Milan on Sunday

02008-05-25 | Performance, Poetry, Touring

(…and then there is Milan in September, a piece we recorded in 1993 for the album “The Hours between Night + Day”, but not included on the CD)

Last night’s performance at the Blue Note was ideal. A quiet and attentive audience that applauded enthusiastically and thereby encouraged further explorations, which I was happy to embark on. I am grateful to all of you.

This ad drew in tourists from Houston, who were in Milan for one day only. A German listener also saw the ad and came to the club. As in the days before, some people had traveled from Rome and other cities in Italy to hear me play – ah, when do I get to perform in Rome!! And on Friday I met three fans who came all the way from Romania for the show. My sincere thanks to all that came to hear me play at the Blue Note.

Y. sent me this part of a poem by Hafiz:

…When Hafiz plays his lute,
My notes ascend into the air and form
Infinite blue crystals
That will move on the wind’s breath for hundreds of years
As my sacred debris, as the divine dust
Rising as a gift from my
Singing bones.

-Hafiz

Music rising as a gift from my singing bones! That’s what it feels like. I don’t use a set list for my solo performances and improvise a lot. I make up new melodies, discover new sections, play new medleys and try to simply follow the whims of inspiration. Every performance is quite different and is as much a discovery for me as it, hopefully, is for the audience.

I’ll be back at the Blue Note in Milan and there is also talk of bringing the band to Italy for a tour next year.

Interrogations

02008-05-23 | Music

Interrogations
What is this?”
“Music.”
“Did you write it yourself?”
“I did, on board ship.”
“Can you play it?”
“I can.”
“Play it, then.”
On the piano in the ship’s saloon, I played the main theme of the Violin Sonata on its own, without accompaniment. It was not appreciated.
“Can you play Chopin?”
“What would you like me to play?”
“The Funeral March.”
I played four bars. The official evidently enjoyed it.
“Very good,” he said, with feeling.
“Did you know for whose death it was composed?”
“No.”
“His dog’s.”
(Via Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise)

That might be my next book. Am almost finished with “The Rest is Noise“, which I thoroughly enjoyed!!

Crew

02008-05-23 | Uncategorized

At any point in history, we are all like the crew of a spaceship at countdown. In times like our own, the countdown seems even more clearly audible. We are taking off for an unimaginable future. Everything is changing. Common sense had been steering the universe from change to change for vast stretches of time, before we humans ever arrived. We cannot stop change. But we can cultivate common sense so that the changes for which we and our society are responsible will be in tune with the creative force of the universe – call it the Tao, the Logos, or Dants’s “Love that moves the sun and all the stars.
– Brother David Steindl-Rast

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