Stages of a Lifetime Journey
2019
Enjoy listening !
Album description
In all these years I have "invented" thousands of pieces, melodies and motifs on the piano - and forgotten almost as many of them again. I have never written down or recorded anything. But some pieces have been with me all my life. And this life path is reflected on the album "Stages of a Lifetime Journey".
This instrumental album contains solely songs composed by me. I play all instruments myself.
While the early songs were influenced by progressive or art rock bands like Yes, Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull, later folk, blues and jazz influences were added as well.
The main constant in this album is actually the piano. It plays the leading role in almost every song.
Track descriptions
The oldest track on the album is "Sujet". As a teenager I improvised at the piano in the music room of the school. This song came into being while a classmate - and for me then the subject of my unfulfilled love - was listening. A few years later the love was finally returned: The classmate became my wife, we are still happy together, have a family, and I still play "Sujet".
Another early piece is "Trip-Stones on the Path", which, like most others, I played piano solo for a long time. In the course of the arrangement for this album it finally became the work I always had in mind: an instrumental progressive rock opus, well composed like a classical symphonic movement, with intro, alternative motifs, cool solos and surprising beat changes.
Representative for the countless blues I have played and still play is "Pentalogical Blues". Typical jazz quartet with piano, sax, bass, and drums (and some organ in the background). In this otherwise classical standard Jazz Blues, the five-four time beats perfectly natural.
In recent years I have moved closer to melodic jazz and songwriting. Accordingly, the later pieces are more subtle, more intimate. These include "Awakening" and "Reawakening", which both address the same theme: An awakening and a concentration of the focus on the essential in life. A very intimate song is also "On the Ridge of the Mountain of a Mystical Island", only piano and flute, accompanied by strings.
The finale "Something's Complete" was written at the end of the album's production and is in several ways the completion of a period of life.
About me
I was born and grew up in Solothurn. As a small child I often sat at the piano next to my grandma, where she taught me to play all the melodies of the beloved children's songs while she accompanied me in her 1920s ragtime style. Eventually we changed places, and I accompanied her to her favorite 30s hits. So I learned to play the piano and to improvise at a very early age.
When I was 8, I was allowed to take classical piano lessons for 10 years from a strict teacher. From her point of view I probably didn't work hard enough, as I mostly "only" improvised instead of practicing my etudes. After a short detour to the Jazz School I went on to study music at the conservatory in Bern.
After two years of giving music lessons, I resigned my teaching profession and decided to keep music as a passionate hobby.
Even though I usually play the piano alone and occasionally perform solo, I have played in a few bands. At the beginning of the 90s I played with the dialect folk band Rabauz which was very well known in Solothurn at that time. From this time the CD "Vollmond" emerged, which is still considered as a local insider tip. Later followed gigs with a few jazz combos, some blues bands (e.g. Born for Blues, https://soundcloud.com/born-for-blues) and also a hard rock band.
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