MUSIC "HERE AND NOW"

Do our contemporaries think about the role of music in our increasingly digital world? Do they realise that thanks to listening to the classics or to serious musical compositions they in fact help themselves? To return to his authenticity, to develop and refine his skills of emotional intelligence, communication, social interaction and aesthetic enjoyment. To plunge into a world where life is filled with harmony and beauty addressing the very essence of a human being...

This is what Renara Akhundova, an internationally acclaimed pianist and well demanded composer, is all about. Along with giving concerts in the US, Europe, Russia and Asia she composes music for theatrical plays and contributes to soundtracks for audiobooks. Renara's CDs have been released in Russia, Europe, China, Singapore and Taiwan.

Her works is a combination of different musical styles and directions, for she has dedicated her life to being unique rather than ‘an assembly product’, just a common element within a matrix. Her works are a living music for the soul. Oriental spiritual practices fit seamlessly into Renara's works and always find their way to the souls of her audiences. One of the hallmarks of the pianist is improvisation, which has become an indispensable part of her concerts, when a musical idea is born before the eyes of the audience, drawing them into sort of collaboration, where the individual becomes part of the collective energy through reflection. Where the sound is the Word and the musical phrase is the Teaching.

Renara Akhundova's music combines different styles and directions from new age and pop-classic to relax and meditative. Her works have been included in the 100 Masterpieces of World Classical Music in Russia.

"You fill your music with a certain philosophical context, implying languid contemplation. This also means that your listener has to be knowledgable enough. Especially in this day and age, when the increasing number of people are developing mosaic thinking."

"It is not about knowledge. Rather, about the extent of one’s mental state, his relation with personal feelings and needs, that is, with the present within oneself. That’s why if by knowledge we mean self-development and being on the path to own self, if we mean the seekers, then it is easier for them to find and connect with this centre in themselves, in this space within themselves in a particular moment when I lead them along this path, inviting them along with the music "here and now". I can share that music with them regardless of their ‘mosaic mindset’. Music works wonders indeed! All it takes is a single moment or a single sound to penetrate into this innermost space, and then you have a miracle, when a moment of true emotional experience is born from your mosaic thinking... Because none of us has ever known and will ever know the moment this déclique can happen. It can happen anywhere and to anyone when the time is due."

"Your music has a kind of cinematic quality. I can listen to it and visualise it."

“I follow you. Many of my listeners have told me that when they listen to my music they see different images, pictures. Pictures from their childhood, or that space inside that they have looked into quite a long time ago, or revelations through images. Different emotions… Film music has been my favourite genre since childhood. It's what I have grown up with. I was fascinated by the divine melodies of great films: Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather, Love Story, Un Homme et Une Femme... Ennio Morricone, Francis Ley, Nino Rota... I used to run back home from the cinema to repeat the music I just heard and never forget it. It's no surprise that I refer to this genre today. And I think it’s impossible to classify this genre.”

"Your musical stories are somewhat in sync with the works of Georgy Sviridov, Tofig Guliyev, Vladimir Cosma, Franz Liszt, Rafig Babayev and other composers."

"Well, perhaps. There is no doubt that at some point their music constantly resonated with me. Azerbaijani composers have been very talented and multifaceted. I am so lucky to have a chance to hear them live as a child."

"A pianist is always dependent on the state of the piano and the hall. Since every concert is a new instrument and a new venue, there is a constant exposure to new sounds, keys, space. Each of these components has a character that requires an individual approach."

"I would not say that a pianist is dependent on the state of the piano and the venue. Rather, each instrument and venue is always new. It is very important to feel the instrument before the concert. Likewise, it is great if one has an opportunity to know the venue before taking the stage. But the real familiarity happens during the musical encounter. I can say that a great instrument is a great help. Because the combination of the sound and state of the instrument conveys the original idea of your music with more subtlety and authenticity. But sometimes it's completely unpredictable and the instrument can be in a terrible state. I think the search for an individual approach is more a product of your brain, while the true encounter goes through your heart. Given all my experience in different venues, in different countries, in different cultures, and the COVID that made the online format of presentation a priority, including the concert programmes, I believe that presence is the most important thing. It is possible when we free ourselves from the Ego, when we are able to completely turn off our heads and immerse into the heart space, fully relying on what is going on in and around us. That’s the state of absolute presence."

"During your recent visit to Baku you have been working on a piece based on a mix of two genres—poetry and prose. Listening to your music at the concert makes one think that it would go quite well with the live Ebru technique of drawing or with the reading of letters by great writers and poets of the past."

