The Music of David Salminen

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announcement: the Portland “Synchronicity” concert 3/30/2014

The Second Law of Synchronicity – David Salminen – live in concert – exploratory piano improvisations

Sunday, March 30, 2014, 3 pm
Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave. Portland, OR 97205 http://www.portlandpianocompany.com

This concert is a chance to listen to music under special conditions which may facilitate the perception of synchronicities (before, during, and after the event). There is little needed in the way of explanation, but some explanation is in order:

The First Law of Synchronicity is the principle of Common Presence – the feeling of simply being here together in this moment, not somewhere else, and not later than… this moment! Being is the operative word.

The Second Law of Synchronicity is the phenomenon of Mutual Adjustment – without the necessity of a before and after process in time. We’ve all seen or heard this kind of thing somewhere, as in the synchronized flight of a flock of birds (especially murmuration) and in really “tight” performances by musical groups.

With a little bit of luck, this unique concert will facilitate special individual experiences within the heart-mind – one’s own personal meaning factory – of what is going on both within us and around us, synchronistically. Connections and insights arise out of music spontaneously, when time & space have been set aside for such experiences.

Diving into the sound stream, as in a concert of this kind, and catching and releasing various things along the way, is done by way of analogy to the cosmic process. This process, like the famous I Ching of the Chinese people, is a “book of changes” – gradual, sudden, recurrent, unique, and so on – and all of it merely part of the flow. The ideas inspiring this concert come in part out of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching, a book which has been a friend of the performer’s for over forty years. The 1949 forward to the book, by C. G. Jung, aptly describes the mystery of synchronicity in contemporary terms, as in the following on page xxiv. “The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure.”

My brief notes re “The Laws of Synchronicity” (actually six in number) are adapted from The Dramatic Universe, a four-volume work by J. G. Bennett, section 10.26.3. He cites Jung’s I Ching forward, in this choice bit clarifying synchronicity as denoting:  “a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves, as well as with the subjective (psychic) state of the observer or observers.”

Donations to help make additional events like this more feasible are gratefully accepted. For more information, please call 503.762.6387 or visit https://davidsalminen.com/

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meditation, music, new

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Portland, Oregon – concert – November 16, 2013

COSMIC SYMMETRIES – free fall concert – piano improvisations

David Salminen

Saturday, 3 pm – November 16, 2013

Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave.  Portland, OR 97205

Among the benefits of music especially associated with this type of concert are:

1) the facilitation of flights of fancy without a defining program or form, 2) an escape from our society’s constant reminders of who we are conditioned to be (an escape which can, paradoxically, improve our memories), and 3) the evocation of a sense of wholeness, that emerges in the cosmic musical experience like a healing balm, against the ubiquitous modern complaint of feeling scattered.

Salminen’s music “contains the very spark of life, and the listeners catch that spark.”     Julia Sopalski, For The Times

for more information, phone 503.762.6387, or visit

https://davidsalminen.com/music/  (includes recordings)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Salminen-cosmic-improvisations/125096377595660?ref=hl

http://www.portlandpianocompany.com

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cosmic, mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, pianos, Portland, Oregon, meditation, music

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David’s summer concert – Portland, Oregon

 David Salminen, pianist – in concert

“The Zone of Avoidance”

(cosmic improvisations)

Image

(photo by Christopher Vardas)

Sunday, July 21, 2013 at 2 pm

Portland Piano Company

711 SW 14th Ave in Portland, Oregon 97205

http://www.portlandpianocompany.com       phone 503.775.2480

Admission: this event is offered to the public, on a “pay what you want”  basis.

The “Zone of Avoidance” – or ZoA – is a term coined by the astronomer Edwin Hubble, after whom NASA’s famous & awe-inspiring space-based Hubble telescope is named. For many years, optical astronomers avoided looking into or across our Milky Way’s galactic equator, because of the obscuring effects of interstellar dust. Early optical “efforts” were better spent looking elsewhere – anywhere else – than directly into the ZoA!

However, in recent years, it has become possible for us – embedded though we are on a spiral-arm of the Milky Way galaxy – to finally look straight into & through the ZoA, using innovations like radio astronomy and infra-red imaging. At the right wavelengths, the visually opaque galactic plane becomes transparent, and the ZoA changes into whole new realms of interest and possibility!

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/Z/Zone+Of+Avoidance

Artistically, the “avoidance” notion is a veritable cornucopia of metaphor. So much of the world we live in seems opaque to us… yet it can be very productive to turn our attention toward our own private “ZoA’s”, looking with different eyes. In another metaphor, to be really experiencing the flow of music is an ever fresh and by definition “harmonious” way to explore perceptions.

