Ian Hisert

Ian started playing piano at the age of 10, joined his first rock band The Regime at age 13, subsequently caught the fever of writing, recording and playing live music and has never looked back. Influences are eclectic, including 80’s new wave synth pop, George Gershwin, Motown, The Beatles, Trinidadian steel drum music (he played pan in a steel band for 4 years) and ambient electronic music.

In his late teens, Ian learned about synaesthesia (a melding of the senses) and realized that it perfectly described how he heard (and saw) music. A short time later, he discovered that his favorite artist Wassily Kandinsky was also synaesthetic and realized that his immediate attraction to Kandinsky’s paintings was due to the fact that Kandinsky painted the way that Ian “saw” music.

Much of Ian’s mixing of genres and layering different styles and sounds is born out of the synaesthetic colors and shapes he sees when writing and playing music, as he is inspired with Kandinsky’s visual representation of music and looks to create music that is a sonic homage to Kandinsky’s paintings.

When Ian is not working on instrumentals, he writes music and performs with the pop folk artist Vanessa Van Spall, with whom he has several prior releases, including the full length album Cotton-Poly Blend (2007).