May 21, 2026

Tree Falls (GSI Records)

Taylor Eigsti

Released May 21, 2021

Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album

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About:

It’s often said that a debut album encapsulates the lifetime of experience leading up to its recording. Given all that Taylor Eigsti has done since the release of his last studio album, the pianist’s ambitious Tree Falls is practically his second debut. Released on May 21, 2021 by GSI in digital form, it marks the triumphant return of an artist who’s been both a global road warrior and a constant—and consistent—composer.

The title of the album, Tree Falls, alludes to that: “There’s been a lot of my own music that I’ve been doing or making over the last decade,” Eigsti says. “But I haven’t released anything of my own for over 11 years. Without letting most people hear what you’re doing, it doesn’t mean as much.”

Eigsti certainly had been building up momentum and some impressive achievements with his body of recorded work—two GRAMMY nominations for his major label debut, Lucky to Be Me (Concord Records) back in 2006, plus nominations for albums on which he’s featured in 2013, 2015 and 2016. The most recent of these, the Miles Ahead soundtrack, earned him his first win. He was also seen on a PBS Great Performances broadcast in August 2018 with superstar trumpeter Chris Botti, in whose band he toured from 2013 through mid-2018.

And it hasn’t been a lost decade for Eigsti by any means. In addition to living an impressive—and, to some, exhaustive—touring life in bands led by his peers and friends, he’s also been focused on composing and performing symphonic works as well as solo pieces. So the challenge was how to best reflect the past decade for him musically and personally.

“I wanted Tree Falls to be something that represents who I am—a really personal record,” he shares. “This is the music that is closest to my heart and my own life journey, and it took me a long time to break down the barrier and finally allow people in to that experience.”

With a dozen tracks that range from a solo piano performance and a piano- vocal duet with Becca Stevens to ones with full-on orchestral accompaniment, Tree Falls reflects both the intimate and grand musical moments of Eigsti’s previous decade. His eighth album as a leader, it reflects the many bandleading, sideman and compositional adventures that the 37-year old Manhattan resident has had since the release in 2010 of his previous album, Daylight at Midnight, on Concord Jazz.

The 11 original compositions (a 12th, “Porch Break,” is a vinyl-only interlude) reflect his continued compositional pursuits including numerous long-form orchestral commissions in which he was a soloist starting in 2006. The album’s roster of musicians includes newer and longtime friends and collaborators.

Guitarist Charles Altura and electric bassist David “DJ” Ginyard are bandmates in trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s E-Collective, with whom Eigsti has periodically toured since 2015. (He and Altura first played together at Stanford Jazz Workshop when Eigsti was 11.) And Tree Falls drummer Eric Harland, co-owner of the state-of-the-art GSI Studios at which it was recorded, has been both Eigsti’s trusted sideman and later bandleader since 2006.

“About 40% of the album has vocals,” Eigsti points out. It’s a nice representation of his extensive work with vocalists such as Sachal Vasandani, Lisa Fischer, Gretchen Parlato and Stevens—the latter two singing in various bands of his and also contributing to Tree Falls.

“There are a lot of albums with maybe one or two tracks where there’s a vocal special guest. And then there’s albums where there’s like 90 percent vocals,” he notes. “So I wanted to try to integrate vocals in a more balanced way throughout so that they could help tell these stories as a true part of the band. Playing with Gretchen and Becca has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had as a musician, and they created such a creative comfort zone that allowed for a real sense of honesty in the music.”

Casey Abrams, the vocalist/bassist who was an American Idol season 10 finalist and is a popular member of Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, sings on a playful and mischievous version of “Skylark” that hints at its mysterious lyrical origins. Abrams also sings on “Accidentally”, which features some of Eigsti’s own lyrics.

“Casey sings exactly how I would want to sing if I could,” Eigsti explains. “This was my first time recording some of my own lyrics, and it was easy to trust Casey with telling that story. He brought such incredible energy to the session and instantly injected so much emotion and expression into this music.”

The kinetic and brilliantly interweaving opening cut “Sparky” is an homage to Sparky’s Magic Piano, the 47-minute animated tale of a young boy and his self- playing upright piano that got the title character to real life performance venues around the world. “Sparky would go on the road to perform at all of these actual places,” Eigsti recalls.

“I first watched and re-watched it on VHS tape when I was six, and it was my first time learning about the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall and all of these famous venues. So any time I play a place that was in Sparky, I freak out a little,” he admits, with a laugh.

The reflective solo piece piano piece “Rainbows” was written in honor of Eigsti’s late sister and only sibling Shannon. Before she passed away when she was 17 and he was three, Shannon had sat in with the Doobie Brothers and inspired Taylor to pursue piano. (A recording of her voice when she was eight can be heard at the beginning of the track.)

