Music is one of the greatest joys in my life. Over the years I've found my ongoing dedication to music to be comparable to the care a gardener gives to his garden. The musical flora that grows and flourishes in that garden is not of the gardeners doing, but over the years I learned to provide the fertile ground in which those musical flowers are more likely to appear.

 

In India, music is considered to be a Sadhana, a path to liberation. And that is how I have seen music play out in my life. Time and again, music has helped me to unravel the knots in my mind, still my thoughts and stir back to life the parts of my soul that lay dormant.

 

My musical background lies mainly in jazz and improvisational music. During my formative years as part of the European jazz and improvisational music scene, I learned to dive deep into music as pure sound, beyond any conceptualization. In my playing I was reaching for a state of emptiness where there is no expectation, no striving and no clinging. By exploring jazz and improvised music I learned ways to let the music unfold from the inside out, in an effortless action. It was an ongoing attempt to find a freedom of expression beyond the borders of the ego.

 

Music came into my life as a medicine. With my background in jazz and improvisational music, I've always been drawn to the spiritual side of music. For years I've been traveling the world to immerse myself in sacred music traditions around the globe and learn more about the ways music can be used to facilitate spiritual connection and healing. Those journeys brought me to India, Africa and South America, where I was able to partake in living sacred music traditions in which sound and music were intentionally applied as tools for healing and spiritual alignment. What I had previously sensed where hidden potentialities of music, now became a concrete and applicable knowledge. And it was during these journeys that I felt my musicianship started merging more and more into a spiritual practice.

 

Now, playing and listening to music has become a form of meditation, a doorway to silence, a journey through the subtler realms of the spirit into the depths of our being.