Every year since 2015, musicians all over the world have paid tribute to one of the most beloved instruments ever created.
World Piano Day is celebrated on the 88th day of the year to mark the 88 keys that make up the modern instrument. Danny Carroll will be touching each one of those keys as he offers up a World Piano Day tribute concert in Winnipeg this weekend.
Carroll’s love affair with the piano began when he was growing up alongside his grandmother in Thunder Bay, Ontario. “My grandmother decided I was going to do some music,” Carroll recounted in an interview on Morning Light, “and she told me, ‘Well, you play accordion or piano.’ And I was about three feet tall and weighed 40 pounds – I couldn’t lift and accordion, so it became the piano.”
For Carroll, who has made his living as a pianist and composer in a variety of genres and venues over his career, that started an incredible journey with the instrument that ranged from lessons with a local nun to thumbing through the shelves of scores at local music stores, looking for pieces that he could share with his grandmother.
Over the years, Carroll’s relationship with the instrument has changed as he gets into new techniques and genres, and even recording an album of his own piano works called Keys of Transformation, which he released back in 2023.
“Sometimes when you sit and you’re playing, you’re going, ‘Wow, what was that? Who’s doing this?’, because I’m just letting the gates open,” he explains. “I always bring the improvisation into just about everything I play. I will be improvising because that’s what gets me moving out. It allows me to go and to express that so I don’t get bored.”
Carroll’s evolution at the keys took a decisive turn in 2018 when he suffered a heart attack. It was at that moment that Carroll decided to pursue his own piano music more fully, starting up his own record label and recording the music that would become his Keys of Transformation record.
“It’s my space,” Carroll says of the piano and the role it plays in his life today. “When I go and sit down and I just start playing… you get into that space, that flow of discovery… you can do anything you want. This is the best feeling in the world of just sitting there and creating and playing.”
Audiences at Carroll’s World Piano Day concert certainly will not be bored for the wide range of pieces that he will share. In addition to works on the solo piano, Carroll, who is also an avid electronic musician, will add colours of electronica and strings to accompany himself on the keyboard. The concert takes place at 7:30 p.m. on March 29 at Fort Garry United Church on Point Road. Tickets and more information can be found here.