| www.sossmar.de: | Eyran - how did you start making music ? Was it your family who 'made' you or was their some kind of magical attraction ? |
| Eyran: | I started playing the piano when I was five years old. My parents bought a Schimmel upright piano from our neighbors and I was immediately very attracted to it and started playing. No one else in my family was playing music, and there was no pressure to take lessons. Already at an early age I felt the need to learn an emotional language without words, sensing that it would serve me later throughout my life. It was clear that I had a tendency to improvise. Improvisation was very easy, and classical music very challenging, but I kept playing both. My first music book was an old used collection of classical pieces. Its pages were yellowed by the years, torn and taped. As a child, I would place this book in front of me on the piano stand, and improvise while looking at the music so that my mother would think that I was reading the music from the book. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | As you started not only having fun making music, was it clear to you that you would make a career and changed your life knowingly or did it somehow just happen to you ? |
| Eyran: | Overall, I feel that music choose me and not vice versa. In life, I believe that it is important to learn to accept what is right for oneself and not choose what is wrong. One of the things I accepted in my life is music. With that said, I was about 16 years old when I made the decision to dedicate myself to it. I started practicing entire days, from morning to night, studying music theory, listening to various LPs and completely immersing myself in music. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | From today's perspective : Do you like the way you have chosen - would you take the same decisions again or are there some thing you would like to change ? |
| Eyran: | I think that I have been amazingly fortunate to have had such a calling and vocation and would want music to be central in my life forever. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Eyran - Did you ever perform in Germany before your concerts in Hummer's Culture Parlor or do you have other links to Germany? Had you already met the typical 'North Germans'? |
| Eyran: | Several years ago I performed in Braunschweig with my friend the jazz pianist and educator Mathias Claus. It was a wonderful experience. I still haven’t performed in other regions of Germany. I was so pleased to find the people in Lower Saxony so warm and friendly. They are a truly wonderful audience. In every concert, I felt welcomed even before I played the first note, which always makes me play better. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Please tell us how you met Gerhard. |
| Eyran: | Gerhard came to meet me following my concert at the Teatro di Marcello in Rome. I have a funny memory from our first meeting. The piano pedals at that concert were squeaking. I took my shoes off and played with just my socks on for the rest of the concert. At the end, when Gerhard came to the stage I felt awkward. Here I was, conversing with this elegant man about performing in Germany, nicely dressed but without my shoes on! |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Your first visits to Soßmar, your first concerts at Hummer's Culture Parlour : What were your feelings in that not very typical concert ambience ? |
| Eyran: | What Gerhard envisioned and brought to fruition in his house in Sossmar is truly inspiring. He has created a cultural center where people from all over the world meet and share their love of music. Gerhard is a man with wonderful dreams and the rare ability to fulfil them not only for himself but also for others. It is truly a blessing that he and his wonderful wife Bettina stepped into my life. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | What were your thoughts when Gerhard first told you about his idea of a colaboration of jazz and classical music in one concert ? |
| Eyran: | I thought it was a wonderful idea and knew that we had the trust and the friendship to make it successful. Gerhard’s idea to choose Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition for this project was ingenious. I felt honoured that he choose me to perform with Andrei Ivanovitch, a great pianist and wonderful man. Gerhard sensed that Andrei and I would work together well and become good friends. He couldn’t have been more right. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | How did you prepare for these concerts in Lower Saxony? What were your thoughts and expectations? |
| Eyran: | Gerhard told me about the project a year in advance. I started thinking about how to approach it and devise a plan for the music. Around the time I started working on this project, I watched the movie "8 Mile" about the life and music of the rapper Eminem. I thought that it would be interesting to bring a rap "groove" into Mussorgsky’s piano medium, and that’s how my interpretation of the opening Promenade theme came about. Naturally, I was a little concerned that Andrei and I might have completely different ideas about how to approach this project. Once we finally met, it was a very pleasant surprise to see that we had a remarkably similar vision. We both wanted to respect Mussorgsky’s original form and maintain the structural unity of Pictures At An Exhibition in our new version. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | You arrived one day later than Andrei - knowing that he was already in Soßmar. Did you think of Hummer's Culture Parlour at that time ? |
| Eyran: | I had quite a long travel, from Boston to Detroit and than via Amsterdam to Hannover, and throughout it was looking forward with excitement to arriving at Gerhard’s house, and meeting Andrei for the first time. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Please describe us the moment you first met Andrei. |
| Eyran: | Andrei was practicing at the Culture Salon when I arrived with Gerhard from the airport. First I said hello to Bettina and off course to their dog Rojnya, who evidently remembered me from last year and greeted me with her usual wails of happiness. Gerhard and I went quietly into the salon because we did not want to interrupt Andrei’s beautiful playing. Andrei stopped playing and came to greet me with great warmth. We were both very excited to finally meet. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | What is your impression of that first concert with Andrei in Hummer's Culture Parlour ? |
| Eyran: | The first concert at the Salon, on October 6, 2007, was a perfect opening for the ensuing series of concerts comprising our Pictures At An Exhibition: Classical Meets Jazz tour. I was deeply inspired by Andrei’s performance in the first half. His masterful rendition of the Liszt B Minor Sonata justifiably received a rave review from Ulrich Jaschek in the Peiner Allgemeine Zeitung. The wonderful audience at the Culture Salon had not one, but two hearts filled with love that evening - one for Andrei and one for myself. But we still didn’t know how much more wonderful it would be to perform together with two pianos a few days later. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | And how about the first concert with two pianos ? |
| Eyran: | The first performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition at the Bechstein Centrum in Hamburg, which was luckily also recorded, was one of the most thrilling experiences of my musical career. For me, it was a wonderful learning experience to combine the idioms of jazz and classical music. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Eyran, what do you now think about Gerhard's idea ? Would you want to repeat this ? |
| Eyran: | I think that Gerhard’s idea was brilliant, and his ability to fulfil it was remarkable. His idea was truly noble, with historical significance and educational value. I would be very interested in presenting this project in the future to additional audiences worldwide. |
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| www.sossmar.de: | One last question: What do you think of the people in Lower Saxony, especially about the people of Soßmar ? |
| Eyran: | The people of Sossmar were truly wonderful to me, and I’m very grateful to them. They are the warmest, most engaging, friendly, generous and happiest 777 people I have ever met. I am proud to be the one who named Sossmar "the new cultural center of the world". Particularly I was glad to see that the people in Lower Saxony and myself share a similar sense of humor. With that in mind, while looking at some online automatic English translations of the recent articles in German, every time Gerhard Hummer was quoted, the automatic translation would say: "Lobster says that this was a wonderful concert"... |
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| www.sossmar.de: | Thank you so much ! Do you have another message for the world out there ? |
| Eyran: | Thank you so much, dear Hansjoerg and Jessica, for all your efforts online and offline concerning our project and for coming to the concerts in Sossmar and Peine. Thank you also for the great questions which gave me the opportunity to clarify my feelings and thoughts about our Pictures At An Exhibition: Classical Meets Jazz project. Please let me also extend deep thanks to my friend Ellie Malick for her extensive help throughout the tour and with this interview. |
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