White Nile

14 Pieces for Piano Solo

1. Celebration, S.4
2. White Nile, S.12
3. No Time to Wait, S.17
4. Noka ee tona (The Big River) S.21
5. The Valley of Djaboué, S.24
6. The Wedding, S.27
7. Her Beautiful Eyes, S. 34
8. The Jugglers, S. 36
9. Ingxunguphalo (The Great Sorrow), S. 44
10. Kampala Matatu, S.46
11. Unstoppable, S.51
12. Meditation, S.54
13. Siku siyo mbali (The Day is not Far), S.57
14. Watching the Stars, S.70

These are the pieces from my second solo album White Nile. First of all: It is not a cycle, but a collection; you can play the pieces individually, together or in any combination.

This is the streaming link to the album:
https://listen.music-hub.com/J1Auay

Until the end of February you can order CD & sheet music together for 29,90!

Here is a description of the pieces:

1. Celebration: This is one of my all-time favorites and it was one of my first commissions. The Recorder Festival in Utrecht in 2003 asked me to write a piece for 12 recorders, the finale for a concert by the Malle Symen Quartet, the Brisk Quartet and the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet. It was written in the living room of our apartment, where we lived with three small children in four rooms. Constantly one child or the other was interrupting me or crying or screaming elsewhere in the flat. Still, in this chaos, I was able to write this piece all about joy, celebration and coming together – the basic purpose of music, in my view. One melody, eight minutes, just the major scale, just the white keys of the piano. It has been performed all around the world in the versions for 12 and for 6 recorders, and in March 2023 Philadelphia Sinfonia played the premiere of the string orchestra version. I am proud to present the piano solo version here.

2. White Nile: I first arrived at the White Nile in Jinja, Uganda, in January 2016. I then returned in August of 2018, when I took my son there for his 18th birthday. For me, it was the most breath-taking landscape I had ever seen. So wide, calm and splendid, which is what I try to express in my music. Uganda is the most beautiful country I have visited in Africa. It is green, flourishing and peaceful, like the Garden of Eden. ‘White Nile’ was the second movement of my African Suite No. 25 ‘The Pearl of Africa’ which was written for the Big Band QUÈKE, from Hamburg. I love this piece and so much that I later arranged it for piano solo, for piano and saxophone, and for piano and vocal duet. In the end it became the title piece of this album!

3. No Time to Wait: This work sounds like an etude and it was written to be the first of 12 African Etudes I wanted to write in 2014. As in ‘Celebration’ I used only the white keys of the piano and constantly changed the meter. It is a pure celebration of joy and quite tricky to play. Most of the time the composer in me does not consider at all the fact that I want to play my pieces in the end!

4. Noka ee tona: Noka ee tona means ‘the big river’. It was part of my African Suite No. 2 ‘Pina ya phala’. It is for recorder trio and was written in 1994 and is still probably my most popular composition. It has been recorded many times and I have arranged it for different instrumentations: for piano solo, for recorder and piano, and violoncello and piano. António Carrilho, Katharine Rawdon and Catherine Strynckx have a remarkable performance on YouTube playing contrabass recorder, contrabass flute, and violoncello.

5. The Valley of Djaboué: This is the oldest piece on the album, originally written in 1993 as the second movement of my first African Suite, Djaboué. The seemingly never-ending left-hand ostinato creates a calm, quiet and almost meditative mood, a feeling of endless floating. The time signature remains ambiguous - is it 3/4 or 6/8 in a bar? I imagine someone standing on a hill and overlooking the valley – and contemplating his own life.

6. The Wedding: This music depicts how I imagine an African wedding; a colorful, sublime, funny, intoxicating and rousing celebration of hundreds of people. I hope one day I will be invited to one! Apart from this it’s again written using my favorite form; I vary a very simple theme so often and insistingly that you will hopefully never forget it!

