Imagine if somebody took the melody of “Fields of Gold” (by Sting), dipped it a vat of strange and viscous neon fluid, then hoisted it back up. This is vaguely what Arthur Possing does on track seven of his new album, ID:entity, the familiar run of notes dripping with otherworldly harmonies pulling it downwards, weirding it into something novel.
Granted, describing it doesn’t really do much good, but the effect is nevertheless arresting. “Maybe the harmonies are a bit more sophisticated,” says Possing in an interview, comparing his approach to more mainstream or popular tracks, “but the melody has to be very clear, and has to pass on a certain message.”
The album, due out on 25 August, comprises thirteen tracks: four cover songs, five original compositions and four improvised interludes.
Possing describes his approach on the project as that of a singer/songwriter, in the vein of Bob Dylan or Nick Drake. (There is no singing; his piano is the voice.) “I always liked this kind of intimacy,” he says of the genre. “A person who tells his story, or a certain story about something.”
What story is the jazz pianist telling? The clue is in the title of the album, an assertion of “identity” that is transformed, fragmented, not straightforward. “There’s a whole melting pot of influences that have created my identity, if I may say so,” Possing explains. Various songs on the album present research into those influences: two Sting covers are an obvious nod to Sting; another is by Éric Legnini, a Belgian pianist well known in the jazz world (and whom Possing calls a dear friend); a fourth is by Edu Lobo together with Chico Buarque; one of the originals was written with a bandmate in mind, saxophonist Pierre Cocq-Amann; another refers to a valley in Italy where it was composed; another is a nod to folk music; etc.
The improvised interludes, arguably, get at subconscious parts of the musician’s identity too.
“I tried to be as honest as possible, to create a personal universe,” says Possing. “And I hope that…” he starts to add, before starting the sentence over: “Well, it never finishes, this kind of journey and research--but at this point, it’s what I am and where I am now.”
Quartet versus solo
Jazz fans will know Possing from his quartet, eponymously named, and they needn’t fear: more music from the Arthur Possing Quartet is coming (as early as next year, he suggests, or early 2025).
ID:entity is the musician’s first solo album, the idea for which came simply through getting opportunities to perform solo and not having anything prepared. Notably, at the Prague Jazz Festival in 2021.
Possing came quickly, he says, to the singer/songwriter approach that ultimately manifests in this new release. Naturally, however, being a single voice differs greatly to being one pillar in a quartet. “I learned that I had to make more of a difference in the dynamics--or I could make more--because I was all alone.”
“Here, you have go into the depths of the piano,” he told himself at one point in the recording studio, explaining: “The lows have to sound more orchestral… you have a bigger range to fill when you’re alone.”
On a compositional level, the songs derivate from jazz as you conventionally think about it. They’re short, around five minutes maximum, and some of them don’t contain much in the way of improvisation.
Still, none of the spontaneity is lost in them--and improvisation makes a more obvious appearance in the four interludes, which were taken as segments from a 30-minute chunk of improvisation done at the end of the recording section.
“Sometimes it really sounds like an introduction to the next song,” Possing points out of the segments, noting the serendipity. “But I didn’t calculate it like this.”
“There is a lot of improvisation still in there,” he comments. “But it’s not the main idea--the songs are not pretexts for improvising on. It’s the identity of each song that’s most important.”