Reflexions – Free Improvisations

Free improvisations
You can only use ideas that you have made your own. During my long life I have encountered countless pieces and forms of music. Many of them have just floated past me without leaving a trace, but some things have staid with me. They are now mine; they have become building blocks of my musicality. This recording includes such melodies, tunes that have become mine, tunes that are now a part of my musical personality. Therefore, when I improvise on a theme by Francesco Cavalli, I am not playing Baroque music, I am playing my music. Neither am I playing jazz or gospel music when I let an old spiritual inspire my musical imagination, and I am certainly not playing Carnatic music when I fantasize on an Indian melody. I am playing my own music, with my own rules…and sometimes without any rules at all. My musical inspirations are reflected from my personality, and it is that reflection that I try to capture in my playing. The music I play is whatever flows efforlessly from my musical imagination. I do not worry about how that music should best be described, just like I am equally unable to tell, what kind of a person I am. I am simply too close to what I am supposed to describe. Luckily many blessed souls have given me detailed accounts of it, sometimes with very colorful vocabulary.