It is a reflection upon the resilience of the human spirit that enables us to derive something positive from a personal tragedy. This project is a celebration of my daughter Kate's life. A real distraction has been a journey of learning, collaboration and determination.
Exploring the melancholy emotions of beethoven's moonlight sonata was the starting point that gave me the confidence to begin composing my own tunes. Sunday morning in paris, was developed with my friend krys in his belle-ville apartment. The raw emotion in the first few takes was amazing and i found this to be somehow cathartic.
The following summer i first performed hi dad, where are you now and sarah's letter (along with the beethoven piece) to my family and close friends in the beautiful chapel of st buenos on the llyn peninsular in wales. These tunes were later developed in collaboration with david day in brampton.
As a celebration of kate's 29th birthday, i assembled images depicting her 25 things - as featured on her facebook page - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfX6vxEdWas.
Funky dancer and cataclyptic calming were developed so that i could include upbeat tunes in my stage repertoire.
The tunes are assembled around a limited number of simple musical building blocks which i hope frees my main instrument - the saxophone - to go some way towards transforming a sense of loss into one of joy and celebration.
May the riffs take you to a nice place.
A big thanks to duncan ... he's the man who added the driving drums, recorded the sweet sounding soprano sax and pulled together a truly magical mix. It was fun working with you duncan.
Thanks to david day for his production of sarah's letter and hi dad, his syncopated keyboard playing and for teaching me the basics of recording and how to play in tune!
Thank you to musicians - alex, ian and tony - for helping me prepare for the portsmouth recording session, especially alex for the bass riff on human. Thank you to gerry king for the beautiful recording of the piano. Thanks to omega music for the use of the steinway piano at brampton community centre. Thanks to the late gordon barker who shaped the backing for the moonlight sonata. Thank you to david foley for advice, encouragement and help with the preparation for the mixing process. Special thanks to krys for his wonderful piano and his support and encouragement right from the start of this project.