Microzoic Piano Suite

About

Microzoic Piano Suite is the latest in a long list of collaborative works with my poet friend Michael Harlow. This process of working together is characterised by a mutual trust, which allows me to use and even alter a Harlow text as I wish, and in return Michael makes precise suggestions for the music, which I am pleased to accept. This new text, or rather, these 13 short texts, recount the life of an artist with all its contradictary qualities like ingenuousness (”boy-man”) und sexual maturity (”The glory of it I thought then and still do”), confidence (”always going to sing their way into the hearts of everyone”) and doubt (’Quand on est dans la merde jusqu’au cou . . .’), seriousness (”After all, said father who had been reading forever discovering one thing and another”) and craziness (”Some thought him a little crazy and others agreed.”) plus the important qualities of passion, enthusiasm, sensuality, determination, the readiness to take risks, etc. and the facility to let himself be inspired nature.

Interesting is the role of the piano in the poem: on the one hand it is a symbol for art in general and on the other an erotic symbol. When the piano celebrates its birthday (“They have birthdays too”), we notice that art can and should celebrate itself.