My second piano composition for the year, titled Spirit & Flight is now ready for you to download. Thank you for the incredible response to my first piece, Of Time & Light. It’s been such a wonderful process, each piece a reflection of a state of now for me, a deep dwelling. And there is something about publishing the work – as I’ve found in the past with sharing my creations in their raw state here on my blog – that not only helps me to grow but is so very nurturing as well.

Thank you for listening, I hope you’ll enjoy this composition.

With Love,

Pia

Dear friends,

It’s been many years since I explored sound here on my blog. And many years since my very first public piano recording. With your enthusiasm and praise I shrunk away, too timid to try again in case the next piece wouldn’t be as well admired. Life moved on but the music stayed in my heart.

This year, in working to open my heart ever more, I’ve decided to play again. For me. And to share it with you. Freely. Each month in 2014, I will upload a new piano composition: My heart’s voice. Each piece will be recorded in my own home on an old wooden semi grand borrowed from a friend, complete with ambient sound from my home & neighborhood. With each piece I am striving to let go: Let go of perfection; let go of expectation; let go of self.

There will be mistakes. I will not edit the compositions. These will not be professional recordings.

I offer each composition to you freely – you can download them and add them to your music collection, to take with you as you journey in your creative life. I recommend listening to them with your headphones so you can hear the birds singing in the background, and the pedal creaking, the keys clicking.

At the end of the year, in its roughness, will be an album. Here is my first piece, titled Of Time & Light.

This is my heart’s voice.

With Love,

Pia xx

Standing in the depth of the forest is one of the most magnificent “I’m alive” moments to be had. Being amidst the trees, the birds, the insects, the soil, the air… it always sends a tingle up my spine. My racing mind stops. And my heart fills with light, and life. It is so real yet so magical.

Would you like to take a moment with me today, and stand right in the middle of the rainforest? We can stand in one place and look around to see what we might see, and hear what we might hear. We can pretend we live in a treehouse, high up in the branches.

Please click on the play button to listen while you scroll through the photos below to be whisked away to the depths of the rainforest with me. Enjoy…

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Have a wonderful weekend mes amis.

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+ soundscape and photographs taken on a walk through Lamginton National Park in Queensland, Australia, January 2010.

+click here for more soundscapes.

On our way to the Val D’Amour we spent a night in Reims – a beautiful French city in the Champagne region. Yes, champagne.  Oh what a treat it was to enjoy a glass of the bubbly stuff right at the source! I had fantasies of finding a little bed and breakfast in one of the wineries and learning more about the making of etc, but alas we didn’t arrive in the region until after 9pm and had to leave by midday the next day to be able to get to our destination on time.

I did however have just enough time to enjoy a delicious glass of Mailly. The next morning, French Boy and I wandered about the town, I knowing little about where I was or what I was seeing,  and he knowing quite alot. I always feel really lucky to be wandering around this fabulous country with him, he is not only like a private tour guide but he has personal memories to add to each story.

After we indulged in a breakfast of pain au chocolat, croissants, baguette with homemade jam, fresh juice and coffee (me, tea of course), we wandered toward the cathedral, having spotted the towers ahead, pointed straight to the sky. And although I am not religious – despite the fact that my last name in Dutch actually means “by the church” (so ironic!) – I do enjoy history and art, and this particular church is an incredible structure housing both amazing art and fascinating history. From the outside it reminded me of the Notre Dame in Paris. And in the inside at first well, it just reminded me of a church. But as I wandered further through the huge arched nave, and looked and listened, I realised how significant this particular place has been in the course of French history.

Would you like to know what it sounds like inside? I recorded a little soundscape for you, click the play button below to be transported inside as we gaze at the photos I took while wandering through the aisles…

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This is where I stood for the longest while, looking up at those gigantic windows and watching the light flood through. Of all the stained glass windows in the cathedral, these ones made me stop in my tracks. They were so uniquely different to all the others, so modern and creative. French Boy noticed my reaction and lent in to whisper two words to me:  “Marc Chagall”. Oh I thought, no wonder I adore them, what a masterpiece.

I hope you enjoyed my quietish tour through the cathedral. Although this particular post really had nothing to do with the scenery or food of France.

xx

PS Funnily enough there  just happened to be a Canadian village set up in the Reims city square that weekend. How bizarre it was to be eating croissants in this very French town and seeing Canadian flags attached to little wooden huts selling maple syrup, cranberries, beer, salmon, soaps and wool sweaters. It was like being in Montreal, but then absolutely nothing like it. Nice touch to our weekend though!

I don’t know about you, but my week has been rather chaotic. Not so much on the outside, but on the inside. My head is full of stuff. It is filled with to-do lists, demands, commitments, negotiations to be made, responsibilities weighing heavy, and emotions riding high. On the outside I may be cool, calm and collected but on the inside, it’s a wild and crazy ride. Rarely does my exterior expose what is going on behind the scenes. But every now and then it will bubble up, and reveal itself to those I am closest to by either snapping a sharp remark, or dismissing their needs. As much as I want to eradicate this behaviour, I am told it is called “human nature”.

What I have learnt though, over the years, is that beautiful sound and music is a wonderful, gentle technique of subjugation. It calms the soul, breathes life into the deepest, darkest commotions of the mind, and warms the heart. When you take the time to listen – just listen – then a sense of renewal is found.

I had no intention of writing all of the above as an introduction to this soundscape but somehow, it happened. And I see it is not without purpose, because what I am about to share with you is a continual, flowing moment of musical interlude that does just that: breathes life and love into a place where commotion is writhe. A moment that almost everyone who visits this special place will experience at some point. It’s a moment when one goes below the cool, calm and magnificent exterior and experiences life under the skin, below the surface, and deep in the veins of this celebrated city. The sound echoes through this labyrinthine nerve center, and penetrates through to its darkest corners.

I speak of the metro Chatelet in Paris. And today, I take you with me as I walk from one of the cavernous tunnels passing by a 12-piece orchestra that plays in this underground mecca, up the stairs and back out to the grandness above. This metro of Paris is very much like one’s mid-week mind. And this music is the strong and gentle breath it needs.

Please press the play button below and enjoy…

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