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O N L O R D Miles Away "Written sometime during a summer in the nineties. In my garden, half asleep. Jet lag must have had something to do with the time signatures of the main theme - 5/4, 4/4, 6/4, 5/4 and 7/4. The working title was "27 Miles Away" because those bar lengths add up to 27. I used some of this material for the slow movement of my piano concerto "Boom of the Tingling Strings."
"Leaving Deep Purple was just as traumatic as I'd always suspected it would be, and more so. This music is, in a way, the story of that departure. Friends of such longstanding (and occasional falling down) no longer there nearly every day to joke with, argue with, to smile with." One From the Meadow "Behind the house where I live are fields and woods and meadows and sky and, just over there, the river. Walking amongst it all, it's hard not to smile and even harder to stop the occasional tune from dropping in. Back from a walk, I wrote this melody down - well the first 6 bars or so - and put "One from the meadow" at the top of the page." Vocal: Sam Brown Cologne Again "On the 11th of February 2004, I drove to Cologne to begin several days of meetings. An idea for an instrumental piece kept nagging at me until I surrendered and picked up a pencil and manuscript to try to exorcise the pesky thing. And here it is. Cologne Again - naturally." I'll Send You A Postcard (Pavane for Tony) "Tony Ashton was a pianist, organist, artist, writer, raconteur, bar-room sage. Occasionally exasperating mirror-image-renaissance-man, sartorially quirky and a holder of the secret of merriment as well as a man of sometime sorrow, but one who left the world a much less colourful place when he moved upwards in 2001." The Sun Will Shine Again "Frida and I meet in Zermatt, Switzerland. Somewhere later along the way, after hearing "Pictured Within" I think, she asks if I'd consider writing a song for her sometime. Early February. I make a demo and fly to Switzerland the next day to play it to Frida. Happily she likes it, and the title." Vocals: Frida A Smile When I Shook His Hand "In memoriam George Harrison- I first met George at Apple studios in Saville Row, London, when I was about to start recording an album called "First of the Big Bands" with Tony Ashton in, I think, 1974. Sometime in 1977 we were re-introduced, became friends and remained so until his oh-so-untimely death. He taught me a great deal about many things, and I miss his wise words as well as his marvelous and occasionally scurrilous humour." November Calls "I have had the harmonic structure of this song for quite a few years. I seem to remember discovering something like it whilst doodling on my first Polymoog synthesizer, whenever the heck that was. (I think I even tried it out on DP and Joe Lynn Turner once. Draw a veil, Jon, draw a veil.) The chord sequence, however, stuck with me. Here, then, is the result - nostalgic but, I hope, positive." Vocal: Miller Anderson The Telemann Experiment
Music for Miriam "Version for String Orchestra (2003) - My mother, Miriam (nee Hudson) was born in 1912 and died in 1995. The morning after, which was, cruelly, heartbreakingly beautiful, I woke with a 6-note motif dancing around in my head. I sat at the piano and within a while had written a short "elegy" for String Quartet, and this was played a few days later at Mum's funeral. In this form it was also recorded on my album "Pictured Within". I feel that this time I've better represented my mother and her mercurial nature and also my feelings for her."
(Thanks to EMI Music) |
De
Profundis 
"I'm
often asked to describe the kind of music I play: "What do you call
it?" they cry. Well, here we have a confluence of Swedish Folk Music,
German Baroque Music, Jazz-rock and Orchestral display; a mediaeval
instrument, piano, electric instruments and percussion dancing along
with strings and woodwind and I don't think you can put a label on that.
To quote Ian Gillan, who says this quite often: "My point exactly."