Messages | Program Notes
by Patrick Zimmerli

People often ask me where the music I write comes from. Of course there’s no real answer to that question, but I can best make non-composers understand the process by of artistic creation expanding the inquiry — where does anything we say or do come from? We all create spontaneously when we speak, and composition starts with a similar spontaneous generation of ideas, in the language of music.

With speech, as with music, humans essentially combine and re-combine the words they’ve already heard before, with some unknown— I suspect very small!— percentage of “unique” or “individual” ideas thrown in.

When I’m speaking I sometimes hear the voices of friends or loved ones speaking through me. I’ll be expressing an idea or a thought, and in the back of my consciousness I think “oh, I got that idea from so-and-so.” In that sense the people I’ve known inhabit me, and live on through me.

For me that’s also the sense in which people do live on after they’re gone— the sense in which the afterlife is real. My grandfather died in 1986, but I can still hear his voice, see him dancing soft shoe, like he’s standing right here before me now. 

In music it’s the same. Composers are inspired by other composers, present or past, and can often trace thematic, harmonic, coloristic and formal influences in a very direct, one-to-one way. 

So we’re constantly receiving “Messages” from all directions, often from those no longer with us. Many of us involved with this project have been touched by recent loss— I lost my father last year; the pianist, Thomas Enhco, suddenly and unexpectedly lost his stepfather, the influential jazz violinist Didier Lockwood; and one of the very founders of the Seattle Commissioning Club, Alexander Clowes, an important doctor and teacher in Seattle, recently died, sending ripples through the entire Seattle community. 

Yet all of these people continue to live within us, through their actions, their words, and the strength of their beings. These Messages are the inspiration for my new commission for the Seattle Commissioning Club.

Messages is a project that brings together French and American musicians, and jazz and classical music.  The young and versatile French pianist Thomas Enhco, the French classical saxophone quartet Morphing, and the bassist Stephane Kerecki and drummer Fabrice Moreau will perform.

The work takes the form of a mini-concerto, in which the saxophone quartet plays the role of strings, brass, and winds combined, supported by the jazz rhythm section, while Thomas navigates between classical piano and improvisation.

A unison theme of four rising notes begins the piece. The rising four-note motive forms the basis of several of the eight inner movements, as well as the two interludes and Coda, and serves to unify what is a diverse set of pieces reflecting a sampling of the various influences, musical and personal, that have guided me and inspired me through my life.

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