A concert of original music born of free improvisations.  Geoff performs pieces from his two albums for Piano Solo, selections from a third album in preparation,  and other projects.

 

The music ranges from the long rhapsodic pieces of the first album to the more recogniseable classical forms of the second:  Passacaglia, Notturno, Romanza, Pastorale per Fin'Estate, Preludio 4B, Wheelchair Waltz etc., as well as excerpts from a recent project based on Gianni Rodari's “Favole al Telefono” (Telephone Tales), conceived as a Music Theatre piece for performance with Peppe Servillo as narrator, and toured around theatres in Italy.

 

The concert is further enhanced with anecdotes from a long and varied career in music, and memories of some of the collaborations for which he is celebrated.

 

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«When I was very small, in fact among my earliest memories,  I would go to sleep each night to the sound of my mother playing the piano in the room downstairs.  And so, already at a very tender age fell in love with the music that accompanied my slumbers:   Brahms Waltzes, Chopin and Rachmaninov Preludes, pieces by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann,  Grieg ….. and so many others.

 

So one day when I was just four years old I told my mother that I wanted to play too,  and insisted that she show me how.   So I received my first lessons from her,  gradually through the years,  I learned to play all the beautiful pieces I had heard her play,  as well as many other wonderful discoveries awaiting me in the piano stool.   Throughout my childhood,   I would play for hours and hours without ever getting tired of it.  And even today,  I still do.

 

The music that we produce when we are composing is always a sum of the music we have absorbed and loved as listeners.

 

In these Improvisations you can feel the influence of the great names who have inspired me right from the beginning. These compositions are offered as a tribute to them, as a heartfelt thanks for the infinite joy and emotional support that their music has provided me throughout an entire creative lifetime.  

 

Geoff Westley