The Magic Behind the “GSI Symphony Orchestra”

Ben Wendel, in whose quartet Eigsti frequently plays, layers saxophones and bassoons in addition to straight up playing and soloing on Tree Falls. “Honestly that was one of those processes where I never actually knew what the whole picture was because Taylor built it from the ground up,” Wendel admits. “When I came in, sometimes there were already existing tracks that were half-done. And he said, ‘Okay, play to this. But imagine, eventually, there’s going to be woodwinds and strings.’

“A different time I came in to play bassoon parts, and everything was already more fleshed out,” he continues. “So it was really fun. And it was cool to hear the fully realized thing, which feels really larger than life. It’s very orchestral at times.”

Sam Sadigursky contributed clarinets and flutes. Emilie-Anne Gendron (violin), Nathan Schram (viola) and Hamilton Berry (cello) turned a string trio into three separate string sections.

Eigsti employed Schram, who is married to Stevens, to utilize the arranging and strings recording expertise he’s garnered through playing in the GRAMMY- winning Attacca Quartet as well as with Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall. “After writing the initial arrangements, Nate went in and did string arranging within those arrangements,” he says. “I wanted him to really adapt things in a way that’s coming from a string player doing it, which really brought everything to life.”

“Nate, Emilie and Hamilton particularly brought so much beauty to tunes like ‘Tree Falls’ and ‘Play With Me’ which added such a powerful textural element,” Eigsti adds. “There are orchestral layers on four other tunes, and a few of them get up into the hundreds of layered parts together. We did a lot of layering and basically created the ‘GSI Symphony Orchestra.'”

“It sounds fabulous,” Wendel says of Tree Falls. “It’s been too long since Taylor made an album, and I think it’s a great, great statement.”

Track Listing:

1. Sparky 07:18

I wrote this piece as a tribute to my favorite cartoon movie character, from an animated movie from 1989 called “Sparky and his Magic Piano”. I watched this movie a lot as a young child (the whole movie is now up on YouTube) and it’s one of the biggest reasons I became a pianist. Maybe the biggest actually. The movie involves a kid who discovers that he has a magical piano that plays virtuosically by itself and talks to him, melodically. His parents, who had been nagging him to practice, are shocked when he suddenly is able to play brilliantly all of a sudden, and he starts touring the world with his piano, keeping the fact that it is magically playing itself a secret from his parents and from audiences all around the world. He performs in some of the biggest venues – Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and others, and starts to get pretty full of himself. Eventually he learns a hard lesson when the piano refuses to play, and he’s left to discover the hard reality that playing the piano at a high level actually involves a lot of hard work. Sadly, pianos do not play themselves (with some obvious exceptions like the Yamaha Disklavier, etc. but who’s counting…). Throughout my life, I’ve had the opportunity to play at a lot of the venues that appear in this movie, and it’s always extra special for me when I realize I’m performing at a “Sparky Venue”. In writing this piece, I tried to combine some elements of automation – a few fast lines that repeat throughout the piece, while the bigger chords work around the line, to represent the piano talking. The piece is essentially two different songs in a way – it arrives at a “clearing” later on, where Sparky learns his lesson and gets to sit back and just enjoy a badass sax solo.

2. Skylark 04:45

I wanted to feature Casey singing one of my favorite standards, and wanted to approach it a little bit differently than how I have heard it or previously played it. Usually this is performed as a ballad, but I think when the lyrics are considered by themselves, the overall meaning of this tune can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I wanted to create a different feel behind this – funky and playful, where the main character is trying to not take himself as seriously, while asking the Skylark for answers.

3. Hutcheonite 04:35

I wrote this piece as a tribute to Ian Hutcheon, one of the world’s greatest cosmochemists and one of NASA’s top scientists, who passed away several years ago. Unbeknownst to me while he was alive, he apparently took an interest in my music, and listened to it while working on cool things like meteorites. I have become friends with his wife Nancy, and she has been immensely supportive of my music, and I was inspired by learning more about Ian, and wanted to create a musical tribute that would honor him and his work in an interesting way. A mineral was named after him – Hutcheonite. So that became the name of this piece.

4. Play with Me 03:31

I wrote this song what feels like a million years ago, and I’ve had so much fun performing it over the years, but never recorded it. I’ve also performed this so many different ways, with different forms and sections, different instrumentation, and with and without vocals. I think that as a composer it’s ok to allow your music to keep evolving and changing, letting it become a living organism, and this tune has certainly become just that. For the album version of this song, I decided I wanted to record the vocal version, and feature Gretchen Parlato to tell this story (along with Becca Stevens on background vocals throughout). I like to keep the meaning of this song slightly ambiguous, as it can take on different meanings for everyone, and the meaning of this piece keeps changing for me anyways. This is a really fun one to perform live, and I intend to keep letting the song evolve into new versions.

