VANESSA WAGNER

Creative PeopleCultureMusicWellbeing
Written By Leila Antakly
Vanessa Wagner: Study of the Invisible | Antakly Projects
The Piano Archive InFiné
Antakly Projects  ·  Piano  ·  Paris Vanessa Wagner

Study of
the Invisible

What inhabits the silences.

French pianist. The most unique pianist of her generation. Unafraid to go against the status quo, bringing bold originality to stages all over the world.

France  ·  InFiné Label Barbican · Philarmonie de Paris · Jazzhouse Interview 2022  ·  Updated 2025
Vanessa Wagner. Photo: Caroline Doutre Photo © Caroline Doutre
Leila chose to speak with Vanessa Wagner because her recordings feel like acts of translation: she takes music that has been called minimal and reveals how much it contains. The quiet is never empty in her hands.
By Leila Antakly  ·  2022

Described by Libération as "curious and captivating" and dubbed "the most unique pianist of her generation" by Le Monde, Vanessa Wagner has earned a formidable reputation over a remarkable and trailblazing career. Utterly unafraid to go against the status quo, she has brought her bold originality to the Barbican and King's Palace in London, Copenhagen's prestigious Jazzhouse, and the Philarmonie de Paris.

Her album Study of the Invisible, released via InFiné, continues her exploration of the minimalist repertoire, introducing her audience to pieces by Caroline Shaw, Bryce Dessner, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, and others. It follows Inland (2018) and her collaboration with Murcof on Statea (2016).

Her playing is consistently described as feather-light, technically precise, and yet never mechanical. What distinguishes her is the quality of her listening, the way she makes the spaces between notes as audible as the notes themselves.

"Intimacy, emotional depth, and the notion of the invisible: what cannot be said, what is said between the sounds, between the notes, what inhabits the silences."
Vanessa Wagner
The conversation  ·  2022
01

What are your greatest inspirations or influences as a musician?

Study of the Invisible is a follow-up to an album I recorded in 2018 called Inland, which already travelled through the so-called minimalist repertoire. It is a repertoire that is relatively untouched by classical musicians, and that I started playing when I collaborated with Murcof for the album Statea, released in 2016. This music is both minimal but also very powerful emotionally. It covers a lot of different feelings, light and melancholy in particular.

I certainly would not have been attracted to this type of music when I was young, because it is very intimate, very solitary. But today it touches me enormously and I find that it corresponds perfectly to the period we are living collectively.

02

Tell us about your creative process and how you curated the pieces for this album.

This album was recorded in the middle of the pandemic when all the concert halls were closed and we had no social links, no cultural life. I asked my label InFiné if I could record it. It was like a lifeline for me. I really feel like it saved me.

I called a beautiful auditorium where I had already recorded two records and they opened their doors for four days. The building was completely empty: only my sound engineer, the piano tuner, and me. I think there is something lonely and strange about that time and it comes across on this record.

"I built the tracklisting like a story, with a beginning and an end, all connected by invisible words, secret stories. There is a lot of sensuality in these tracks."

When I saw Laurent Pernot's sculpture in an art gallery, I found it very soft, very tender and also very mysterious. This feeling of intimacy, of closeness and distance at the same time, corresponded completely to what I wanted to express in this record.

03

What are the themes you touch on with this work?

Intimacy, emotional depth, and of course the notion of the invisible: what cannot be said, formulated, what is said between the sounds, between the notes, what inhabits the silences, what is not immediately comprehensible, but which inhabits us.

04

Do you think the art world needs to change?

The artistic world is constantly changing but it is also under the control of the business world, the market. The arrival of streaming platforms has revolutionised the way we consume music. Today we have a huge catalogue at our disposal but the algorithms try to lock us into comfortable circles. It takes power, willpower, and curiosity to break out of this. In the same way, artists need strength and courage to go against established models and to take steps aside.

05

What does wellbeing mean to you?

To preserve oneself from external chaos. To know how to wonder. To protect oneself, not to let fear and anxiety invade the space because it brings us to a standstill. Take moments of introspection so as not to let bad emotions drive your life. Surround yourself with beautiful people.

Update  ·  2025
Philip Glass
The Complete Piano Etudes

The first-ever complete recording of all eighteen Philip Glass Etudes. Collector's double vinyl edition. InFiné, October 2025.

Vanessa Wagner, Philip Glass, The Complete Piano Etudes

In 2025, Vanessa Wagner released what no pianist had done before: the complete recording of all eighteen Philip Glass Etudes, developed in close collaboration with Glass himself, who blessed the project. The collector's double vinyl edition was released via InFiné on October 10th, 2025.

The Etudes span decades of Glass's compositional life, from the early 1990s to works written well into the 2000s. Together they form a complete portrait of his piano language: repetition as development, simplicity as depth, the accumulating of patterns into something overwhelming. No pianist had recorded them all in sequence before.

What distinguishes Wagner's interpretation is the same quality that defines all her minimalist work: the spaces are as important as the notes. She plays Glass the way she plays Shaw and Muhly, with a meditative purity and emotional warmth that never lets precision become coldness. Feather-light in the delicate passages, physically immediate in the driving ones, the playing is always in the service of the music rather than the musician.

Philip Glass himself noted the depth of her engagement with the cycle. The Etudes had been performed many times, but never in their entirety, and never with this degree of continuity and personal insight.

"Each etude is a self-contained cosmos. But only in their entirety does their full dimension become apparent. These pieces accompany me like familiar beings: they grow, mature, and gain more depth over time."
Vanessa Wagner  ·  on the Philip Glass Etudes
Watch  ·  Vanessa Wagner  ·  Philip Glass Etudes
From InFiné  ·  @infinemusic
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Leila Antakly

Leila Antakly

Leila Antakly is the founder and editor of Antakly Projects, the independent cultural platform she launched in New York in 2003 as Ninu Nina. Syrian and Colombian, she began her career at Vogue Italia and has spent more than twenty years in conversation with artists, musicians, designers, photographers, and inspiring thinkers around the world.

https://www.ninunina.com/
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