EMERGING FRENCH-ENGLISH PIANIST RIOPY ANNOUNCES UPCOMING ALBUM THRIVE OUT APRIL 14

Photo credit: Pierre-Emmanuel Rastoin, 2023

Composed over the last two years during a period of uncertainty and fear, RIOPY’s new album THRIVE–out April 14– “represents the inner strength that pushes us to fight in moments of doubt or sorrow.” Accompanying the announcement are the record’s first single, “Nocturne,” and video–listen here

THRIVE marks the beginning of a new chapter for RIOPY. It builds on the success of his trilogy of albums, RIOPY (2018), Tree of Light (2019) and Bliss (2021), which have accumulated more than half a billion streams and achieved significant chart success: Tree of Light remains near the top of the Billboard classical chart after more than 120 weeks. It will be the first of his albums to include strings alongside the evocative and powerful pianism which has earned the pianist-composer an ever-growing international following.

THRIVE is also a metaphor for RIOPY’s personal journey. During RIOPY’s unique upbringing in rural France, he found solace in music, improvising on the piano alone as a means to escape the stress and anxiety of the real world. When he was able to listen to music, RIOPY would imagine expansions of the melodies he heard. The album THRIVE was born from the same process: “One day, I was playing Satie’s famous Gymnopédie and kept expanding it and from that little seed, THRIVE was born. In taking inspiration from the greatest classical composers, I wanted to show how I interpret and shape their music in my mind.”

As well as new compositions for solo piano, the album features the composer-pianist’s take on famous music which has most inspired him, including works by Satie, Pachelbel, Beethoven, Fauré, Debussy and Chopin. He has transformed their much-loved melodies into cinematic scores of his own, and composed lush arrangements for string orchestra. He explains: “The piano has always helped me find this momentum, this inner strength, and composing for strings has opened up new horizons for me. The reinterpreted melodies on this album are a metaphor to show that everything can evolve.”