7. Her Beautiful Eyes: I wrote this piece for the double bass genius Marcin Oleś from Kraków in 2014. His family took me as an Airbnb guest for my first Polish language course. I was inspired to write this piece having seen the amazingly warm, shining, dark brown eyes of Marcin’s wife, Marta. It caused a marriage crisis because Marta complained to her husband that he had not yet ever written a piece for her, let alone about her beautiful eyes!

8. The Jugglers: This challenging piece was originally the first movement of my African Suite No. 23 ‘Kampala Circus’, written for the Hanke Brothers. I hope you imagine the balls flying through the air of the circus arena. I love juggling, I learned how to do it for the 10th show of my a cappella quartet LaLeLu in 2010.

9. Ingxunguphalo: Ingxunguphalo means The Great Sorrow. I wrote this piece in 2015 when my father was dying, one of the saddest times of my life. It was the second movement of my African Suite No. 16 Inxaxheba, commissioned by the Flanders Recorder Quartet, who recorded the piece with Saskia Coolen for their album ‚Five’. Ingxunguphalo has been played in various instrumentations at funerals around the world. There is a beautiful recording of the version for violoncello solo and string orchestra by the Philadelphia Sinfonia. This is the version for piano solo.

10. Kampala Matatu: This piece was originally the first movement of my African Suite No. 25 ‘Pearl of Africa’. This was the name Winston Churchill gave Uganda after he visited there in 1905. In Kampala, the huge capital built on seven hills, the main means of transport is the Matatu. These are old buses that can take up to 20 people. They don't move from where they stand unless every seat is occupied. Sometimes there are two people on each seat. Sometimes there is disco-like loud music. Sometimes someone preaches the whole journey. Sometimes they stop because the engine from 1970 has broken down. It’s a world on its own. Kampala Matatu!

11. Unstoppable: This piece is from a collection of 12 pieces for Marimba solo called Njalo Njalo. These pieces are yet to be premiered. If you know a talented Marimba player I would be very keen to meet them. In the meantime, I liked them so much, I arranged them all for piano solo!

12. Meditation: I wrote this piece in March 2022 under the impact of the war in Ukraine. It's unlike anything I've written before. I wanted to express my deep sadness at the incomprehensible horror of this war. A year has passed and the war is still going on. The piece is a kind of reflection and remembrance of all those who lost their lives and loved ones in this war.

13. The Day is Not Far: I confess, I am an atheist. However, nowhere I got so close to understanding religious feelings and beliefs as in African church services. The energy, optimism, strength and power of their passion and faith are breath-taking. People do not pray to the ground, but to the ceiling; they do not whisper, but call and shout; they sing with all their might; even in small rooms there are huge loud speakers; and it does not take one hour, but three to five hours at least. You experience more energy in one African church service than in a whole year in Poland or Germany. I tried to express this emotional odyssee, this apotheosis of joy and hope in this music. This piece has come a long way: I took the theme from the second movement of my recorder quartet "Wakati njema" and wrote a long set of variations for eight hands on one piano for the piano quartet Tastissimo from Oldenburg.I reworked this eight-hand piece for piano for two hands ... and these two hands have to whirl around quite a bit ... the official finale of this album. This piece went a long way: I took the theme from the second movement of my recorder quartet ‘Wakati njema’, about which I wrote a long piece for the piano quartet Tastissimo from Oldenburg, for eight hands on a piano. I have now arranged this eight-hand- piece for two hands... and those two hands have to twirl around quite a bit... The official finish of this album!

14. Watching the Stars With the finish of the album being No.13, this track is supposed to be the thoughtful, lyrical, slightly melancholic encore. Although, I feel this piece carries much more hope than melancholy. Actually watching the stars is one of the most simple, beautiful, and most spiritual things we can do. It’s for free too, and yet we do it far too rarely. In this piece, I explore the feelings that overwhelm us when we immerse ourselves in the starry night sky.

number of pages: 
72
Price: 
22,90 Euro