Nicholas Fairbank offers a unique collection of piano pieces for the early to late intermediate pianist… Fairbank composes in a polyphonic texture with a modern twist. The most significant composition in this collection is his Variations on B-A-C-H; here Fairbank uses the motives and sequences normally associated with … the Baroque era and infuses his ten variations with modern polytonality and syncopation…

My favorite piece in this collection, entitled Prelude… merges a lyrical cantabile style with split chords in the left hand. … Thoughtful effort went into the variety of pieces here. If you are looking for some interesting, out-of-the-ordinary piano pieces for your late intermediate student, then add Ten Pieces for Piano as a noteworthy addition to your library.

“Ten Pieces for Piano” reviewed by Sarah Lawton in The Canadian Music Teacher, Vol. 68 No.2, January 2017.

“Surely the shining star of the night was Nick Fairbank with his Kingsfold Variations. His playing was absolutely brilliant, demonstrating the fine tonal resources of the Cathedral’s Wolff organ. This was a joy to hear, and all the more so as it was our local composer who wrote this delightful work.”

Fran Pollet in Pro Organo, May 2009.

Gaudeamus … would make a fine postlude to a major liturgical celebration.”

Song of Ruth … is carefully crafted in contrasting textures and ranges to bring out a wide variety of tone colours. This music displays Fairbank’s fluency in twentieth-century French compositional and improvisational styles.”

“Variations on Kingsfold … displays economy of material, directness of expression, and a wide contrast of affective moods, very often controlled through well thought-out textural contrasts …”

William Renwick in Organ Canada, vol.16 no.3 (2003).

The opening lines, “let us probe the silent places” from a text by Robert Service were heralded by a compelling evocation of arctic winds, a sibilant ssshhh-ing building to an eerie howling, shimmering dissonances on “silent places”, a soprano’s “I know” shadowed by a bass, filling the entire cathedral as if the stones themselves were singing, “the wild calling, calling…” Marcus Lund’s word painting followed. From delicate to bold, tempos and tones ever-changing from smooth to up tempo, silence and “inky violet deeps” in beautiful language created the vast and mysterious backdrop in which the “transformative vision” might take place.

The third section invoked Isbjørn like an ancient God, the percussionist making sounds like cracking ice, a deep voiced shamanic intoning summoning up the image of the king of beasts. An unearthly high soprano echoed the invocation, and the climactic sounding of cymbal, drum and bells seemed to peel away the layers of Christian sensibility to reveal the epoch when the Bear was truly the Great King of all creatures.

The fourth section, based on a text from Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams, consisted entirely of naming the endlessly subtle gradations of colour in the arctic, hypnotic voices chanting each shade as a separate jewel from white, ash grey through aquamarine, reddish yellow and watered purple.

The last movement left words behind, and in a stunning interplay of beautifully shaped vowels and cadences took me right out into the enormous spaces, the vast horizon, the aurora borealis itself, before fading and dying into the Arctic night. Beautifully written, perfectly sung, it brought a strange and remarkable journey to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

From a review by Elizabeth Courtney, Music in Victoria, of a performance of “Isbjørn!,” 15 Nov., 2013