Copy My New Soulful Way of Playing Bach

After 40 years of preparation, I entered a new phase in the life-long process of improving Bach-interpretation. Having mastered the technical difficulties —although still not all of them— I now move the delicate balance between the brain and the heart definitely towards the latter. In terms of supplesse and soulfulness, the Hauptwerk-recordings on my YouTube-playlist My New Soulful Way of Playing Bach  add something essential to any existing recording of Bach's organ works on Internet, LP, CD or DVD that I know of. My Bach interpretation has a strong message: negative energy can be turned into positive energy by creativity, spiritual force and imagination. I am waiting now for the right opportunity to make recordings on real organs of the highest quality.  Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, an indian woman who lived near the Mohawk River in Canada in the 17th century, helps me to improve my playing. It works very simply: I just put a candle with her image near the organ console. That makes the performance more fluid, lowers my inborn competitive attitude and gives an overall healthy feeling. Saint Kateri Tekakwitha possibly represents the same positive energy that I felt when composing My friend the Indian for organ or piano solo in 1996, shortly after my father died. She also reminds me of my happy catholic upbringing.  As a professor at Codarts, University for the Arts, Rotterdam, I am actually preparing a new course, called Soulful Bach Interpretation in the 21st Century in this spirit. Students respond enthusiastically, confirming that in our time there is a need for what I call "the human factor" or "soulfulness" to make historically informed performance or musical craftsmanship in general more complete. This does not mean that the course will be "vague". On the contrary, I intend to create a strong coherence between craftsmanship and spirituality. An example can be found here: My Pedagogical Truth The course Soulful Bach Interpretation in the 21st Century will be closely related to my course Soulful Grooves in the 21st Century, for classical, world music, jazz and pop students of Codarts, which started in 2017. Both courses are based on the rhythmic intensity with which I play. They show how well a Hauptwerk-instrument can be used for educational purposes and contribute to a universal appeal of the organ, beyond it's habitual catholic or protestant context, while fully respecting it's archetypal role of "spiritual" instrument par excellence.

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