What happens when a classical pianist decides to break free from the stress of performing perfectly the notated music of others? Hania Rani from Gdańsk, Poland has become known as a genre-blending musician, combining classical with jazz and electronic influences, resulting in original minimalist works. In interviews, Rani notes that she welcomes improvisation in her music and this is apparent in her live performances and official music videos. She shares, “I'm interested in ambient and sonoric qualities of the music. So I make conventional composition, and then I am attentive to other sounds as well.” (Rani 2022). Part I of my presentation examines Rani's 2019 debut album Esja (named after the mountain Ejsa in Reykjavik): Esja quickly gained a lot of traction during the start of the pandemic in 2020, when listeners positively responded to the album's tranquil and meditative qualities. My analysis of the two album songs, “Glass” and “Esja,” highlights Rani's approach to open form and varying texture within. I argue that the repetition elements present in these songs are reflective of both mantric and kinetic categories for minimalist music, the two categories proposed by Rebecca Leydon (Leydon 2002), and aid in listener introspection. I explore the songs' structural details and how these are further reflected in the accompanying visuals included in the album's official score, official song video for "Glass" (2019), and in Rani's personal photography on her Instagram account. The visual components are identified as vital by Rani in her holistic creative approach. 

Part II of the presentation surveys Rani's bodily presence and improvisatory elements in solo and band performances in three different performance and their video recordings (2019–2022). I highlight how Rani repeatedly alters the notated material provided in the official album sheet music; she modifies the piano itself by removing parts and exposing the strings (2019 recording session); increases instrumentation by positioning an upright together with a grand and a synthesizer and layers electronics (2021 Studio S2 performance); and brings in multiple other instrumentalists (2022 Paris concert). My analysis focuses on these multimedia aspects in Rani's early repertoire and builds on the work of Nicholas Cook (1998) and Carol Vernallis (2004). Rani delights that her live shows are full of “mistakes,” meaning changes from the published score or previous recordings, and she embraces them as necessary comforts in her unfixed performance process. Meanwhile, the process of recording and post production allows Rani to play with timbre in her works; because her official scores are intentionally not very detailed, the subsequent sounds can be processed differently in recording or further modified in live performance. By privileging the humanistic changes across Rani's live performances, I refer to Cook's methodology of viewing the composer's scores as “scripts” rather than “texts” (Cook 2001) and thus demarginalize Rani's “flawed” composer-pianist performances. Newly developed scripts in each of Rani's performances allow her to build different sonic environments, where each playing event is fit for each newly selected space, and create a deeper connection with the audience.