"O Tree", the new project by Wiek Hijmans, with Bart Soeters and Mees Siderius, is a jazz-rock trio that thinks as an innovative chamber music ensemble. "O Tree" uses everything stylistically necessary to tell a poetic story in music. Hijmans is the composer and the pieces take shape together, also through improvisation. The quest to use all the music that composer Hijmans holds dear and has taken root in his body for a compelling and coherent musical narrative is leading. A breakthrough in that journey was the composition of 150 guitar solo pieces, based on just as many psalm texts: by starting from the tone, atmosphere and dramaturgy of these poems/prayers, seemingly unbridgeable contradictions in musical stylistic elements seemed to disappear like snow in the sun. Or indeed very obvious contrasts within the dramaturgical sequence of the sounds. Examples of such a process include Hijmans J.S. Bach, Anton Webern, Miles Davis and The Beatles, with the extreme White Album perhaps even being too contrasting for some. For Hijmans, the album only radiates more and more unity over time. The pieces for "O Tree" have no literal word source. The stories are latently present as a proto-form for the compositions. The connecting image is the tree. The roots are as branched as the arms and leaves. An infinite source of inspiration, staring at the bark, feeling rooted again, from the head into the body, experiencing that body and mind are one, bending, cracking, growing, with the seasons. In Siderius and Soeters, Hijmans finds the ideal (literally!) companions for the musically challenging form he chooses. The fact that these are very sensitive, inventive and people-friendly musicians/makers is just as important as their impressive musical-technical background.
