Rockers Coheed & Cambria land on Earth – Pianist Kovacevich beats stroke, celebrates 75th birthday

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Writer Abi Morgan, from left, Helen Pankhurst, producer Alison Owen, Carey Mulligan, director Sarah Gavron and producer Faye Ward attend the premiere for "Suffragette" at the Paris Theatre on Monday, Oct. 12, 2015, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Writer Abi Morgan, from left, Helen Pankhurst, producer Alison Owen, Carey Mulligan, director Sarah Gavron and producer Faye Ward attend the premiere for “Suffragette” at the Paris Theatre on Monday, Oct. 12, 2015, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

ASBURY PARK, United States, Oct 13, (Agencies): Coheed and Cambria built an avid fan base by creating an epic new galaxy both through hard-charging guitar rock and a parallel series of comic books. But after selling more than 1.5 million albums, events here on Earth — most notably, fatherhood — have led the band for the first time to take up real-life matters directly.

“The Color Before the Sun,” the band’s eighth album which comes out on Friday, is the first by Coheed and Cambria to break out of the fantasy concept and offers a more rugged, stripped-down feel compared with the band’s trademark tightly woven, yet blaring, productions.

“When I started this idea in ’98, I started it because I wasn’t a secure frontman or lyricist. I created a concept to essentially hide my feelings behind,” singer and guitarist Claudio Sanchez told AFP as the band prepared to take the stage Sunday night at The Stone Pony in the New Jersey beach town of Asbury Park, the first stop on a tour of the United States and Mexico.

In a novelty for the band, Sanchez and fellow guitarist Travis Stever were joined in the dressing room by their sons, each under two years old.

“I was — and still am — a shy, reclusive, insecure individual. And for me it was easy to create a piece of fiction, because that way that fiction would get judged and I as a person wouldn’t,” Sanchez said.

“At 37, I feel a little more secure. I feel like this is something I can do. I can allow the songs to speak for themselves.”

Moving

The concept — or lack thereof — for “The Color Before the Sun” came as Sanchez and his wife, fellow comic writer Chondra Echert, decided to leave their home in upstate New York and briefly tried Paris, Los Angeles and Florida before moving to New York City.

Settled in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, a tony neighborhood with omnipresent strollers, Sanchez felt a sudden, disconcerting “exposure” as he realized that he could no longer follow his long routine of writing, far out of neighbors’ earshot, in the early morning.

Sanchez decided to go fully for a real-world album after learning that he would become a father.

The song “Ghost” is driven almost entirely by an anxious acoustic guitar as Sanchez wonders what type of father he will be to his son Atlas, singing in an uncharacteristically gentle voice, “How am I to keep from blemishing this masterpiece?”

Elsewhere on the album, “Here to Mars” is not a return to science fiction but instead a love song by Sanchez to his wife, with the guitars building to make a classic alternative rock chorus rather than one of Coheed and Cambria’s sci-fi sagas.

“Normally, I would flip it and create a concept that would basically act as a curtain to the real things that inspired the album,” Sanchez said.

“This time around, I just thought, you know, this is such a new phase in my life — becoming a father — so why not share that artistically?”

As Sanchez adapted to Brooklyn, his life came full circle as his house in upstate New York — where Coheed and Cambria wrote four albums — was partially destroyed after renters apparently turned it into a marijuana grow house.

The band mourned the house with a song, “Young Love.”

Adding to the direct feel of the album, “The Color Before the Sun” marks the first time that Coheed and Cambria has recorded live in a studio, working with producer Jay Joyce whose past credits includes alternative rockers Cage The Elephant.

California-born pianist Stephen Kovacevich, who made his public debut at age 11, has a lot to be thankful for as he celebrates his 75th birthday this week — including being alive.

He and his former wife, the virtuoso Martha Argerich, will play piano duets at London’s Wigmore Hall, a box set of his recordings has been reissued and, perhaps most significantly, seven years have now passed since he suffered a near-fatal stroke.

“I’m incredibly lucky, I’ve made a total recovery. That isn’t everyone’s fate,” the affable Kovacevich told Reuters in an interview at his flat in north London, where his Steinway grand dominates one room and a stereo dominates the room below.

Kovacevich has talked to other interviewers about how his medical emergency began with a loss of some ability in his left hand and escalated with a loss of velocity in his right. It culminated with his doctors in London sending him a text message saying he had to come in that night for a Pacemaker implant.

A few days later he had the full-blown stroke, which initially left him unable to speak.

“I thought, that’s it for me, I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life,” he said. “But I could play, not fantastically. And two weeks later I played (Beethoven’s) Emperor Concerto, not fantastically, but it was good.”

So was it that famous, if not scientifically proven, notion that musicians’ brains are wired differently, that helped him recover?

All Kovacevich knows is that when he left the hospital, a specialist told him: “When you go home, you turn the key in your apartment, you go to the piano and you start.”

“So there must be something about practicing that keeps the brain working … there probably is something, it may be true,” he said.

Piano aficionados worldwide will rejoice that Kovacevich made it — and keeps going. The recording he made of Beethoven’s challenging “Diabelli Variations” in 1968 after he triumphed with it at a London recital is rated one of the best — perhaps rivalled only by one he made some 40 years later, which some critics rank even higher.

“The second one is wild,” Kovacevich said, clearly relishing recent acclaim for his later version.

What some of his admirers may not realise is how hard it has been for Kovacevich to perform at all. Like many performers, he suffers from severe — and unpredictable — bouts of stage fright.

“There have been times when I walked off” stage, Kovacevich said, adding it had happened only twice, years ago, and he feels better able to cope, having talked to a sports psychologist.

“The coach takes care of the tennis, but the sports psychologist, I know one, and he says, ‘My job is when the person is taking a penalty I get his mind to think it’s at least a half-filled glass and not a half empty glass’.”

“That helps,” Kovacevich said.

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