i-sola for piano solo was written for the Art of Virus online collaborative project, launched by Modern Orchestra, and overseen by the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös.
Here is the description of the project:
“The ArtOfVirus is an initiative using music to model the spread of a pandemic, the mutation of a virus, its latency, disappearance, and re-appearance, in other words behavior. Unfortunately these questions became part of our everyday lives for the past weeks and months. Kornél Fekete-Kovács tried to think of something that can incorporate as many artists as possible, creating a grand-scale piece of art together.
AOV is a massive performance, a virtual work of art, which, as the pandemic ends, will exit its virtual space and will be performed in front of an audience in the traditional way.
Kornél Fekete-Kovács created a melody consisting of nine notes, which can be considered the strain of the virus. This melody lacks rhythm, tonality, harmony or any other context. This way the nine notes can be easily adapted to the different musical trends and styles of the different artists. As a first step, he sent the “virus” motif to ten composers, who will create the first mutations of the “body”, thus the first ten branches of the spread of the “virus”.”
I was invited into the project by the American composer Pamela Madsen, who issued me with the following 9-note series: B-flat, F, E-flat, D-flat, F-sharp, C, B, D, A, which I used to create very simple ostinato variations. The simplicity of the piece is partially due to the fact that I had to write to for myself and perform as a pianist, and on the other hand to reflect the feeling of depressive boredom in isolation, which has been experienced by many in prolonged the quarantine, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The title of the piece refers to both the word isolation (as a shortened version of it), and to the Italian word isola (which translates as island to English), and to a combination of the English I and Italian sola (which means “alone”).

i-sola for piano solo was written for the Art of Virus online collaborative project, launched by Modern Orchestra, and overseen by the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös.
Here is the description