Pianist Martin Mayer Returns With ‘The Solo Piano Collection’ — A Triumph of Art and Resilience
Born in Prague, Czech Republic, and now based in Vancouver, pianist and composer Martin Mayer has long been celebrated for his cinematic approach to neoclassical and new age piano music. With his latest release, The Solo Piano Collection, Mayer transforms personal adversity into musical poetry — a testament to resilience, artistry, and the healing power of creation.
The album gathers Mayer’s most intimate and evocative piano compositions, written over three decades of his life and career. Each of the sixteen original works captures a defining moment: tributes to loved ones, reflections on his homeland, and celebrations of recovery and new beginnings.
Among the highlights is the poignant ‘Heart of an Angel,’ featuring Grammy Award-winning violinist Charlie Bisharat. Written as a tribute to Mayer’s late mother, the piece radiates warmth and cinematic depth, bridging classical crossover with lyrical emotion.
For Mayer, The Solo Piano Collection is more than a career milestone — it is a return to life itself. Five years ago, an on-tour accident left him with debilitating injuries to both hands. The recovery process spanned over four years, 233 medical appointments, and one major surgery. At the height of his struggle, he endured trauma, depression, and loss of identity. And yet, through perseverance and music, he found his way back to the piano.
“When I woke up unable to move my hands, I thought my story as a pianist was over,” Mayer shared in his reflections. “But music became my therapy. Writing again was the only way forward.”
His recovery marked a new creative awakening. The compositions in ‘The Solo Piano Collection’ mirror that emotional arc — from darkness to light, from isolation to reconnection. Tracks like ‘New Beginnings’ and ‘Summon the Heroes’ embody the spirit of gratitude and perseverance that carried him through recovery.
Accompanying the album is a meticulously designed sheet music book of the same name, notated to reflect Mayer’s precise performance phrasing and dynamics. For pianists, it offers a rare opportunity to experience his work exactly as he plays it — a living blueprint of expression and touch.
Every element of the book — from the FAZIOLI grand piano photography to the engraved notation — speaks to Mayer’s perfectionism and his belief that music should be both accessible and profound.
“When I was younger, I often found a gap between recorded music and what I saw on the page,” he notes. “I wanted to create a collection that feels alive in both worlds.”
Pieces such as ‘Prague Sunrise’ and ‘In the Arches of St. Vitus’ reflect Mayer’s deep connection to his homeland, while ‘Sun Moon Lake’ and ‘Positano’ evoke the global landscapes that have inspired his concert tours. This is music written by an artist who has truly lived — who has turned recovery into rhythm and vulnerability into virtuosity.
With ‘The Solo Piano Collection,’ Martin Mayer redefines the intersection of neoclassical composition and personal storytelling. It stands as both a love letter to the piano and a testament to the human spirit — music that transcends injury, silence, and time itself.
Hi, Martin! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Of course, I’d love to – how much time do you have? hahaha.
My name is Martin Mayer and I’m a concert pianist and composer of neoclassical piano music – basically a crossover between classical and pop music. It used to be called new age, contemporary instrumental, instrumental fusion, and so on.
I started learning piano at the age of 11, after coming to Canada from the Czech Republic, and after years of listening to music by Elton John, David Foster, John Williams and many piano greats, I started writing my own music.
When it became clear that I needed to do something big in order to get noticed in this genre of music, I took out a $35,000 loan at 18 to produce my debut concert, complete with a 20-piece orchestra and recording crew in tow. I had no idea how to pay any of it back, or if it would be successful, but I knew from other now-famous pianists that I had to take the risk. The resulting album “Live in Concert” became more of a door-opener than I could have ever imagined. It got me my first industry nomination for ‘Outstanding Instrumental Album’ at the Western Canadian Music Awards (now BreakOutWest), and got me noticed by a performing arts agency in Asia, who invited me on a 16-city concert tour of China.
Now I’d never toured anywhere. I’d only done the one concert, alongside playing in a local dance band for years. So it was huge. And an incredible experience. I went from being unknown and unrecognized in Canada to having sold-out shows in China, where police escorts, being mobbed for autographs, and fans knocking at my hotel room at 3 a.m. became a 6-week adventure. The press there even gave me the moniker of ‘Canada’s Prince of Piano,’ and I’ve been performing there for the last 20 years.
So, to say that my risk on that debut concert has paid off would be a substantial understatement.
When you finally played again after your surgery, what was the very first note or melody you touched on the piano, and what did it feel like?
Well, I’ll tell you that the first time I did play the piano after the surgery, I did it wrong – in the worst way possible. You see, I’d never had strong pain medications in my life, so I didn’t know how they worked and what they did. At the time, I just remember sitting down and playing, and having that feeling in my fingers – you know, when your arm falls asleep, and you get ants in your arms – that’s the feeling I had in my fingers when I started playing. So I dug in, and worked it out.
What I didn’t know at the time – and what none of the doctors told me – was that the pain medication wasn’t just blocking the pain: it was also turning off the ‘hey, this is painful’ protection system in my brain. And I learned that the really hard way when the pain medication wore off. I’d forgotten to take my next dose, and woke up with my hands just screaming at me. That was almost worse than the accident itself, because while that wasn’t my fault, this pain was.
So I had to really, really, really pull back my expectations and start small. And go immensely slow. I had to get to a point where my body was more healed from not just the trauma of the accident, but also the identity I’d felt I’d just lost. I mean, I spent 4.5 years in and out of hospitals and specialist offices – during the pandemic, no less – trying to get answers and a diagnosis. That wears you out after some 233 appointments over those years.
What ended up working is that I had to focus on getting my physical health back first, working through the pain in other ways, and only come back to the piano when I was ready. The guidance my hand specialist, hand therapist and music hand therapist gave me were my bible for how to get back to the piano.
