Behind the scenes: The creation of "Alles Licht"

 

My new album *Alles Licht* will be released on November 1, 2024. I would like to tell you the story behind this extraordinary CD for grand piano and organ. Please enjoy the insights into the creative process and the inspiration behind the pieces.

This photo was taken during the live recordings of the compositions, January 2024.

Every person has a story of the heart. And only those who know theirs can truly be happy. For me, all my music albums are stories of the heart. They yearn to be experienced, seen, and heard. (My) music is meant to bring joy into the world and to make the stories of many hearts audible.

The compositions for *Alles Licht* were created in 2020 during the pandemic. At that time, I was searching for an instrument that could bring new sounds into a changed world while offering comfort—both for myself and for others. This is how I discovered the organ.

During the first lockdown of my life, I sought places where making music was still possible. This led me to various church spaces in Berlin, Denmark, and Italy.

I began working on a cycle of pieces that express my feelings about the world and my thoughts on the gradual disappearance of cherished (natural) spaces, precious refuges, and biodiversity on our planet.

During this time, I got to know the organ better and better. I was fascinated by writing secular music that made a spiritual connection to the place where it was created, with the complete compositional freedom to arrange and play music as I wanted it … with references to jazz, classical music, minimal music and improvised passages.

Photo by Thomas Nitz 2024

I wanted *Alles Licht* to be recorded live and in direct dialogue between piano and organ. I found the right place for this in the Neue Kirche Kleinmachnow, which is acoustically similar to a studio. And a musical partner in Daniel Stickan, an organist from Lüneburg, who is a kindred spirit.

During the two-year composition phase for *Alles Licht*, I also came across Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish, which has always been one of my favourite composers, and I improvised on its Hebrew melodic arrangements, first on the piano and then on the organ. I took up the idea of a prayer for healing and composed/improvised my own interpretation of it on both instruments.

The leitmotif of the album*Alles Licht* goes back to the book ‘All the Light We Don’t See’ by Anthony Doerr, for whose radio play I wrote the soundtrack in 2022. This book, with its basic idea of feeling your way through a world caught up in war and surviving it, matched the thoughts in the book ‘Earth Emotions’ by Glenn Albrecht. Both works are about a new language for a new, challenging world in which the loss of once beloved places and people plays an ever greater emotional role.

And what would compositions in this challenging combination be without a sound engineer? My long-time partner-in-crime Martin Offik, with the help of his colleague Jonas Fehrenberg, dedicated himself to the sound design of this record, from the recordings to the master. Kudos to them!

Our press release was written by the renowned jazz editor and free spirit Ulf Drechsel. He has known my work since the first record. Here are some excerpts:

„Every new production by Ulrike Haage is a kind of miracle box. Before opening it, all you know is that it will reveal music by an artist who has developed an unrivalled artistic signature in around four decades of musical creation. And anyone familiar with Ulrike Haage’s work can be sure that her new, as yet unheard music will surprise, captivate and touch.

Ulrike Haage sees her work as something holistic. As a combination of music, word, image, sound and noise. Her compositions for radio plays, radio and theatre pieces and films are never just atmospheric or sonic accessories. Ulrike Haage’s music gives the spoken word, the moving image, the sound of life a new dimension, a new meaning. Her music creates and opens up spaces in which what is heard and seen can expand or condense. Ulrike Haage’s music becomes a catalyst for listeners to delve deeper into their own world of feelings and thoughts, perhaps even to rediscover themselves.

Unlike most churches that have an organ, the one in the New Church in Kleinmachnow is not permanently installed in a gallery, but has a mobile console. This meant that Haage and Stickan sat right next to each other in the church during the recordings, with eye contact and a closeness that becomes almost tangible, especially in the quieter moments of the music. And then, in the next moment, sounds of a tremendous shared power reach us again.“

(Ulf Drechsel, summer 2024) 

And after the recordings, the music becomes colour, graphics, design.

The CD was designed with dedication by Sven Grot / B-99.

Published by Blue Pearls Music.

I hope I’ve made you curious, please order here.

Online listening here.

I want my music to bring joy to the world.

Or to put it another way: to make the story of many hearts audible.