Copy My Artistic Thruth 4.4.2017

My Artistic Truth

Before I entered the conservatory, the organ became my favourite instrument through inspiring lessons by Rudi van Straten. During my studies in Utrecht I had the good fortune to have Jan Welmers as my organ teacher. After my studies we maintained a life-long friendship and always observed and discussed the way we developed as artists.  As an organist, I intend to bring organ playing closer to regular music life and society, by playing the repertoire —in particular works by Bach— with a rhythmic intensity, lightness and supplesse that has a universal appeal. In addition, by improvising and composing in a 21st century language that truly communicates with musicians from world music, jazz and pop traditions. As a pianist, I use this language to stretch the boundaries of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical music. From when I was 18 years old the guide line for developing my organ technique has been a passage in the first biography on Bach, written by Forkel in 1802, about contemporaries of Bach stating that when playing the organ the great man achieved a huge expression with very small movements of hands and feet only. In the past 40 years I gradually realised that this attitude towards organ playing could raise the level of concentration in such a degree that music seemed to come from a world of ideas and archetypes which I associated with Plato and Jung. This was confirmed and enhanced in 2009 by reading Bruno Nettl’s article Thoughts on improvisation (1974), in which he points out that Pima Indians in Arizona considered music making as unravelling a message from a supernatural world, with hardly any distinction between performing, improvising and composing. From about 1996, I have been teaching myself not only the organ, but also the piano according to Forkel’s observation on Bach. Contrary to the organ however, I never played pieces from the classical piano repertoire. Instead I developed my technique by making my own exercises for improvisation and composition, in the spirit of Pima Indians but also, as I gradually realised, inspired by the 18th century practice among keyboard players to study partimenti, a reservoir of musical formulae for performance, improvisation and composition. In the past twenty-five years I built up my own reservoir of 1001 (the number is symbolic and refers to a world of imagination) rhythmic, melodic and harmonic patterns for performance, improvisation and composition. After many years of intense and disciplined studies, I am now able to play these patterns at any time of day or night similar to, for instance, Indian and Persian classical music and jazz. This enables me to combine and vary the patterns in endless ways. True improvisation occurs when the hands (and feet in organ playing) seem to be quicker than the controlling mind. My actual musicianship consists of playing pieces from the classical organ repertoire and performing/improvising/composing my own music as a pianist and an organist, solo and with other musicians, in a context that combines Western classical music, jazz, world music and pop music. I have the feeling that I am at the start of a new musical life now and that the most essential is yet to come.