Shelby Lock is a composer, pianist, and audio engineer based in Santa Cruz, California, and the founder of Silver Moon Sound, her own recording studio. Her new single, “A Matter of Time: Perseverancia,” reimagines her original solo piano piece for piano and string orchestra, recorded in collaboration with conductor-producer Raniero Palm and the Venezuela Strings Recording Ensemble out of San Cristóbal, Venezuela.
A Matter of Time: Perseverancia
The piece carries a deeply personal history. Lock began composing “A Matter of Time” around 2019, not long before she was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, an incurable neuroimmune illness that left her largely bedridden for years and, at her sickest, barely able to play piano or tolerate sound long enough to do engineering work. Told that any recovery would simply be a matter of time, she kept composing in whatever small windows she had, and slowly rebuilt her health, her playing, and eventually her own studio practice. She premiered the original solo piano version at the Kennedy Center in 2022, a milestone that gave her real hope during a period when her career felt uncertain at best.
This year, to mark her recovery, Lock reworked the piece for piano and string orchestra with orchestrator Joe Jaxson, composer-in-residence with the Richmond Symphony, and added the Spanish word “perseverancia” to the title to reflect the persistence at the heart of her own journey. The Venezuela Strings collaboration adds another layer of meaning to that word, arriving in the wake of the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela in June, with the orchestra’s own perseverance now folded into the piece’s story. The recording itself came together across two continents, with Lock engineering her piano parts at Silver Moon Sound using a ten-microphone immersive array built around her vintage Yamaha C7 grand piano, while the strings were recorded separately at The Music Embassy in San Cristóbal and layered in afterward, an unusual approach for a classical work that required careful matching of room ambience to make the two halves feel like one continuous performance.
Final Thoughts
“A Matter of Time: Perseverancia” is a moving, meticulously crafted piece that carries real weight behind its title, a genuine testament to endurance on both sides of its collaboration. It’s available now on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Follow Shelby Lock on Facebook and Instagram.
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