5. Tree Falls 06:04

The meaning behind the song is that in a world of oversharing, it’s worth exploring the unseen silence – the track and the album celebrate bringing to light the beauty that can be created when no one is around to hear it.

6. Rainbows 04:58

This is a very special song to me – I wrote this in memory of my sister Shannon, who passed away from cancer at the age of 17 when I was 3 years old. I’ve always wanted to write a song as a tribute to her, but I felt like I didn’t know her well enough. All I really had was some fuzzy memories as a toddler, and some old videos growing up. She was a pianist as well, and had the opportunity to play with the Doobie Brothers, and I was largely inspired to play music because of her (sibling rivalry I guess…). I have old memories of sitting at the piano with her, and I remember that I thought she was so cool, and I loved it when she would play music. As an adult, I’ve had to go through and clear out my mother’s house in California over the past few years, which has been an immense challenge, but also has led to some fascinating discoveries the more I unearthed everything, especially about my sister. One day I stumbled upon a cassette tape from 1988 of her memorial service. Kinda heavy. I realized that I had technically attended that as a 3 year old, but I was probably just crawling around on the ground trying to put as many items in my mouth as possible, as one does when you’re 3. I hadn’t really “attended” that. So I decided to confront the uncomfortable nature of what I found, and I drove to a nearby parking lot and popped the tape in my rental car, and I listened to her whole memorial service. I heard her friends talk about how resilient she was, I heard my family cry and talk about how she gave them strength, and they read some of her essays and writing about dying and how she had no fear. I had goosebumps – and for the first time in my life, I felt like I finally was starting to get to know my sister. I got out of my car the second the tape finished, went inside a local practice room, and wrote the whole song in 20 minutes – it kind of just came out right then and felt right. She was obsessed with rainbows, and had them all over her hospital bed, and so I named the song after something she loved. The very beginning of the piece features a small audio snippet of her talking as an 8 year old.

7. Listen In 03:46

This is a special song that I wrote together with Becca, which tell the story of reaching out to find perfection in your life, but needing to just listen and embrace what life sends to you when you were looking for something else.

8. Accidentally 04:02

This song tells the story of someone who feels lost when they realize their relationship is breaking down, and how they can’t imagine how difficult it will be to imagine that their love has moved on. The main character is still in love but keeps telling himself to move on as well – that things will be ok and his heart will start beating again. But it’s pretty clear that the main character is a bit obsessed and stressed out. Casey did an unbelievable job at expressing these emotions as he sang it, and personified this main character perfectly. Becca and Gretchen join in background vocals as “supportive friends” in the situation.

9. Bandwiches 04:22

This is a little tribute to all of the shitty backstage food I’ve been subjected to over the years on the road. There’s also a hidden meaning in the title, but it’s more fun to think about crusty little sandwiches and sweaty cheese and vegetable platters backstage.

10. Plane Over Kansas 05:34

The lyrics and story behind this piece represent some thoughts that I had while looking out an airplane window, high above somewhere over Kansas (duh). I noticed that there was a lot of interesting similarities to looking down at all of the life going on below, and looking down to the deep bottom of the ocean. There is a lot of activity, much of it quite beautiful, but from far enough up, it’s impossible to see everything that is going on. I think that we have a lot in common as human beings to creatures that exist in the dark, deep at the bottom of the ocean in that way. I think I was probably jetlagged, but that tends to lend itself to compositional ideas quite well. I wrote it with Becca in mind to sing it, and she captured everything I wanted to express in this piece so beautifully.

11. Tree Fell 01:31

This is the conclusion of Tree Falls, confirming that, indeed a tree fell, and it made a noise. This was a perfect little vehicle for Charles Altura to play a short and heartbreaking guitar solo over a slowly moving bed of lush strings, re-stating the theme of the record, and playing as the listener walks out of the room.

12. The DJ Situation 01:01

This is a voicemail that I sent to Josh Giunta explaining that DJ came down with food poisoning and that he won’t be able to make the recording session. Trying to track all of this music without DJ definitely led to some pent-up musical frustration amongst myself, Charles, and Eric, and we needed a few moments to chop out and just get it out of our system. While DJ was busy getting it out of his system as well. I didn’t want to let this record end without poking some fun at his situation… (and plus, after a long emotional journey through this music, it could use a little comic relief at the end…).