"I'm open to absolutely any form of co-creation. It's an amazingly exciting process that can and should be developed further! It can be poetry, painting, music and dance at the same time. But the essence and catalyst for this process and its expression can only be pure improvisation."

"Improvisation is sometimes thought to be a carefully elaborated and finished piece of music. After all, people find it hard to imagine that music can be born right in front of their eyes. And this is where listeners can be sceptical about..."

"To be honest, I no longer think it’s reasonable to take into account what others claim. I've been working on myself to develop as much as possible a completely holistic view of the things going on around me. Perhaps this is what I need to make my life complete. If someone doesn't believe and enjoys the life of dogmas and beliefs that their family, school and society have stuffed them with, then kudos to them... that's their life. Proving something to someone is so exhausting an activity! And it is such a freedom to simply share something from the bottom of my heart with the whole world. This subtlest phrase comes from Hafiz: "I am a hole in the flute that the Christ's breath moves through”. Listen to this music. Improvisation is being a hole in the flute...

“A compromise is the death of the soul. As for improvising live, the music can only be an artistic product when it is recorded on a medium. If it is not recorded anywhere, it comes from the Silence and goes nowhere. It takes place exclusively in the present for everyone and everything.”

“Music is a universal language. Seven notes that replace an entire alphabet. Major and minor as a unity of opposites. And it is the universe that you fill in with the breath of wisdom. How do you, or can you, avoid playing out of tune? After all, you can accidentally hit a key and release an out-of-tune sound into the universe.”
“When I improvise, when I'm not here, when my ego vanishes in the light, there is no false notes, everything is perfect. False notes are in my head. As for the so-called pure crystal performance... I think the Soviet school of music, with its attention to the purity of notes and brilliance of performance techniques, has been quite a traumatic experience in this sense. By the way, the Chinese are very good at dealing with it now. For me personally, it is important to understand your student and see their unique qualities. Musicality is much more important than technique, which gives you more freedom of expression, that's all it does. But with students, you should follow in the steps of Marshall Rosenberg: Connection before the education.”

"One of your maxims is By healing myself, I heal the world. This is an appeal to the very essence of human being. But the most difficult thing is to educate oneself. Our contemporaries are not particularly concerned with empathy..."

"Yes, self-awareness, getting to know yourself is the most difficult and painful process. A journey to the real you. For me, that journey began thanks to Marshall Rosenberg. He opened me up to empathy in ways I had never known of. Marshall said that empathy will save the world. Therefore, by re-discovering ourselves, we re-discover the world. The key reason 98% of people don't want to look into themselves is fear. Fear of stepping out of their comfort zone. Fear of experiencing strong emotions. Fear of being rejected. It manifests itself in different ways.

“Each of us develops the strategy of avoiding looking into our present state by the programmes that we had been set up as children, during the first seven years of our life. Then we start developing those setups further in life, during our evolution. A truly healthy person is one who is healthy in all aspects of life: physical, energetic, spiritual, emotional and mental. I highly recommend the book Ancient Secrets of a Master Healer by PhD. Clint G. Rogers.”

"Your works address the people. The geographical coverage of your concerts is very wide. So you can compare audiences in different countries. How important for you is the attention and reception of the audience, its involvement while you are playing?"

"I have stopped comparing the audiences long ago. The reason is simple: it can lead me away from the truth. Sure enough, when there is a connection with the audience, all questions about perception, attention and so on disappear. It's either there or it's not. So I can tell you that the geography is very broad, the cultures are completely different. But the moment of full reconnection with the audience, when there's no ego, no concept of "you-me-he", when there's one whole, may not happen immediately. Sometimes it happens from the first note. I had a similar experience when I was invited to Bert Hellinger's 85th birthday party in Bavaria. There were about a thousand people from 80 countries in the audience. All these people had gone through the 10-12 days intensive systemic recovery method invented by Hellinger. The audience has been so ‘clean’ that from the very first note everything soared into a unified whole, leaving room only for presence. As to the audience involvement, it helps me a lot when I invite people to create together. It involves connecting everyone in the room to someone or something; it depends on the subject matter manifested at that particular moment. It's always spontaneous, nothing developed in advance. Such a collaboration makes the very process of improvisation unique for absolutely everyone. Everyone can live it."

"Your biography is a series of encounters and further development. As if the people meet along the way teach you individual solfeggio lessons..."

