In 2009, I played a piano -solo concert at the Vooruit in Gent as support act for Bender Banjax , with new compositions for this occasion.

A part of this musical material was worked out in a next composition for lyrical voice and piano.

Draaiorgelpunt, a composition for lyrical voice and piano on a poem written by Ine Pisters was performed for the first time in february 2010 and commissioned by Noordrand, Grimbergen.

Performance ; Monica Brett Crowther (mezzo-soprano), Kaat De Windt (piano) .`Later also performed by Lucy Grauman, alto.

I knew Ine as a friend, colleague pianist since a long time.

She wrote lyrics for some songs of the White Wine Dark Grapes album, she worked as a dramaturge for "Waves", a project with the music theatre company La Dea and in 2010, I asked her to use one of her beautiful poems to compose a piece for voice and piano. I met Monica Brett Crowther during my work as a dramaturge for the production Pitié, by Alain Platel and Fabrizio Cassol. I was very touched by the work of those 2 women. We made a proof recording in Berlin.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud

Song lyrics: poems and reflections by Ine Pisters

Translated and adapted

The surrounding sound of that street-organ filled a circle of about 180 degrees.

I turned around my axis and turned it into 360 degrees. Organ point.

I came so far, looking for an epic centre although I already knew it for many years. I also knew about the snow and about the water.

Water, water, water.

With and without sound.

An empty day – grey.

I wait for at least one idea,

one idea to wade through my brain.

We will never understand it – the memory of the hands, the journeys of the heads, the worlds of the words. And we never ever will come to a conclusion.

The sun is white, and also dark. There are no shadows in the dark.

Water becomes air and driving clouds. A horizon is impossible to reach.

The air is thin, or heavy. Look at that balloon sitting on a cloud.

Tears are water, tears are salt. Cry me a river.

I saw a sun all orange over here – over there it was blood-red scarlet.

And the moon, the moon just appeared as always the moon.

Hugged, a perfect circle, a square in a circular shape.

That tide will return from an old story and other things neither will become new. But please allow me to take notice of a movement over there in the distance, although I know we left it behind.

To remember is to dream something backward, from a distance.

Time is a line, a block, zigzag hesitation.

While I was staring into the void as if there were no perturbations, I saw how everything rattled away. Like the sound of tramrails in stories where tramrails rattle away, and somebody gets crashed by the train. There’s a lot of wind. Leaves are floating in the air.

No, that’s not what I want to talk about.

The void is not knowing what it is all about.

I think I lost it again.

What the hell I thought I found?

I have lost the words.

They stick on my skin.

What is sticking on your skin, you ask me, and why?

But I don’t know, I have lost the words.

How can I talk about this, like I’m cold or I’m hot, how can I tell about feeling the sound of the wind in the trees?

In my garden I see the vines, climbing, and apple trees. That magpie is staring at us. And a parrot and a sparrow too. I am a stranger and I only feel connections raging all around.

Only one moment of intensity – we pretend non stop and for eternity.

I have to skip this exuberance, into an other centrifugal word

or hide it in the leaves of the hornbeam.