 Listen to samples at Musicline. Click here ...Alice Coltrane died on the 12th of January 2007. In the last formations of her husband John Coltrane she played the piano. Her death affected me very much, but at the same time I was inspired to once again deal intensively with her music.
With the death of Alice Coltrane a non-conformist spirit departed this life, a spirit that is almost irreplaceable. In the 1970s she crossed the clear male line of the art of improvisation through her very personal, non-conformist and feminine way of playing. She introduced the harp and developed the overall concept of jazz further.
Three compositions from the diversity of her pieces are especially dear to my heart, three pieces that to me signify a kind of essence of her music – powerful, melancholic, sensitive, but also with some humour as her composition Los Caballos, which is based on three different horse paces, illustrates. In Multiple Pulse I present this selection and my own compositions that I developed under the effect of Alice Coltrane’s music. I personally dedicate the first piece In Pulse to Alice Coltrane.
Music is a multiple pulse that everybody experiences differently and it is a statement that speaks a different language every day. Mysteriously shimmering and fading like Polar lights. To play jazz means to stand up for freedom without a parachute or a safety net, a musical statement of tolerance and openness, beyond all limits of our regulated world. That’s Why we are. In this piece I take Alice Coltrane as an example.
At the time of her death the news spoke of 2.000 American and 300.000 Iraqi war casualties. In my composition 2:300 I give this tragedy a musical voice.
My special gratitude in the course of these recordings go to the cellist Maria Magdalena Wiesmaier. The instruments cello and saxophone are the ones closest to the human voice and I have always been fascinated by the combination of both. I am very happy that Maria lent her “voice“ to my ensemble for the compositions Requiem and Polar lights.
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