In the meantime, while still busy with music and coming from an improvised music background, in most cases, we were expected to play either within a certain style, form, harmony but the focus mainly being the “playing” aspect. Without a deeper connection to the music, I was just playing my part. Throughout my experiences, I started discovering what was missing in my approach. I started focusing more on tone, quality, what structure, intuition, the space between notes and most importantly, silence. I started meditating on these thoughts for a while.
I started finding some connections. I still remember, from my earlier memories of both classical and improvised music concerts, even though I was fascinated by what has been played, I was always mesmerised even more by the silence before the beginning and after the last note. The lingering period of tension, in the best sense possible, between the audience starts clapping of the last note of the performance. The euphoric feeling after an improvised concert, after a flow state, when everything stands still for a brief moment.
This led into a search of philosophical concepts, ideas that very well can be adapted to the sound world. More focusing on the quality of limited material, happening through a well-structured frame became what I started looking for in composition, art and life. This led to an interest and minimalism, structure and aesthetic philosophies, I started learning about new ways to approach art in general and wanted to adapt that into my own compositions and playing.
Being educated in contemporary music and spending more than a decade in the improvised music scene made me realise that the music that I was writing and what I was performing did not satisfy me as an artist. I thought maybe I was not where I wanted to be technically so I started practicing more, playing more difficult repertoire but that was not it. Following this, I started composing more technical material, which I thought the more challenging a piece (in all aspects) the better it will be, but that was also not the case. I was looking for something that I did not know what. Honestly, this ultimately led to a form of hiatus for 2 years at the end. Without realising, I stopped performing, which I thought was my passion, stopped composing after graduating which was almost ten years ago and started drifting. During this unfruitful era, I have found out that I lacked the inspiration and ideas outside of music, different ways of thinking. I have gone through a style of music which led me to realise that my ideas and the music that I was both composing and performing were not connected. So I started to search for other approaches without knowing what to look for.
With this musical and personal self-discovery, I started drifting away from technically and harmonically dense material that was my interest in my youth and started focusing more on a having a minimal approach. I was looking for simplicity, unity. A deeper meaning in music rather than virtuosity. And more importantly, the beauty of silence and the feeling after executing a well thought single note.
With the discovery of certain composers, concepts and philosophies, I have finally arrived at an artistically content place. With this research, I will be exploring possible outcomes of improvisation and composition, when one focuses on limited material and its variations, simplicity, the space between objects and the beauty of silence. I have chosen to focus on a certain composer, his style and relative philosophies. This new approach to art and life in general, helped me understand things more clearly in the age of information overload and over-stimulation. Find a different connection and meaning in music, also through music. I hope this can be an inspiration to others as well.
While growing up as a musician, I had variety of interests ranging from philosophy to Japanese martial arts, the latter leading to an interest in the culture, arts and philosophies as well. The contemplative element even in the simplest of tasks, the importance of silence, rituals, minimalism and many more concepts that I learned throughout my life from this interest of mine. During the hiatus period, I have rediscovered these and it made me realise that I wanted to put these approaches and thoughts in my music. I just did not know how and where to find possible examples.