JORAM FEITSMA
Church
Since his piano teacher introduced him to the work of Ludovico Einaudi at a young age, neoclassical piano music never lost his grip on Joram Feitsma (1990). He started making and home recording his own compositions around the age of 18 years old. The thread that runs throughout his compositions is the minimalist character: repetitions, series, structures that slowly build after which to transition into something other. The works
are evolving spaces of sound with a felt, warm, melancholic undertone. Joram’s inspiration comes from time-honored neoclassical composers like Simeon ten Holt and Philip Glass, but also more recent pianists, including Joep Beving and Nils Frahm. Since some years, Joram has, together with musical friends, been experimenting with including musical elements of trumpet, cello, soundscapes and analogue synth, taking a more electroacoustic turn. From 2018, he has started performing, among other things regularly playing in ‘Het Muzieklokaal’, a classical music venue in his home-town Utrecht. After some low-key online EP releases through Mine All Mine! Records, the upcoming Bigamo release will be the first album that Joram is bringing out. This story began with Frank Wiedemann discovering one of his early songs, ‘Mimi’, through Soundcloud, which he played on a mix for the Solid Steel Radio Show. Frank and Joram kept in contact
throughout the years, resulting in a further collaboration with this 5th Bigamo release. The album includes nine songs that are a collection of works composed and recorded throughout the last ten years. There is a variety of both older and newer songs, which can be heard in terms of the recording style of the different works – for older songs (like ‘Belle’, ‘Mimi’) mics were placed at a conventional distance, while for newer songs (like
‘Intralude’, ‘Twin’, ‘Dans’), Joram experimented with placing the mics closer, inside the piano, sometimes at inches away from the hammers. In composing the more recent songs, Joram has also been experimenting in other ways. ‘Appearance’, which comes as a digital extra, is based on a collaboration with Alexander van der Linden, who made the soundscape that forms the base of the song. ‘Intralude’ combines piano with delayed
analogue synth sound. With ‘And Then What’ Joram is trying out a wholly different style, recording multi-layered improvisations in one single session by recording, looping and overdubbing piano sounds, while also using the piano woodwork as a percussion instrument. The album is called ‘Under’, which for Joram links to his own musical process of ‘going under’. Under into an inner emotional world – translating felt, existential, indefinable moods and undercurrents into piano sound. As such, the life behind the piano forms a crucial counterpart to a parallel side of Joram’s life as a social scientist.