Always evolving, the music David manifests comes out of long experience in cultivating the mutual benefits to both performer and audience in putting attention on the creative process in music, rather than the roles of  “presenting” something or “receiving” something. The traditional roles of performer and audience are still there, of course, but the aim is to activate another dimension of appreciation – the spontaneous element in all art. In any event – in all forms of music presentation – it can be postulated that there are still the same three creative elements: an expressive manifestation through an artist – the attention and inner life “river rafting” of listeners – and the ineffable mystery of music itself.

Salminen’s education in classical music included: the David Hochstein Music School in Rochester, NY (Louise Young, Chuck Mangione); Clark University in Worcester, Mass (Relly Raffman, Wesley Fuller); the Sherborne Academy in England (J.G. & Elizabeth Bennett, Anthony Hodgson, et al.); and the University of Alaska (Jean-Paul Billaud, Dean Epperson). Another major influence was Vipassana meditation training with The Ven. Vira “Bhante” Dharmawara.

Transition: In 1979, after twenty years of classical training, David’s connection with music began to change. His emerging knack for improvisation brought him into new musical situations with dancers and singers & also with meditative musical healing – a dynamically audible working through and re-blending of the energies of experience. This work – or play – has led to many concerts over the past 30-odd years, of extemporized music exploring extra-musical themes – often cosmic in nature. Combined with guidance in music appreciation, this format fosters a creative blending of the known with the unexpected…  so much so, in fact, that people coming to David’s concerts often find that afterwards they hear anew the joyousness of other music – both live and recorded.

Music recordings, videos, blog, etc. https://davidsalminen.com/music/

More videos: https://vimeo.com/davidsalminen

For more information: phone (503) 762-6387     email david@wholeworks.net

Salminen’s music “contains the very spark of life, and the listeners catch that spark.”      Julia Sopalski, The Anchorage Times

Salminen “uses his rather unconventional methods to create [music] bursting with life, feeling, and spectral intensity.”                   Metro Magazine, Anchorage, Alaska

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meditation, music

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“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” Albert Schweitzer

For many years, I nursed a hope that great music, in and of itself, could awaken a moral conscience in people. As Plato put it and apparently believed: “Music is a moral law.” This hope continued for a number of years even after I was introduced to the notion of a necessity for successful performing musicians with ethical aspirations to introduce sophisticated means of “rehearsing the audience”. This introduction happened in 1974, in sessions with the visionary futurist and exceptional amateur musician Anthony Hodgson. Investigating this question of music vs. “music plus” on my own, again and again, with audiences open to rehearsing – as well audiences that remained non-rehearsed or even non-rehearsable (resistant to listening sensitivity exercises) I gradually began to see things differently.

1974 was a big year for me in several ways… Aside from starting to introduce some of Hodgson’s music listening exercises to my own concert audiences, I graduated from Clark University with a degree in psychology. And – something I will try to write about in detail some other time – I had a particularly exceptional experience while performing some of the G. I. Gurdjieff – Thomas de Hartmann piano compositions for a group at Boston University, that opened me up to the sense of St. Paul’s famous line “Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I do not know.” 1974 was also the year, for better or worse, that I became a working professional musician in Los Angeles, California.

I had been involved with the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann literature from 1972 on, having been introduced to that unique repertoire by J.G. Bennett and various “Gurdjieff Movements” teachers – notably Pierre and Vivien Elliot, and Anna Durco – who along with Bennett himself, had been at least for awhile in contact with Georges Gurdjieff and/or Thomas de Hartmann personally. This training and experience in an esoteric art form was built upon many previous years of traditional lessons and classes in Western classical music, and some familiarity with jazz technique and theory as well.

Various musicians in the Western classical tradition have affirmed this striking notion that art in and of itself may be practically amoral, and must be intentionally linked with imperishable values if it is to have significant ethical weight. But the idea is by no means universally accepted. Two outstanding examplars of “music plus” from the world of popular music would seem to be the late John Lennon, and Bono. In the classical world, I think that obvious proponents of the principle of linking art with something more than art include Dame Myra Hess, Pablo Casals, and Albert Schweitzer. Historically speaking, the great Baroque era composer J.S. Bach was as clear as anyone has ever been about this ethical basis: “All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul’s refreshment; where this is not remembered there is no real music but only a devilish hubbub.”

