Exploring creative processes · 2026
Late Sessions Project
Late Sessions Project begins with a simple need: to return to the piano without making every encounter a test. It proposes playing late at night, recording what emerges and accepting the music before correction, technical demands or the ambition to create a “great work” begin to change it.
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Research question
What happens when the piano becomes a place to express an emotional state, free from the demand to demonstrate technical ability?
Late Sessions Project investigates what emerges when familiar mechanisms of control are consciously reduced: planning, correction, editing and expectations of the result.
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Method
Each session begins with simple conditions: work at night, start without a predetermined piece, let the material develop through improvisation and accept the resulting performance with as little subsequent intervention as possible.
These constraints make it possible to observe how the relationship with the instrument changes when playing is no longer associated with demonstrating, correcting or perfecting.
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First stage: Late Sessions vol. 1
The first application of this method produced three piano pieces collected as Late Sessions vol. 1.
All three preserve the intimate, provisional character of their sessions. They document an initial stage in the process: the possibility of approaching the instrument again through intuition, simplicity and listening.
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Connections with later research
Late Sessions Project is an early starting point for a broader investigation into composition and performance, the weight of technique and the transformation of pianistic identity.
Questions raised here — what it means to return to the instrument, how much control a performance needs and what happens when perfection ceases to be the goal — recur from wider perspectives in subsequent research and residencies.
Credits
- Concept and composition
- Héctor Muñoz
- Mixing and mastering
- Héctor Muñoz