So I knew that once I got back there, and I was excited for it, that it would be an incredible experience. It was like being reconnected with an old friend I’d not seen. And when I did get there, I spent hours and days at the piano – still listening to my body, of course, as to when to take a break. When I did it wrong that first time, it was painful: when the time was right, it wasn’t.
That’s how the song New Beginnings on the album was written. It was the very first piece I wrote at the piano when I came back from this harrowing medical journey, so it has a very special meaning to me. Actually, if you look at the artwork from when I released the song as a single, it’s a watercolour painting of a sunrise reflecting on the water. That painting is what I created in art therapy when they asked me to envision what my future looked like after I had healed from this. I’ve never shared any of my paintings before, so to have it as part of the New Beginnings single ahead of the album launch felt like I had truly made it!
Heart of an Angel is deeply personal. What was it like to share something so intimate with another musician like Charlie Bisharat?
Someone once told me many years ago that if you surround yourself with people better than you, it can lift you to incredible heights. And that’s certainly true of getting the pleasure of working with Charlie. I’d been a fan of his playing since he was in Shadowfax, with whom he won his Grammy, and then when he played with Yanni and John Tesh.
Mom was also a huge fan of Charlie, his music and his playing. He just commands this incredible performance from his violin that is so full of soul and heart that you can’t stop and listen. It literally just reaches into every part of your being and connects you to his music in an incredible way.
I’d originally written Heart of an Angel on that first China tour in 2001. I was alone, away from home, and missing the person that had championed my passion for music. When I decided that it was going to be on The Solo Piano Collection as one of my favourite pieces, I wanted to do a different version than how I originally released it on my 2003 This Is Who I Am Album.
So I took that same ‘blue sky’ approach I had when I mounted my $35,000 debut concert, and thought to myself ‘ok how I could make this a truly special version?’ And it was Charlie and his incredible violin playing that came to mind.
I will tell you this: I have had the pleasure of having some incredible musicians play my music on stage and in the studio. Like truly spectacular talent. And yet I was completely unprepared for how moved I’d be when I first heard Charlie play those notes. It’s like I said – he’s got this way of just reaching into your soul and connecting you to his playing. I’m not ashamed to say that I wept, and I mean really wept when I listened to what he put into Heart of an Angel.
Getting to work with your heroes is an incredible experience all on its own. When those same heroes lift up your music to a place you’d never imagine, that is what the power of music is all about. I still get choked up each time I listen to Charlie play the piece. Here’s hoping that mom can hear it as well, because I know she’d be weeping and smiling at the same time.
How did you decide which pieces from three decades made it into The Solo Piano Collection?
I knew I wanted a combination of music I’d written and released, and also new pieces I’d written along the way that hadn’t yet been on an album. When I couldn’t play piano, I still spent time writing and I used a digital keyboard with soft-release keys to help me with that.
I looked at which stories I’d already shared in my music, which songs connected with audiences and listeners, and which meant the most to me. Six of the songs on the album are brand new, two are newly-imagined versions, and the rest are ones that just have deep impact and lasting meaning. What I wanted to do was to showcase the best of my music, who I was as a pianist and composer, and really offer a full body of my best work on this album.
There were some songs that were left behind that I thought were still great songs, but they didn’t fit the overall story I was trying to tell. And that’s fine, because while this album just came out, I’m already in the studio working on a new one.
The sheet music book was clearly a labor of love. Why was it so important to document your phrasing exactly as you play it?
Yeah, that’s a really great question. The sheet music book had to be different because the project itself needed to be different. I mean, look, there’s so much music going out into the world these days, right? So, for me, I connect best with my concert audiences and those who listen to my albums when I’m at my most vulnerable and personal. Everything you hear from me, whether live or recorded, is me being my 100% genuine self. And that’s reflected in the music.
I’d put out a number of albums over the years, but I’d never attached sheet music to that. When I was on the last 20-city concert tour of China before the accident, at the end of each concert, I’d go into the lobby to meet the audiences and sign programs, take photos, and so on. There would always be a piano student or piano fan who’d want me to sign their Beethoven book, their Mozart book, and so on. My agent said to me one night “wouldn’t it be great if on the next tour they could ask you to sign a Martin Mayer book!”
So that was the genesis of the book itself. And when I thought about how to make it different, I knew instantly what used to drive me crazy when I was learning piano. Because I studied through the Royal Conservator of Music, it was all classical music. In my spare time, I’d be listening to Elton John records, or David Foster’s piano music, or even Frank Mills. Most of the time, I’d learn to play their songs by ear, meaning, I could pick it up and play it on the piano without the sheet music. When I did get the sheet music, I was always disappointed how the cool licks that would be played in some passages of the recording weren’t in the music themselves. It’s like they took the parts that made it even more interesting and special and just didn’t include them.
That was the artistic choice to make The Solo Piano Collection sheet music book a true reflection of how I play the music. Not only that, this way, you’re not only seeing how I, Martin Mayer the pianist, play it, but you’re also getting the ‘blueprint’ for how I, Martin Mayer the composer, intended for it to be played.
Alongside each of the pieces, I also include the story of how each song was written, what inspired it, and its meaning. And, you’re right – it was absolutely a labour of love over a good number of years.
These pieces are the best of who I am to-date as both a pianist and composer. That’s why it’s so special to me that The Solo Piano Collection sheet music book is being carried by such incredible book vendors like Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Indigo Canada and Kindle, among others.
Having an album out has always been part of my DNA as a musician and artist – having a sheet music book out in such prominent places is truly a dream come true.
And I will say this: both the album and the sheet music book are an incredible milestone for me in terms of what I survived in my medical journey and how I came out of it. So I’m glad to be able to celebrate that in this way!