the prairie than I started it with. Performances have slowly but surely been kicking back into gear, and I was able to play in a few of my favorite spots in the upper Midwest in a quick swing out that way earlier this fall. Here's a neat photo from the inside of an old silo in Kansas, here's the highest point in Delaware, here's a weird scene from the edge of the Ohio River, here's a pylon and the moon, and here's a wild picture of me playing the keyboard while looking like some kind of gargoyle. And here's my new pal William Crosby, the amazing painter responsible for the image on the cover of The Trouble With Wilderness, posing with the surprisingly huge original painting in his studio.
Finally, I'm performing tomorrow night—Friday, October 22nd—at Dewey Hall in Sheffield, MA, in case any of you are near enough to swing by. It ought to be a great time: Dewey is a beautiful hall with an excellent piano in it, and as far as environs go, it's pretty hard to beat far-western Massachusetts in late October. Tickets and other info about the show are here. (I'll also be playing in Ellsworth, ME next week and in Portland, ME on 11/5; you can find details for those here.)
I'll leave you with a handful of brief clips about the record, below. Thanks so much for everything, you guys, especially for taking to this album of mine the way you have over the last six months. I miss you all, and wherever you are, I hope to be back on the road and out your way soon.
- Ben
"The Trouble With Wilderness is a deeply impressive album; I have listened to it many times in the course of reviewing it, and I am not nearly done exploring it yet. It is emotionally and intellectually satisfying in a space where it is hard to do either thing, due to the high level of mastery required to break through the sea of pianists. Cosgrove has a rare talent. Wilderness will definitely be on my top-ten best of the year. Highly recommended."- Independent Clauses
"...a beautiful and fascinating instrumental concept album that celebrates the certainty of nature’s presence in the most unnatural spaces." - The Maine Edge
"Composer Ben Cosgrove makes music that begs the listener to stop, drop and recollect. His neoclassical, instrumental compositions are immediately evocative and fully arresting. His work brims with technical mastery and emotional capital, evident in the recently released The Trouble With Wilderness." - Seven Days
"A musical work of art"- Mainly Piano
"'This Rush of Beauty and This Sense of Order' has the pop and verve of an indie-rock song, melded with mellow and post-minimalist composition chops. The final coda is absolutely a rush, punctuated by so much performerly enthusiasm that the ghost of Glenn Gould must have taken notice."- Independent Clauses
"[Cosgrove's] ability to swerve from cosmic-leaning melodies to charging rhythmic workouts shows he is basically fearless when it comes to his original compositions, and by now is ready to proceed on the paths he has built himself. And now that the wide world of nature is opening up to Ben Cosgrove’s exploration again, the skies are the limit. Just like this."- Americana Highways