About the 2025 Solo Piano Jazz Suite ‘Clarity of Vision’
As I look back in my early notes of September 2018, after some five years of endless, playing, improvising, composing and arranging on the piano, I noticed that I already wanted to name the three parts of my Stage 6 Jazz Suite ‘Sense of Purpose’, ‘Sense of Direction’ and ‘Sense of Urgency’ respectively. But moving along I skipped these designations, because the three actual parts wouldn’t fit the names. But now they do.
Clarity of Vision
In terms of what I wanted with my music I’ve always had a clarity of vision. I knew exactly what I wanted and how I wanted it, and the execution of my various projects might not always turned out exactly the way I imagined it, but they always came damned close. Clarity of vision has always been a part of my life, both privately and professionally.
But when you have a clear vision, you need something more. Because a vision alone will get you nowhere.
You need a sense of purpose. What are your goals, your objectives? What added value does it pertain? For whom? Without a sense of purpose the entire endeavor becomes a moot point, a random act, something superfluous.
But a sense of purpose without a sense of direction doesn’t make any sense. Knowing what you want to do but not being able to point your nose at it? Why? What’s the point of wandering around aimlessly? So, you need purpose and direction. But that doesn’t cover it.
Without a sense of urgency a sense of purpose and direction are useless. Because you gotta do what you wanna do when you are able to. Now is the time. Knowing what you want to do and where you want to go must be accompanied by a sense of urgency. Take care of it, prepare, plan, assemble, do, act, be! Go, go, go!
That’s clarity of vision. And it has been the story of my life.
Flipping through the pages of my note book I find myself back in February of 2021, smack down in the middle of the Corona Pandemic, contemplating my next moves to compose and arrange my second jazz suite, inhibited by the limitations the Corona virus had bestowed on all of us.
Just start playing
So, what could I do? Simple, just start playing. Me, myself and I and a Yamaha U1 piano is all it takes to start a music project. Gather a list of songs and snap to it. And so I did. During 2022 I kept adding songs, rearranging existing arrangements and perfecting structure and form. Some songs were added, some were rejected, some just organically merged with other ones or simply withered away.
By august of 2022 I had gathered some 50 songs in my playlist: 5x swing, 9x Latin, 13x 6/8 – 3/4, 11x blues (also swing) and 13x ballads. Some 10 songs were in the ‘out-category’ and needed additional work. I created three clusters of songs as though they were playlists for live performances, with a nice mixture of styles.
By March of 2023 I had a ‘final list’, but that was a relative term. It still undergo significant changes, but the heart of core set of songs kept beating strongly. I kept working on it regularly all through 2023.
Final playlist
By March of 2024 I had created a final playlist in three parts, at that time still under the designation ‘Jazz Suite Roots & Reflections II’. I kept finetuning the set lists al through the Spring and Summer of 2024, adding a few new compositions and changing some arrangements and rearranging the sequence of the songs.
I had to rehearse some 60 songs all the time, because everything existed only in my head. I had no scores, only song titles, some chord notations and notes on structure and form. If you don’t touch all songs regularly, details will start to flip, chord sequences and melodies will start to fade. It’s a lot of work but hey, I love/ live to play.
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[Stay tuned for more!]
