I never was good at expressing my emotions verbally. I often get jealous of people who are great speakers, good teachers or people who can grasp the essence of something and reduce it to a few meaningful words. I was born with a talent for music. And as a natural response to that, I always felt that playing music is a good way for me to express myself. But more than that I learned that music can be an instrument for spiritual expression.

In autumn 2019, my wife and I went on a retreat in the Egyptian desert. We spent time at a Coptic monastery called Anaphora. We prayed together with the monks, talked, shared meals, studied holy Scripture and enjoyed nature in a beautiful oasis surrounded by the silence of the looming desert. During our time there, I was reminded again what true freedom is. ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.’ (Galatian 5:1) True freedom, it occurs to me, is something that we tend to forget about, living our busy lives in western society. We let our minds get flooded by unimportant things and are so caught up with ourselves, mostly feeding our egos instead of our souls. Only embracing the physical and neglecting the spiritual.

In Anaphora I decided to take a few moments everyday to write a simple melody. To keep the creative mind flowing. These melodies represent my time in retreat, getting back in touch with Source.

Before booking the studio in October 2019, some of these melodies were taken back to the drawing board, others remained unaltered. In most cases I refrained from writing harmony, tempos or even bar lines, just the melody. I wanted to present the musicians involved with purely the essence and give them all the freedom they need for interpretation. Or as Quincy Jones calls it ‘allowing God to walk through the room’.

I want to thank everyone involved in making this record, and I pray that somehow it might be a blessing to you, listener, as well as it was for me making it.

I am writing this during the COVID 19 Corona crisis, march 2020.

The busy lifestyle suddenly ceased, for weeks now. Perhaps making room for some reflection. God bless.