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"A musical instrument has to be handled with a lot of care, because that's where sounds live." These were my father's first words when I wanted to explore the secrets of his accordion. I was four, and I didn't understand. He explained. All kinds of sounds live in an instrument, good and bad alike, and it is a great resposibility to only let the good ones out, because once a sound is released, it will travel the world and will once come your way.
To my question of how one has to play so that only the good sounds are let out, he replied: "You have to live that way."
This homework I got at my first accordion class is still valid and seems to be one of the mostdifficult tasks. It is hard to be a musician, but sometimes it also helps as it becomes almost indifferent whether the things that happen to you in life are positive or negative; it is only their intensity that counts, because it all becomes emotional capital, which is essential in order to have something to play on the instrument.
Musicians can only play what they've experienced and the kind of person they've become.
My father's words are still vivid in my memory, so the realisation of the value of a full house audience spending two hours of their lives finding out how I feel/think always strikes me before a concert and leaves me no other choice but to try and only release the good sounds from the instrument.
Sometimes at concerts, memories thought to be forgotten are reborn and bad feelings I have had for long are suddenly gone; and although the grounds for the existence of music is unquestionable, getting feelings through to people might have never been so difficult; and there might have never been such need for it.
The title of this record is "Contrasts", which in a way refers to the sometimes extreme differences between the characteristics of certain kinds of music. However, I am convinced that a musician can only react to what he comes across in everyday life and it would have been impossible for me to convey this mass of experience through a single genre of music.
At the same time, the title could have also been "Midway", since this record is a closure of a period
in my my musical life that I feel would have been a mistake to let go without a trace; and it also evokes the new directions that the Audience will encounter on the ones to follow. Hopefully sooner than in another seven years time.
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