About Myself - Somewhere in the beginning I learned to play the piano and began composing little pieces. It seemed a natural thing to do and one of the few ways I could say what I wanted to say. My piano teacher was a wonderful, nurturing person who exposed me to many different kinds of music and planted seeds that continue to flower within my musical world to this day. It was the acid trips of the sixties and John Cage that opened my mind to what creativity is really about. Cage taught me to listen - not to what I wanted to hear or thought should be there but just listen! Now it seems rediculous that there should be any other way to approach music. Out of the acid trips came a deeper spiritual point of view as to the meaning of my life and what I do with it. There was a dramatic change in my music after these experiences. In the past, most of my efforts have been directed at live performance and particularly at improvisatory situations. The current CDs represent a fascination with the digital world, all of its possibilities and what it represents in terms of consciousness. The fusion of spoken words, manipulated word/sounds and music have been my primary focus of late. For me - the spoken voice is the most natural and deepest expression of a person - even more than the singing voice. It amazes me how much the spoken voice can change from moment to moment and how the subtle inflections can express various meanings and emotional states. The manipulation of word/sounds through digital means almost approaches the way babies play with sounds or the way in which altered states of consciousness perceive sounds. As my own consciousness changes, so goes my music. I cannot rationalize it but just be a part of the process and bear witness to its honesty. I don't know if anyone else will ever experience this music the way I have but I hope some might share in its adventure and ultimately not take it - nor anything else - too seriously. As Mother Teressa has so wisely said "We can do no great things - only small things with great love".
About The Poetic Images - The term "Poetic Images" seems the only way to describe the collection of words I write. They are related to Japanese Haiku in spirit but not in such a rigid form. They are poetic in nature but not real poems. I started writting them in the sixties during acid trips - as a natural expression of what I was experiencing. Gradually I began writting them all the time, as a free-flow type of expression. They are a meditative focal point where numerous meanings can emerge and flow into other meanings - almost Mantra like. I didn't know what to do with them until I set them to music and then began to realize how the mutual interaction could expose hidden meanings and changing relationships. On the surface they seem simplistic and naieve but absorbed into your consciousness they take on a life of there own, bringing new depth and meaning.
About The Sounds - As important as sounds are in music silence may be more important, for it is that imense void out of which sounds emerge - are defined -and into which they dissapear again. In my music there are layers of sounds and silence, each playing hide and seek - a mini cosmos of motion, color and change. As a composer I tend to relate to artists more than musicians. I see colors and shapes in my sounds and I see the edges of the frame which I would love to go beyond but which I know give the game its meaning. I also feel the texture of the sounds as a personality that I would get acquainted with. In the digital world these things are realized with a passion - for the possibilities are endless and exploring them is like exploring countless lives in an endless reincarnation. Many styles of music have specific sounds that are in fact the very framework of those styles. My music borrows from many styles but will use whatever sound seems to fit - often forming paradoxical textures and relationships. On the one hand I find it humorous and on the other hand deeply moving - producing emotions that are very hard to put a word to. In everyday life, sounds are our cue cards to tell us to be annoyed, to laugh, to become curious, to be careful, to be just about anything our conditioning would respond to. Music has cue cards too - only I switch them around and around you go wondering what to feel. A lot of my music uses field recordings and sampled sounds for this purpose and also because I love them - and in the digital world it sometimes hard to tell which is which. The poetic images I use seem to search out and discover the sounds that best go with them. It is my own innersence of what fits and what doesn't that is the sole determination of how a piece of music will go together. When I let sounds flow, they seem to know where to go and what to do by their own nature and I had best let them.
About The Listener - We often grow up with deep emotional attachments to certain styles of music and artists. Because music is the premier vehicle for emotions, it is easy to understand these attachments. As we grow and become more aware, our emotional worlds often become more complex and reach into new areas of consciousness. This is usually accompanied by interest in different kinds of music or "new discoveries". It is not uncommon today to find young people who have a very diverse collection of music. The interest in world music, rap, folk, techno, punk, jazz and countless other forms attest to this diversity. Many of these styles were "experimental" at one time until they went mainstream. Society seems to absorb new ideas tentatively at first and then devour them almost to the point where they have no meaning any longer. When they have become drenched of their fire they become the "classics" that get worshiped in a museum like atmosphere. There is a wealth of new and experimental material out there (largely due to the internet) that listeners can tap into and explore. The ability to listen and be open to new sounds is priceless and can open one's mind to exciting possibilities. This is the evolutionary process, unabated, exploring chaos patterns into existence. This is the exploration of other peoples minds that eventually leads right back to our own doorstep - and beyond.