My first proper encounter with Philip Thomas’s playing came through his box set of Morton Feldman’s piano music, released on the label Another Timbre in 2019. The performances are intimate to the point of sensuality, every gesture like a phantom hand hovering above the tiny hairs on your arm, in that fragile space between presence and contact. After surveying Feldman’s music for a quarter of a century, Thomas’s five-disc collection was a landmark achievement in the contemporary piano repertoire, and became the Sheffield label’s best-selling record.
A year later, Thomas went for surgery to remove a cavernoma in his brain. (A cavernoma is a group of blood vessels found in the brain or spinal cord. According to Cavernoma Alliance UK, it looks like a raspberry.) During his recovery immediately after the surgery, Thomas suffered a brain bleed. He spent 17 months in the hospital before coming home last March.
Thomas popped up online at that time to explain his situation to his Twitter followers. From then on, he would post very occasional updates; some factual, others humorous. “At the moment, my speaking voice is like my piano playing,” he tweeted on January 14, “both unspeakably loud and harsh, faintly ridiculous, and both lacking in tenderness and control.”
“I can no longer write and I am typing this very slowly with one finger only,” Thomas said in one of our first exchanges. I had initially asked him if he’d like to meet in person; he declined. “The injury has totally destroyed my voice and you wouldn’t be able to understand me!” he said. “I can’t see properly nor talk or eat/drink properly. I can’t walk and of course I can’t play piano properly. But I’m alive!”
Over three months of sporadic emails (Philip’s replies being noticeably more prompt than my own), I asked him about listening, scales, and the path to recovery.
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