Over het album

A solo album is always a risk for a pianist, because it is important to keep the complete attention of potential listeners only to this piano during the entire album. The Luxembourger Arthur Possing has so far attracted attention with two quartet albums; the second one, "Natural Flow", was released two years ago by Double Moon.

"The aesthetics of a solo album should differ significantly from my quartet recordings," the pianist stated. "Like a singer/songwriter who stands alone on stage with his guitar, I want to play songs alone on the piano. This means that my compositions are deliberately kept simple and the melody is always in the foreground and should have a statement. The pieces shouldn't be too long either." In fact, only the opening song "The Essence of Joy" is longer than the five-minute limit, and Possing has scattered four short interludes between his five songs, which create space for new moods and atmospheres. The straight "Folk Songs" is framed by two of these dreamy miniatures.

"In addition to my own pieces, I also wanted to play pop songs that have strongly influenced me or songs by musicians that I find very concise," Possing said. He chose two of Sting's most famous songs with "Fields of Gold" and "Seven Days". "Sting is a musician who has always fascinated me," the pianist recounted. “He loved playing with jazz musicians and that's why the harmonies of his songs are a bit more refined. There are odd time signatures in 'Seven Days‘, which the general audience does not notice because the song still grooves.”

"Beatriz" by Edu Lobo and Chico Buarque is a classic of Brazilian pop music that Arthur Possing got to know during his music studies. "I studied in Brussels, and there was also a Brazilian combo in which we played this song by Chico Buarque," the pianist recalled. "I always kept that in mind and thought I'd do something with it sometime."

The fourth cover version on "ID:entity" is "Cinematico", a song by the Belgian jazz pianist Eric Legnini. "Eric Legnini is a decisive figure in my life, both as a musician and as a human being," Possing stated. "He made me a complete pianist. I owe him a lot, and my version of 'Cinematic‘ is a tribute to him.”

The nine songs and four interludes make "ID:entity" an extremely varied album, on which you can perceive the complete bandwidth of pianist. Alone, as he plays “Fields of Gold” – namely, as if he touched the song with velvet gloves – is astonishing, but Possing's peculiarly radiant  “Midnight Light” or the grippingly constructed “Val Pellice” show the pianistic variety that the Luxembourger has quite naturally at his disposal.

Possing is considered one of the most promising pianists of his generation. He has set an early highlight in his career with the natural musicality of “ID:entity”.