Andrei Irimia on taking his piano music from Bucharest to Europe’s grandest concert halls

Andrei Irimia is a Romanian pianist and composer on a mission to bring his cutting-edge contemporary sounds from Bucharest to the wider world. And with his third album on the way, following a September European tour which saw stops in Berlin, Barcelona, and Paris, he chats to Headliner about the resistance he had to overcome with people on the more traditional side of the Romanian classical music scene, and his new singles, including the sprawling epic track Obsidian.

Irimia composes deeply emotive music that puts him in league with contemporaries such as Hania Rani and Nils Frahm, a scene dubbed ‘neoclassical’, rather than the contemporary classical world that often feels very experimental and beard-scratching for the uninitiated. His debut album, Nuit Minimaliste, arrived in 2019, in which he paid tribute to the minimalist piano music of French composers such as Erik Satie and Frédéric Chopin.

He followed his debut LP with an equally accomplished and lyrical album, All Strings Attached, in 2022. It might sound strange to say, but Irimia’s approach to the piano is unique in that he plays the instrument as-is, whereas the likes of Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm have many copycat composers who try to mimic their ‘soft piano’ sound via techniques such as applying felt to the piano hammers.

His career so far has been marked by his dedication to live performance and taking his concerts far and wide. Since 2021, he has had an ongoing collaboration with Romanian film and theatre actor Marius Manole, in which they bring a fusion of live music and theatrical performance to audiences around Romania. He regularly tours Europe more widely and has graced some of the finest halls in Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona.

Irimia joins the call from Bucharest, where he is based. On his very first steps into music, he says, “I started playing piano at a very young age. Of course, like many musicians, it began as a classical education. Growing up in Romania, I was surrounded by both traditional folk elements and the great European classical tradition. But over time, I started exploring my own voice as a composer and blending those early influences with more modern, minimalist textures. So that journey naturally led me to the neoclassical music.”

Nuit Minimaliste, the first album he put out into the world, is largely a solo piano record, with touches of sound design, plus a delightful solo marimba piece in Petite Phillipe.

“Nuit Minimaliste is influenced by the French minimalist composers like Yann Tiersen, Erik Satie, and all the French melancholy music. I was inspired by them, and I tried to put a twist on those compositions and make them melodic as well. It's my first project. I went on a national tour with the album, and it was great for me to start with a single instrument and develop without the other instruments as well.”

He also, sadly, had to take into consideration the pitfalls of being purely a solo pianist in a world where people’s attention spans have been decimated by social media and being chronically online. This partly influenced his decision to go a bit bigger on the sophomore LP.

“In a gig, even if you are the best pianist in the world, and you play one single instrument, it is very difficult to keep the audience focused for an hour and a half. We don't have that focus anymore. So I understood that I needed to add elements to make it more engaging.”

With 2022’s All Strings Attached, a fairly literal album title, Irimia really expanded his sound with a string quartet accompanying his piano playing. And, as seen in It Comes At Night, he introduces a lot of electronic elements and an organic beat, as the strings join the eerie soundscapes. There are still moments where he plays alone, with two solo songs in No Strings Attached and For Lisa.

On the challenges of his first two albums being separated by the pandemic, he says, “It was a very difficult period, because I didn't know if I would have time to launch that album. But I tried to add some elements, like the violin and the strings, and to take my sound to the next level. I'd say it's somewhere between classical minimalism and cinematic storytelling. All Strings Attached is piano-led and very introspective. The strings tend to evolve slowly, almost like unfolding thoughts. It tries to create space in the music.”

“I use synthesisers, but also samples,” he says when asked about his unique approach to the electronic and sound design side of his compositions. “I work a lot in Ableton. I try to approach the creation of a piece more like a child's play, because I try many samples, many instruments. I like it to be very intimate as well. So not to be a hard texture, more like a breath, a bit of very airy pressure. Then it can be nostalgic at the same time.

“Playing live is where everything comes alive. Connection with the audience finally completes the music. So, besides playing piano and the samples live and sometimes with the strings, I’m always working on the visuals, the lighting, and creating the right atmosphere. I want my sets to feel like a complete journey. It’s a case of adapting to the different pianos and acoustics in each venue, but it’s incredibly exciting.”

Fascinatingly, Irimia initially found that it was much easier to secure concert bookings in prestigious concert halls in Central Europe; in France, Germany, and Belgium, where the appetite for modern classical music is very much established. Back home in Romania, he initially came up against scepticism and some resistance from the traditional-leaning classical music scene in Bucharest and beyond. He very much appears to be the first Romanian neoclassical artist, and so the idea of promoting a concert that wasn’t a pianist performing Beethoven and Brahms seemed to confuse them.

“I was somehow the first one who brought the neoclassical genre to my home country,” he says. “So the people who run the venues, the Philharmonics, were a little bit sceptical. I tried to explain to them that this kind of music is filling up the most important venues in Europe. And that these venues will have a season with, say, Prokofiev and then Nils Frahm within a few weeks. So everything is connected. After a while, they started to embrace this, but it was hard at the beginning. Then our project got bigger and more well-known, and the audience seemed to like it. In Europe, it's another story, because they are already familiar with this genre. So it was easier for us, my management and PR, to promote a show in Europe than in cities in my home country.”

2025 has seen Irimia building up to album number three with new single releases. One of which is his most ambitious track yet, Obsidian. It’s a track worthy of any epic blockbuster film trailer, as the piano and strings are suddenly sidelined by a pulsating bassline and synth arpeggiator, before a stunning lead violin line is the prelude to all of these elements joining together in a Hans Zimmer-esque climax. It’s unlike anything heard on Nuit Minimaliste.

While this song easily fits his aspiration to keep audiences engaged, he adds that, “I don't have to think of this all the time when I'm creating, because that's not the point. In the back of my head, I always try to create something fresh and keep the audience there. But it's hard work because, at the same time, I have to stay true to what I believe for that song; it has to have a meaning as well, not just something flashy.”

Fascinatingly, the prior single, Anao Marva, is totally ambient by comparison. Irimia plays a beautiful piano solo over a bed of synth pads and birdsong sound design. “I had the idea from hearing sounds in nature — I found the samples of bird song, then came the piano part, and then I added layers and layers. It came very naturally.”

With his biggest European tour yet for 2025 now under his belt, next up is the release of his third album, Light and Shadows, which he is teasing for a 2026 Spring release. Latest single, What Remains Of Us, also reveals his newly expansive, huge sound that he has been experimenting with. The promise of this record seeing a big creative shift for Irimia, and whispers of his biggest London concert yet, as well as more stops around Europe, mean this is the perfect time to discover this highly progressive composer.