Chester Bennington's Widow Shares Son's Shostakovic-Inspired Music, Says He's 'As Talented as His Father'
8/17/2017 by Gil Kaufman
Chester Bennington of Linkin Park and Talinda Bennington arrive at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 20, 2012 in Las Vegas.
The widow of Linkin Park's Chester Bennington offered a ray of hope for fans mourning the late singer on Wednesday (Aug. 16) when she posted some moving composition's from the rocker's 21-year-old son, Jaime Bennington. Talinda Bennington wrote in a tweet that "our son Jaime is as talented as his father," then linked to her step-son's new EP, Reveries 4.
The young composer explained the inspiration behind the compositions on his site after a month-long break during which he said he "ran out of ideas and I most definitely ran out of motivation." He said the latest installment of his Reveries series was "fueled by my love for the incredible Dimitri Shostakovich, of which I have cultivated over the last six months through the systematic consumption of every symphony, brooding string quartet, and whimsical piano solo, I decided to sit down with my piano and have a conversation about what we wanted out of music. That conversation ended with the subsequent decision to write music that simply SOUNDED good. I purposely forced myself to stray away from any of the hard-wired academic prejudices that I had the tendency to fall back on."
Our son Jaime is as talented as his father @ChesterBe . Here's a bit of his original work. #legacy https://t.co/ubvdUe9Acl
— Talinda Bennington (@TalindaB) August 16, 2017
Listen to the moving piano-based compositions below:
"These pieces took me far away from any notion of form, harmony, or time that I had so desperately wanted to control," Jaime wrote on his site. "Likewise, what came out of this experiment is something I feel is wholly different from anything I have written before! I would also like to mention that I took a large amount of time to properly record and perform these pieces (to the best of my ability considering the only microphone I own is on my phone). Which makes these compositions the first pieces of music I have devoted myself to interpreting since mid May."
On Saturday (Aug. 12) in Cincinnati, more than 700 fans gathered at Riverbend Music Center to honor Bennington at one of hundreds of memorials planned around the globe for the singer, who died at age 41 on July 20 of what officials deemed a suicide. Click here to watch fans singing an a cappella version of LP's "One More Light" at the event.