Feature: David Bridie – On Karen’s Piano

David Bridie‘s latest album On Karen’s Piano marks yet another rich chapter in one of Australia’s most distinctive musical journeys.

Known for his emotionally resonant songwriting and atmospheric soundscapes, Bridie has spent four decades crafting music that captures the essence of people and place.

This latest offering is a return to his roots: voice, piano, and the bare beauty of simplicity. Featuring a selection of pieces from his work with Not Drowning, Waving, My Friend the Chocolate Cake and his solo catalogue, On Karen’s Piano reveals Bridie in a raw, reflective mode.

The album was recorded on a rare 1908 Bechstein piano, once owned by French horn maestro Barry Tuckwell. The instrument belonged to his friend Karen and following her passing, her partner Peter invited Bridie to honour her memory by recording an album on the cherished piano in their living room.

The result is a quietly intimate record—steeped in warmth, musical space, and the quiet grace of remembrance.

“We wanted to let the piano speak,” Bridie says. “There’s a quality in these songs that felt best captured through minimalism—no gloss, raw and with space between the notes.”

“I was inspired by other artists who’ve revisited their back catalogue in stripped-back, piano-led form— records that still had a unified sound even when they span years of works. Albums like John Cale’s Fragments of a Rainy Season, Randy Newman’s Songbook series, and, in a different but equally powerful way, Cat Power’s Covers. There’s something revealing in that kind of treatment—it casts the songs in a new light.”

Bridie’s extensive body of work includes over 100 film scores (In a Savage Land, Secret City, Satellite Boy), seven solo records, and foundational contributions to Australia ’s alt-pop and diverse music landscape.

He has collaborated widely across the Pacific, co-founded the Wantok Musik Foundation to support Indigenous and Pacific artists, and remains a powerful advocate for cultural and environmental justice.

As always, Bridie’s music traverses personal and political terrain — meditative, observant, often wry. On Karen’s Piano is not a nostalgia piece; it’s a distillation. A quietly powerful album that, like his best work, locates the poetic in the everyday and the emotional weight in silence as much as sound.

David Bridie’s latest album Karen’s Piano is available to stream now via Wantok Musik.