This CD completes a trilogy of three colors. It started off in 2004 with the color blue (Blaauw), followed soon after in 2006 by red (HOT). For this CD I’m using white and, as with the themes of the other two CDs, it is a very personal portrait of the trumpet.
I remember hearing live music for the first time at the age of 5. It was in the church of the small Roman Catholic village where I grew up, sung by a choir with some very impressive male voices. The music must have been Gregorian chant. The church was cold, the music mixed with the fragrance of incense. I loved it.
But the big space of the church also frightened me. I remember it being half dark, when, while listening to the music, the angelic statues seemed to search me out, looking down on me with their static, mysterious stares. Their impact on me was strong. So strong, that the statues started following me in my thoughts, especially at night. Alone in bed, trying to fall asleep, I would often be visited by those eyes. Their very unsettling looks made me shake with fear. To deal with this fear, I invented my own music.
I fantasized. Endless melodies arose in my head. Starting off slow, soft and gentle, they would soon grow stronger, bigger, louder, and faster. To finally besiege the piercing looks of the stone creatures, I would add the sound of the trumpet. This guaranteed success every time. The trumpet would enchant and transform the threat into peaceful sleep. These frightening visions pursued me until my eleventh year – the year I was given a trumpet, and my parents allowed me to take trumpet lessons. I couldn’t believe my luck.
The repertoire on this CD comes from wonderful composers with totally different
backgrounds and totally different stories to tell. Somehow I felt these pieces were related. By practicing, playing, performing, and recording, each piece took on its own identity and developed a unique personality. The pieces became alive, turning into spiritual and angelic beings made of vibrating air. Only then did I find what they had in common and a reason to combine them. Their sound world reminds me of what I heard as a young boy, dealing with fear. Many years have passed since then, which have helped me discover that my early fears were only a small preparatory exercise for what has turned out to be an existential part of life. I am happy to play the trumpet. The enchantment remains!
Marco Blaauw
Many thanks
to my musician colleagues Markus Schwind, Nathan Plante, Ralf-Werner Kopp, Christine Chapman, Bruce Collings and Michiel Braam for their musicality, their precious time and motivation; to the composers, for their music; to Armin Köhler and Rolf W. Stoll for making this possible; to Ensemble musikFabrik, for the use of studio and equipment and keeping the noise level in the building low enough; to Dorothee Schabert, for all the work behind the scenes, the networking, the great artistic input and for creating a productive and pleasant working atmosphere; to Christine, for support, ideas, translations, and jumping on the bike to look for a new wacky whistle in Cologne during the recording of Wild Winged-One.