In 2018, John Tilbury, after half a century in the course of which he'd been a leading interpreter of contemporary music, long-time member of AMM, specialist in the more challenging works of Morton Feldman, author of the magisterial Cornelius Cardew - a Life Unfinished and the musical animator of several works by Samuel Becket, decided to withdraw from public performances. Happily, the recordist and founder of Another Timbre, Simon Reynell, persuaded him to continue at least to record at home - an enterprise undertaken intermittently over a span of eight years, resulting in this biographically informed programme of works for piano and sometimes clavichord, selected by John. When release was imminent, John proposed adding a handful of archive recordings that bring the younger virtuoso into conversation with the mature artist, making this collection, if not exactly an apologia pro vita sua, at least a kind of portrait. Composers featured include his British contemporaries Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith and Christopher Hobbs - all of whom, alongside Tilbury, were members of Cardew's revolutionary Scratch Orchestra (Hobbs and Cardew also appearing on the original 1966 AMM LP, AMM) - and the more elusive Erika Fox. Also featured here are New York School alumni Christian Wolff and Morton Feldman, and new kid on the block Linda Catlin Smith. Mark R. Taylor, John Lely and Catherine Kontz complete the programme. Additional performers appear on five of the pieces, Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop, Catherine Laws and Tanya Chen (pianos), Sebastian Lexer (processing), Klaus Filip (electronics/dust) and AMM veteran Keith Rowe (prepared electric guitar), this last the only pure improvisation in the box, taken from a 2004 performance at the Holy Trinity Church, in Leeds - with John, unusually, at the organ: a stunning 28 minutes, alone worth the price of the box. And the album opens with four short pieces by the C12 master, Guillaume Machaut, arranged by Gyorgi Kurtag. It's fascinating to compare the more recent pieces (and styles of performance) with some of the archive recordings - the suspension of Skempton, for instance, with the virtuosic drama of Christian Wolff's For Pianist, or Cornelius Cardew's remarkable Volo Solo; and the rough, banjo-esque character of the clavichord (and what it inspires in composers) provides a complete contrast to the piano works. Morton Feldman is represented by a piano reduction of his Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, originally scored for a 12-piece ensemble, and his labyrinthine Piece for 4 Pianos; Samuel Beckett by John's own What is the Word, for organ and voice, and Mark R Taylor's Pour Rien. There's huge variety here and astonishing craftsmanship. It comes in a sturdy box, with charming photographs and exemplary booklet notes by Clive Bell.