I've attached the press
release below as it puts this album, this rather beautiful album, into context
better than I could. However, I feel I should offer some thoughts on
improvisation. Improvisation has been at the core of jazz since it was born.
Sometimes enhancing or offering a spontaneous variation on a theme whilst
at other times playing scant regard to the melody albeit not the harmonies or
the chordal structures. Perhaps the two best examples of this are Hawk's Body
and Soul and Bird's Embraceable You.
The current style known as 'improv' frequently does away with both melody and harmony which, in the right hands, can be fascinating and compelling as was demonstrated at the recent Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. In the wrong hands ... but, I guess that applies to any artform.
Yaron Herman's approach is both
traditional and contemporary as the blurb below suggests. I'm not sure
that the piano is a travel companion to help decipher the mysteries of
the world but, with Herman at the keyboard it certainly offers an
entry to a magical world of beauty. Check it out - YouTube. Lance
(Press release)
Alma opens a whole new door for pianist Yaron
Herman. After ten albums, here he is, launching himself into the void and, for
the first time, offering us an entirely improvised body of work, at once a
staggering snapshot of the present and a rich mirror of his past.
Let
us recall that a knee injury forced Herman to end a promising basketball
career. From the age of sixteen, he then devoted himself to music. Under
the guidance of Opher Brayer, his training encouraged him to adopt a holistic
vision in which the study of music is part of a whole that includes philosophy,
psychology, and mathematics. For him, the piano is thus at the center of a more
global reflection; it’s a travel companion to help decipher the mysteries of
the world.
This creative, prolific, and unconventional path is the framework for a fascinating and generous global reflection in his recently published book entitled Le Déclic Créatif.
We sometimes forget that at the dawn of music, up until the end of the 16th century, improvisation was at the heart of the practice. Later, composers from Bach to Chopin, from Beethoven to Messiaen, all created melodies and invented harmonies on the spot, which sometimes became the matrix of their masterpieces.
This is the path that Herman followed when he walked through the studio door to record Alma. Without any planned script, he pushed himself to the edge of a form of letting go, listening to what the music had to say and opening doors to spaces still unknown to him.
Improvising is composing in real time. When one writes music, the first gesture —what is sometimes called "inspiration" — is improvised. Composing is, in a way, improvising with a pencil and an eraser. Thus, Alma proceeds from a flow beyond music itself and finds its source in the wilful desire to "always leave the door open to let what must happen, happen."
To construct concise and skilfully structured pieces in this way, inventing melodies that develop according to a logic defined in real time, is a process of infinite complexity. A process that requires an extraordinary capacity for invention and concentration, a sense of the present coupled with a (non)awareness of the future without which no development is possible. Alma is a rare invitation to embark on a sensory journey; it’s an inner dance that takes us far away, evoking a profound emotion that never lets us go.
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