OPEN
My new solo album OPEN will be released on September 24.
An album written and recorded in the long months when the world was locked up. An album that is characterized by stillness. By a forced pass. By space and deepening.
Perhaps the quiet made us listen to each other better. We felt that we were less likely to make judgments, that we listened with an open ear, an open attitude.
The presentation of the album will take place on 9 October in the Grote Kerk in Veere (NL). Although this is well past the release date, I'll be playing the entire album live for the first
time.
LOTTE PEN
Before the break, saxophonist Lotte Pen plays her own music: electronic neo-classical to reflect on.
Lotte was selected as best producer from East Netherlands for New Electronic Waar 2018 and her track Tabernacle was picked up by an Italian documentary maker who uses it as a soundtrack.
Lotte composed music for youth dance company De Stilte and the Tuinfeest-Literary Festival in Deventer. On Spotify, her music attracts hundreds of thousands of listeners worldwide every month.
Together we play the Epilogue from Music for Wiek.
I hope to see you there!
2nd single : Theme I
Forty years in the making
It must have been sometime in 1981 or 82. Sitting at my clattering piano, the ostinato pattern and the two melodies of Theme I emerged. It wasn't the first music I wrote, but it felt like a new beginning.
It was music that never left me. I played it with the band I was in at the time. Including a howling fretless bass and a yearning sax. I made a studio recording and added a cello and more. Later I wrote a new version for piano.
And it was never really finished. All those years it felt like the music still held a secret that I hadn't yet discovered. A core that I had not yet unlocked.
In 2019 my anthem returned to the drawing board. And very slowly the second half of the music unfolded, it became clear how the ostinato and the two melodies intertwined. I understood the secret that had been hidden all these years.
Now it's finished. The first half, that of a young dreamer, remained unchanged. The second half is completely new, written by a dreamer almost forty years older.
listen on Spotify
listen on Apple Music
1st single : Searching
listen on Spotify
listen on Apple Music
The source
Last year was one of forced silence for almost all musicians. That can make you rebellious, restless. Or you can move along, let yourself be carried along with the new situation.
Facing the silence with an open mind.
I chose the latter. Looked for other ways to keep in touch with my listeners. And especially - in the long, quiet days - started writing a lot of music.
Searching is about searching (and finding) your own source. For a long time I thought that musical originality meant that you had to walk completely new paths. But that's not true. Striving for originality is nothing more than moving towards your own source, your own origin.
Only from that core can music be authentic, honest. Searching seeks and finds the core: a slowly rotating movement. Where you can let yourself be carried away. Which you can approach with an open mind.
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