“When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?” (Michel de Montaigne)

Underlying any artistic endeavour is an urge to interact – with an audience, with art history, with instruments and matter, one’s surroundings, other artists, oneself. This interaction, however, is not one among equal players: one person – the artist – is usually held responsible for the act. The composer composes a composition, the improviser improvises an improvisation, the performer performs a performance. These concepts suggest that the interaction is one-directional. This is why I call my work ‘playing with …’. For me, this expresses the multi-directionality of art. The cat also plays with me.

Although the title of my album is ‘Playing with standards’, the number and kinds of ‘playmates’ are infinite. They can be both conscious and unconscious. Most conspicuously, I play with two pianos, tuned a quartertone apart. When I play with my pianos, my pianos also play with me. The sound is not only produced and controlled by me, I am also guided by the resonance of the strings. Moreover, tuning the pianos a quartertone apart, I play with our collective artificial habit: the equal temperament. Since J.S. Bach’s Das wohltemporierte Klavier, the custom in Europe is to have twelve equal semitones in one octave; a uniform system of tuning that still dominates Western music. Adding quartertones, one octave is divided into twenty-four equal intervals, multiplying the harmonic possibilities. Thus, our playmate – tonality – who had become a self-evident tool, is brought to the fore. I do this both to question the tradition and out of love for it.

I also play with another convention: standards. The word speaks for itself. In the history and tradition of jazz, a number of popular songs became part of a collective language which facilitated playing together in a spontaneous way. This carried within itself the risk of stifling creativity by dressing up musicians in a stylistic costume. At the same time, relieved of the responsibility of deciding which clothes to wear, the musician is free to focus on other aspects of playing – this is the paradox of freedom. Standards are imprinted on our collective (un)consciousness – even if you do not know a particular song, its nature is such that it sounds recognizable. The familiarity of the songs allows a greater level of abstraction than when creating or composing from the unknown – the known has yet to be established.

Typically, the musician plays on the harmonic and melodic structure of the standard, for example in the so-called solos. This in itself has become another habit which obfuscates the great variety of playmates. One of the things I aim for in this project is to deconstruct the harmony and melody itself, with more floating voice leadings, meandering paths on which the listener can drift along and eventually lose all sense of direction. Sometimes, I only play with the leftovers in my memory. By striving to remember those fading fragments, another creative space opens: the standards are transformed, not intentionally but out of necessity. We tend to forget the importance of forgetting. What we remember and what we forget are signposts of what we value. I found comfort in this organic, more intuitive way of expressing my aesthetics. I look at standards as archetypal figures which spring up in memories or dreams, sometimes blurry, sometimes clear and shocking.

In its foggy shape, the identity of the original loses significance, and with it, the author does too. Isn’t it this doctrine of Original and Author that has overshadowed the role of the listener in the existence of a piece? When we listen to music, we also compose: selecting the sounds based on the capacity of the ear, their familiarity and our receptibility, and shaping them into wholes, we are actively involved in the creative process. Like the ouroboros – the snake that eats its own tail – this process of listening and creating is an unending cycle, perpetually in motion. The concepts of beginning and end become hollow. When we create, we do not create out of nothing: any idea is at least a representation of a memory or impression. Even if it feels like a fresh start, this is only because what occasioned it got lost somewhere in the depths of the mind. Beginnings, endings, results, occasions, moments – all are copies without original. Simulacra! They repeat but they are not the same. We must beware of confusing repetition with resemblance. A recording on repeat is different every time, changing with the listener’s mood, the memory of the previous listening experience, the atmosphere …

‘Playing with standards’, the standards are repeated. It is precisely by repeating that I hope to stress the variation that is always part of repetition. Opposed to this stand the comforts of sameness, on which, for example, the artist’s ‘image’ is based, a style that is preferably reproduced as much as possible. Creatures of habit that we are, we look for similarity and recognizability. We need a name, an individual who can be held responsible for the creation in question. There is a tendency to look for a subject, and thus we overlook the interactive whole that surrounds it, always transforming and in motion.In my project, change, unpredictability, uncertainty, fluctuation become values. Author and work lose their individuality. The whole exceeds the subject. When playing, there is only interaction, no cat nor I.

Seppe Gebruers with Hannah Lingier

Seppe Gebruers ‘Playing with standards’ And with two pianos tuned a quartertone apart

Seppe Gebruers 'Playing with standards' And with two pianos tuned a quartertone apart

Seppe Gebruers plays with two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart.

In his project 'Playing with Standards', he doesn't play the exact original songs but he plays with them.

Release tour 2023:

January 20, HA Concerts Ghent

January 26, Rataplan Antwerp

January 28, KC Nona Mechelen

The triple CD-box will be released January 1, 2023

and the triple LP-box October, 2023 (with different tracks), at eNR, elnegocitorecords.com.

