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Willem van Ekeren
(1956)(classical piano and school-music) was as a young boy already
interested in music and playing piano. As a teenager he formed several
bands and also commenced a singer/songwriter career. It was in 1996
that he made the album 'For
the Rich' where he sung the lead vocals and also played the acoustic
guitar. At this time he often performed in cafes as a bar-pianist
and gave piano lessons, while at the time being drawn more and more
to classical piano.
In 1994 he chanced upon the book 'The Last Night of the Earth Poems'
by Charles Bukowski and he immediately fell in love with it.
Now, in 2002, he still reads the poems but a lot has happened in the
mean time. He gathered some other favourites such as ‘You Get
so Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense’ and ‘Dangling
in the Tournefortia’.
In 1997, whilst lying in bed with ‘The Last Night’, and
reading it for the third time, he was struck by the fact that ‘You
know and I know and thee know’ was the ultimate text for the
f minor prelude of Bach’s Well Tempered Keyboard. He didn't
know what hit him. It was as if he had entered a secret cave with
strange drawings on the wall... Taking a deep breath he continues
scrolling and penetrates in the deep caverns of a mysterious place.
Peace, Spark, Aliens and Be Kind seem eager to wrap themselves in
a Bachian robe. Exhausted he falls asleep. The next day at the piano,
he just starts combining the words of You know with the f minor prelude.
The whole thing is still crooked but ritual forces lead Willem, as
he manages to sing You know in such a way that it falls into place
with the structure of the f minor harmonies. He wonders what is happening
and asks himself whether this is something super kitsch or something
real. Was this what he had been searching for all those years? He
became very moved and grateful when with Peace and Spark it all continued
to flow with the same natural self evidency. At the time he didn't
tell anybody about it.
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