For artist Mary Ocher, the piano has always represented an act of reclamation. Self-taught and having turned away from classical training, she has focused on writing her own songs and poems. Ocher approaches musical instruments as opportunities for discovery. Her upcoming album, Weimar, was largely composed on a creaking upright piano from the 1870s, which she rescued from a Neukölln apartment. This album feels less like a stylistic shift and more like a distillation of her experiences.
Having spent two decades exploring themes of power, hypocrisy, nationalism, and belonging, Ocher now sits alone at a century-old instrument in a Berlin apartment that survived the war, creating delicate melodies in a city she fears may be on the verge of another historical turning point. Her record will minimize sonic excess while presenting her listeners with sharpened political and emotional clarity.
What was your musical upbringing like?
I never “started” playing the piano — I have no formal training. I played the baroque flute for many years as a child, but classical music didn’t sit well with me. I wasn’t interested in strict technique or playing sheet music. I began writing my own music and poems at eleven and more or less quit classical music at the same time — my tutor never forgave me. Since then, I’ve picked up many instruments. I never master them, but I love discovering what they can do.
Much of your work examines identity and belonging. Has your idea of “home” shifted over the years?
I’ve never really had one geographically. Every recent generation of my family moved because of politics — my great-grandparents left the Ukrainian Jewish shtetls due to pogroms, my grandparents moved to Moscow, my parents to Tel Aviv, and I moved to Berlin. Home, for me, is anywhere I have friends. I’m lucky to have them all over the world.
How did growing up between Moscow and Tel Aviv shape your instinct to question authority?
It’s not limited to my work — it’s who I am. I’m not sure I had a choice; sometimes I feel it chose me. I was expected to blend in, serve in the military, get a job, and have a family. There was no alternative presented.
I couldn’t have lived with myself following that path. Leaving was the only option. I had no resources, no contacts. I’m still amazed I’ve been able to do this for almost twenty years. I never take it for granted. When war comes knocking, art is the first thing to be defunded and controlled.
Your upcoming album, titled Weimar, evokes a specific cultural and political era. What does it signify for you?
I sometimes wonder if this is the tail end of a second Weimar of sorts in Berlin. Since moving here in 2007, the city felt like what people describe about the Weimar Republic — broke, chaotic, spontaneous, creatively explosive. It was perfect for a young artist.
Now, for the first time since the Nazis, we have an essentially fascist party in government in second place, and we’re noticing patterns of silencing critical voices. It can still get much worse. It’s not as bad — yet — as in Russia or the US. But the patterns are visible.
The album was written on a late 19th-century instrument. What did that 1870s piano make possible — or demand — that a modern instrument wouldn’t?
I picked up that beautiful old piano from an apartment in Neukölln, a district in the south of Berlin, where people are getting rid of pianos because they have no space for them (there’s also an acute housing shortage, but that’s another topic altogether). The piano’s previous owner used to play it as a child, and I understood it was a family heirloom. She gave it to me for a very modest price, and I was just so excited to finally have my own piano. Isn’t it wild that these instruments will most likely outlive us? The piano is more or less the same age as my building. 80-90% of my neighborhood in central Berlin was bombed out; my building is one of the few that survived the war.
Weimar marks a striking shift toward a stripped-back piano record. What drew you to that format at this moment in your life?
For the first time, I had my own piano at home, and I was just so excited to play it. My records tend to include lots of different bits and pieces, which I really enjoy because I listen to so many different things, and I know that some of my listeners prefer the folk, some prefer the ambient, some the pieces with the drummers (Your Government)… There were always piano pieces on my records, but I never released an entire album that’s focused on just one instrument, so that was exciting, and a little scary.
How did the instrument’s age shape the album’s emotional tone?
There’s one home recording on the album — the last track, “To Transcend” — where you can actually hear my piano. The rest was recorded on a grand piano in a proper studio, which I appreciated for its tone and natural reverberation.
But I love my old creaky piano at home. One pedal doesn’t work, and I recently fixed the sustain pedal because I can’t do without proper reverb.
Is fear something you try to expose or dismantle in your music?
Rather than fear, I try to expose hypocrisy. It’s everywhere, and it’s directly linked to power — the attempt to disguise the desire for power as moral superiority.
How will you translate such an intimate record to live settings on tour?
These shows will be quite intimate. I try to keep things vulnerable and have direct communication with the audience.
After years of touring internationally, does performing feel like communion or confrontation?
It can be confronting at times, or at least it used to be. I’m not particularly confrontational with the music anymore. I used to be – I’d use silence, stop, and scold the audience for talking, but these days I try not to care as much. I’m so grateful for the people who follow my work and come to the shows again and again, year after year.
I do however, encourage political dialogue; these topics come up, they are in the lyrics, and most of the time the audience is on the same page as me, but it can be somewhat challenging when I perform in Germany, where sometimes people have enormous personal guilt that is put under the rug, and tends to cloud their judgment of what my country is doing, making it very difficult to talk about it, and I encourage them to come up to me after the show and talk in private, if they want to get a perspective of someone who actually lived there, even if that doesn’t sit well with the narrative they’re more comfortable with.
This is extremely important for me, and I’d prefer for people who ideologically prefer to side with right-wing fascists not to follow my work. Honestly, I’m better off with a select few listeners who are not assholes.
Photo assets to be chosen by the editor. Credit to Kasia Sekula.