Seppe Gebruers - Playing with 'When You Wish Upon a Star'

In this recording he plays with ''When You Wish Upon a Star'', a song written by Leigh Harline for Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'You And The Night And The Music' Version 2

In this recording he plays with ''You And The Night And The Music'', a popular song composed by Arthur Schwartz with lyrics by Howard Dietz.

Playing With 'You And the night And The Music, Everything Happens To Me Lullaby Of Birdland & more'

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Wyschnegradsky, Prelude 1'

Seppe Gebruers don't perform the preludes of Wyschnegradsky but he plays with them like a vague memory. In this way, nearly-one-hundred-year-old pieces of the all-but-forgotten Wyschnegradsky (sill performed, though, by big shots such as Yvonne Loriod and Pierre Boulez) are put in a radically-contemporary context.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'The Days Of Wine And Roses' part 4

In this recording he plays with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', a popular song, from the 1962 movie of the same name. The music was composed by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Last Night When We Were Young' version 2

In this recording he plays with 'Last Night When We Were Young', a 1935 popular song about nostalgia and young love composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by Yip Harburg.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Everything Happens To Me' version 2

In this recording he plays with 'Everything Happens to Me' (1940), a pop standard written by Tom Adair (lyrics) and Matt Dennis (music).

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Chords' version 1

In this recording he plays with only and idea of 'Chords'.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Last Night When We Were Young' version 1

In this recording he plays with 'Last Night When We Were Young', a 1935 popular song about nostalgia and young love composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by Yip Harburg.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Just A Gigolo' Version 1

In this recording he plays with the song "Just a Gigolo". This well-known song was originally an Austrian tango called "Schöner Gigolo, Armer Gigolo", composed in 1928 in Vienna by Leonello Casucci to lyrics written by Julius Brammer. Later on, Irving Caesar adapted this song into English.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'I Loves You Porgy' version 2

In this recording he plays with the song I loves you, porgy by George Gershwin from his opera Porgy and Bess.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Never Let Me Go, Everything Happens To Me and Stella By Starlight'

In this recording he plays with the songs 'Never Let Me Go, Everything Happens To Me and Stella By Starlight'.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Bye Bye Blackbird' version 2

"Bye Bye Blackbird" is a song published in 1926 by Jerome H. Remick and written by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon.

Seppe Gebruers Plays with 'Born To Be Blue' version 1

In this recording he plays with a popular song called "Born to Be Blue" . It is a 1946 traditional pop torch song written by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells. Later on in the 50s, it was considered a jazz standard.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Stella By Starlight'

In this recording he plays with the song 'Stella By Starlight' by Victor Young, that was drawn from thematic material composed for the main title and soundtrack of the 1944 Paramount Pictures film, The Uninvited.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Last Night When We Were Young' version 3

In this recording he plays with 'Last Night When We Were Young', a 1935 popular song about nostalgia and young love composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by Yip Harburg.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With ''In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning'

In this recording he plays with ''In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning'', a 1955 popular song composed by David Mann, with lyrics by Bob Hilliard. It was introduced as the title track of Frank Sinatra's 1955 album 'In the Wee Small Hours'.

Playing with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', 'I Fall In Love Too Easily', and 'In the Wee Small Hours'

In this recording he plays with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', 'I Fall In Love Too Easily', and 'In the wee small hours of the morning'

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'The Days Of Wine And Roses' Part 1

In this recording he plays with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', a popular song, from the 1962 movie of the same name. The music was composed by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'The Days Of Wine And Roses' Part 2

In this recording he plays with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', a popular song, from the 1962 movie of the same name. The music was composed by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'The Days Of Wine And Roses' Part 3

In this recording he plays with 'The Days Of Wine And Roses', a popular song, from the 1962 movie of the same name. The music was composed by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

Seppe Gebruers plays with 'What Is This Thing Called Love?', version 3

In this recording he plays with 'What Is This Thing Called Love?', a 1929 popular song written by Cole Porter, for the musical Wake Up and Dream.

Seppe Gebruers plays with 'What Is this Thing Called Love', 'Never Let Me Go' and 'L'Accordéoniste'

In this recording he plays with 'What is this thing called love' (Cole Porter), Never Let Me Go (Jay Livingston) and 'L'Accordéoniste' (Edith Piaf).

Seppe Gebruers plays with 'I Fall In Love Too Easily'

In this recording he plays with 'I Fall In Love Too Easily', a 1944 song composed by Jule Styne with lyrics by Sammy Cahn.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'You And The Night And The Music' Version 1

In this recording he plays with ''You And The Night And The Music'', a popular song composed by Arthur Schwartz with lyrics by Howard Dietz.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Donna Lee'

In this recording he plays with 'Donna Lee'. It is a bebop jazz standard attributed to Charlie Parker (although Miles Davis has also claimed authorship), and based on the chord changes of the jazz standard 'Back Home Again in Indiana'.

Seppe Gebruers Plays With 'Never Let Me Go' part 3, full version