Albert Schweitzer said about himself that his life was his best “argument” for his beliefs. Nonetheless, he was also actually a very articulate thinker and writer. I recently came across the following article, profound and amazing in its relevance to the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that began March 11, 2011. Although not about music or even referencing music per se, the article strikes a tone that is quite congruent with the search for a universal harmony:

A Declaration of Conscience ~ Albert Schweitzer

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cosmic, mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, pianos, Portland, Oregon, meditation, music

October 27, 2012 concert in Portland, Oregon

Prelude to my concert in Portland, Oregon, Oct 27, 2012 – 3 pm – at the Sherman Clay Pianos facility (no tickets necessary): Now I’m really gearing up for the concert this Saturday, which is dedicated to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. I can’t pretend to follow all the scientific details and speculations about sub-atomic particle physics, what’s next in terms of research into the Higgs boson and how it operates, etc. But I still believe that it’s useful for non-scientists like myself to try to follow the gist of it. And also – as a non-scientist artist, I think that it’s important for members of the society at large to contemplate what these contemporary developments on the frontiers of discovery might mean to us. So, I’m dipping into several books on the topic – even one published just after the Higgs boson discovery was first announced out of CERN in Europe on July 4, 2012. You know, (you may know this) the physicist who’s work was central to predicting the existence of Higgs bosons some 40 years ago, particles which are said to go along with and somehow interact with quarks and gluons… a veritable “zoo” of sub-atomic particles… in order to give them “mass”, a fellow named Peter Higgs, was still alive to see this validation of his theoretical work! That alone is interesting to me, that a person might say to the world that such and such a “thing” must be there, according to his calculations and ideas, somewhere in the virtually unseen world, and then to be validated some decades later when the technology and testing procedures catch up with his predictions. So, I’m enjoying some far out reading, and imagining different ways to make music to match…

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cosmic, mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, pianos, Portland, Oregon, meditation, music

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David’s long-term project

The free concert at 3 pm, Saturday, October 29, 2011 – “Into the Dark” – at the Sherman Clay Pianos recital hall in Portland feels quite imminent to me now. After all, it’s been coming together as a musical inspiration for about nine months, initiated really by a perhaps offhand comment from my friend Anthony Blake… but it is part of a much longer arc of creativity:

Beyond what I have written elsewhere, let me try to explain… I am on a long-term journey to create musical occasions in which we can get at something deeper than a “spectacle” or an “experience” – both of which are fine, as far as they go. I hold dear the ancient idea of music in various cultures. For instance, I relish the attitudes of the classical Greek culture, which held that “music is a moral law” (Plato) and the ancient Chinese, who expected the Emperor to “set the tone” – as a musical pitch, literally – for the coming year. I am most inspired, however, by a more modern approach as found for instance in Kepler, who was looking for a “harmony of the spheres” corresponding to the actual observational data that was being collected in his time – for the first time, as far as we know, in human history – about the movement of the planets. For much of my life, I myself have been looking at these things as metaphors for new kinds of self-perception for us as individuals and for even the human race as a whole. Years ago I read in a book by a particular musicologist who I greatly respect, about the usefulness of the Ptolemaic point of view (the earth is the center of all things, with various heavens or layers of reality above it) as an aid to meditation, as compared with the post-Copernican model, which is – according to some – less amenable for most of us as a metaphor or picture of spiritual unfolding. This bothered me; why should contemporary meditation or mysticism be dependent on outmoded models of the universe!  I suppose that I have always been something of a mystic, but I am also the son of a scientist… and somehow, I have always, also by nature I guess, been looking for progress in mysticism that could be parallel to, and not divorced from, the development of the sciences of our time. These days, due to the immense progress being made “as we speak” in astrophysics and cosmology, much of it having to do with researches into the nature of gravity, and the application of what is called “gravitational lensing”  – which has been poetically referred to now as “Einstein’s Telescope” *– there are whole new vistas of understanding  and contemplation opening up that are just waiting for us to enter, to appreciate, and to share.

*”Einstein’s Telescope -the hunt for dark matter and dark energy in the universe” is the title of a fine book by Evalyn Gates

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cosmic, mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, pianos, Portland, Oregon, meditation, music

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Concert Announcement

3 p.m. Saturday, October 29, 2011 – solo piano concert – Portland, Oregon

DAVID SALMINEN – INTO THE DARK

spontaneous creations

Sherman Clay Pianos auditorium – 131 NW 13th Ave, Portland, Oregon (parking across the street)

map: http://www.shermanclay-portland.com/portland-piano-location

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cosmic, mysteries, dark energy, dark matter, pianos, Portland, Oregon, meditation, music

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