It can take a while for an artist to find their true calling. For Pieter de Graaf, he’s been searching since he sat next to his father, aged five, and watched him play the classics and the classical; the Beatles, the Stones, Chopin, Bach. As a teenager, he immersed himself in the world of jazz, dedicating hours to practice, and studying at the Conservatory of Rotterdam.
For de Graaf, it has to be real, and it has to say something. So for his new project, he went back to basics. His influences – Miles Davis, Nils Frahm, Rachmaninov, Bach, Chopin, Herbie Hancock, and above all Keith Jarrett – allowed him to combine easy melodies with more virtuoso passages without losing the meaning, or the essence, of each song.