‘Streams of Consciousness’

‘Streams of Consciousness’ is a solo piano album compiled from an entirely improvised recording session over three consecutive days in July 2024. The session was recorded by a video camera positioned above the keyboard and the only ‘composed’ phrase of each piece was the very first one, which was conceived just before the camera was turned on. Every subsequent note and harmony is nothing but a response to the notes and harmonies before it.

Now the recording is over, I look upon this music as a kind of letter to myself, a snapshot of me in July 2024. I attempted something similar seven years ago shortly after my father died, with a working title ‘Meditations on Love and Death’. I played for a day but the music was formless and I knew on listening back that those improvisations wouldn’t connect with an audience as there was nothing to hold on to – no recurring melodies, no coherent structure – just meandering sentiments. Listening back to those older recordings now, I can barely believe that they were created by the same pianist as ‘Streams of Consciousness’ and in a way, they weren’t. I’m a different person now, and a different musician.

One ‘rule’ I made for this new session was that I wouldn’t listen back to anything until the evening of the recording, when the piano lid was closed. I didn’t want my judgement of what had gone previously to affect my playing in the present. My memory for spontaneous musical phrases is unreliable so I had to devise phrases of words while recording to help me remember what I’d just played which would help me recap melodies later in the piece. Ostinatos (repeated motifs) I could keep in mind only by watching my fingers move and trying to remember their patterns. Watching the videos back now, I can see my fingers form and reform in different shapes as they try to recall exact voicings and the order of notes in a melody. I often got them wrong but I tried to make these ‘mistakes’ into new departures and I managed to recover and continue most of the time.

Many (most) of my preconceived ideas of what I would end up with after three days of pouring out ideas and emotions turned out to be wrong. A starting point was ‘family and friends’ (à la Enigma Variations), but I quickly abandoned this. Family and friends are in every element of my music whether I like it or not and I found it better to start with no goal or intention in mind and just see where the music led me. A knock on the door from the postman would trigger a memory which might lead the melody in one direction, hearing my daughter leap and tumble upstairs, another. An impromptu visit from a neighbour might bring a new focus and recalling a childhood dream, a different focus again. In some pieces (Beneath the Stars, for instance) I can still clearly see what was going through my mind when the notes left my fingers, but most of the music is just music to me now. I initially had in mind to group all the minor improvisations on one album (named ‘Consolations’) and all the major improvisations on another (named ‘Constellations’) but when sequencing them in this way, I personally couldn’t bear to listen to either album so I scrapped that idea. Anyone who fancies being monumentally depressed for an hour can indulge themselves here.

I’m writing about this album on the day of its release (a month after the recording session) because it is something of a musical departure for me. This is a different Andrew Holdsworth to the one known to ballet teachers and dancers, but maybe they’ll be able to hear ballet in this music. I’ve been playing for ballet since the age of 11, it is bound to be wrapped up in my musical personality.

A final mention must go to the Bechstein piano this music was recorded on. Purchased with a bequest from my late father, this extraordinary piano has inspired me to keep playing, composing and recording since it entered my life seven years ago. This piano (tuned to perfection by the most wonderfully passionate master piano technician Alfredo Capurso) simply draws music out of me and to a very considerable extent plays itself. What comes out of the piano always sounds better than what I put into it, which is why I adore the recording process so much – whether it’s Britney Spears or Beethoven.

I don’t normally explain my music and I’m not going to make a habit of it, but for those of you who have read this far, I hope you found this page interesting. Oh, and for those of you who just want to fall asleep, I’ve put a version of the album with a synth choir on YouTube here.

Andrew Holdsworth 19th August 2024