The inspiration for this project is based on one of the first things that William Parker told me when we first met in 2018; that the music is endless, it is always around us, it has no beginning and no ending and that we choose to dip into it when we play but it doesn’t stop when we stop. It is always there like a flowing river.

When Germaine Liu, William and I stepped into the studio and then recorded live in March 2020 this was what we did, we played in the musical river together for many many wonderful hours.

The track selection, done in 2021, was also a kind of dip into the music, this time into our recorded material. I am sure that the tracks I selected then would be different from what I would select now – it’s a neat aspect of this process but also a bit scary…as I am always tempted to go back and give it another listen, wondering what else I would choose now and didn’t then.

The flow of the track ordering and naming is my latest dip into the material. I wanted to model the songs after a river’s course, active and lively at the beginning, leading slowly to a calm merging into a larger body of water.

William’s idea keeps resonating with me now as much as it did back in 2020. The image of the sound as a river and its flow and the feeling of play as we dip in and out. The tracks in this album are a selection of those moments – each so different.

This album is both a product of and an homage to the river.