Dedicated to Robert Walser, whose life and writing provided the inspiration and impetus for this album.
Each piano piece is a meditation on a corresponding “microscript” that Walser wrote, hence the titles. The two cassette-exclusive bonus tracks were especially reflective of Carl Seelig’s accounts of their walks together.
My first introduction to Walser was through W.G. Sebald’s “A Place In The Country”, which is a collection of homages to some of his own greatest influences, including Walser.
All that to say: thank you Robert Walser, and thank you Carl Seelig, and thank you W.G. Sebald. Thank you also to Jochen Green, Werner Moorland, and Bernhard Echte, who invested so much time and energy in transcribing and deciphering Walser’s scripts, which turned out to be a radically miniaturized form of the medieval Kurrent script.
These pieces attempt to convey a variety of things at different times – sometimes it’s the specific subject matter of a microscript. Other times it’s the overarching impression that a microscript made on me. It’s not just the microscripts that I had in mind while working on this album, but Walser himself, or at least as much of him as I have so far come to know. His walks, his poverty, his mental breakdown. These and other details very much informed my intentions behind the way the album sounds. Some pieces were fully composed. Others were improvised. And others were a combination of composition and improvisation.
