re: the inner process behind my August 17, 2014 concert in Portland, Oregon
The water theme is offering me a chance to see some things about myself and life a little more clearly… I just don’t know how many people share my view of the potential of music to open up perceptions and creative thinking, insight, and so forth… but those are the sorts of things that keep me going, with my impressionistic improvisations. Many years ago, when I started to have some remarkable experiences in the performance of composed music, I got motivated to learn a hundred or more special pieces that I thought had “messages” – but then, little by little, I found that what I heard was not necessarily at all what others heard!
Therefore, little by little, I gave in – to an appreciation of the unique subjectivity that everyone of us has. In that sense everyone is a genius – every person sees things or understands things that no one else does! The “message” of water that I recently happened upon in the Chinese Book of Changes/I Ching – that water “does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions.” … that message has begun to take on a profound significance to me. My hope with this concert is to encourage people to appreciate their own individual and unique “essential nature” !
This August 17 concert is free of charge, by the way (although donations to help defray costs and make more presentations possible are greatly appreciated). Here’s a link to the venue, with all the pertinent info: http://portlandpianocompany.com/press-events/
David Salminen 