"These people are indeed a pure blessing and the grace of God. Starting with my parents and grandparents. Each and every person has been my teacher throughout my life. Some of them are very strong, some are very discomforting. But they are the most important ones, and I am grateful to them. I was fortunate to meet different masters. Each of them, in their own way, shared with me part of their own wisdom. My son is my greatest teacher. Baku is my greatest teacher. Everyone and everything is my teacher...”

"Although the world around us is a compilation of many different forms of music, there are people who are deaf to it. Then we face a dilemma—to teach them how to perceive this music or to leave them as they are..."

"One can never reach a heart shut down. But we can be an inspiration. After all, each and every one of us has at some point of our life journey been totally closed to the surrounding world, let alone what we have done along the way. But no person, no country in this world has escaped karma. Neither on the individual nor on the collective level. Karma is neither bad nor good. It is a constant action. It becomes an old piece of memory that is alive, vibrating and in need of transformation. By the way, no one has written better about karma than Sadhguru. His Karma is an excellent book. Everyone is where they are, in every sense of these words. Who, what, when and how will be your catalyst is between your soul and God."

"Reading books and musical education have been the most revered elements of personal development in my childhood. Every home ought to host a library, while a musical instrument, mostly a piano, was something the families have been proud of. Gadgets have gradually diminished the significance of these areas of personal development, giving birth to pseudo-freedoms. Has our society lost some of its spirituality?"

"I don't think the society has lost anything in terms of spirituality because the proportions remain the same. It's just that the global population has increased and virtual life has been occupying a significant share of our real life. There have always been those two percent of people who at some point in life hit the road for a spiritual quest. Also, we have never had so much access to the global library as we do now through gadgets, without leaving home. There are virtually no boundaries. So, on the contrary, ignorance is a choice today. Because information is available to absolutely everyone. So I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about a loss of spirituality. The is a growing number of amazing masters, seminars, books, trainings, etc. that have been completely inaccessible in the past. Continuous self-development is something that one starts when he or she feels ready for it at some point in life. This process is irreversible. Some people are just not ready for it yet. I think each of us goes through this stage of life at certain point. I don't perceive our being only in a 3D world, the general notion of space-time. I am very fond of quantum physics, which I think is the closest thing to the concept of Absolute Truth, God. It has absolutely incredible and amazing experiments that prove the linearity of time: past-present-future happens here and now in this quantum field. This is my perception of the world, and we can talk about it for a long time."

"An impressive number of people are turning to spiritual practices these day as if they are looking for an anchor of awareness. Only few of them realise that this path may span an entire lifetime. Because there are no ready recipes for how to become happy. Disappointments happen. Are you familiar with this feeling? How do you overcome such moments of doubt?"

"There is an incredible amount of currents and information out there today. One should understand that there is life beyond awareness, or vice versa. It is from the moment you perceive your life consciously the notion of time stretching disappears almost immediately. You start appreciating each moment of the present, and these kinds of questions do not matter any more. The feeling of happiness is also possible only through such inner treatment of oneself. It's a huge layer of everyday practices. In a nutshell, full awareness of your self leaves no room for disappointments, they just vanish. There are ups and downs. Life is like a sine wave. There is sadness and joy, polarity of feelings. But there are no moments of doubt. Except that approach to awareness is hard work, originating from that very déclique. One’s inner space, which has longed for freedom, knowledge, understanding, empathy, triggers the process from the first question about life. First come doubts and frustrations. But through constant development and when one is lucky, thanks to karma, to encounter his own Guru and achieve awareness, many frustrations fall away completely. Awareness is when one takes responsibility for absolutely everything that has happened, is happening and will happen in life without exception. And he understands that it is he who has created it, is creating it and will create it thanks to his personal contribution on a global, collective or narrow scale, in the process of evolution. This is the responsibility for everything that happens in human life without exception. Everything happens for a reason. There is the boomerang effect, there is karma, there is dharma and the clarity of it all..."

"We talked about live performance and records. While the former implies freedom in its very definition, the magnetic medium brings a kind of limitation to music, killing a tiny piece of soul put into that work, doesn’t it?"

"Nothing can replace the live performance in terms of the magical and subtle interaction of all vibrations in all fields at the same time. When it is alive, it is here and now. But I would not say recording music kills it. Because I know what the process of recording in the studio is like. And perhaps the most important thing when a musician works in a recording studio is the ability to be present in every note. If he can achieve that, his music will sound live even on a medium. I can prove this through feedback from people who have never been to my concerts or listened to me live. They continue writing to me after buying my albums, regardless of the format of recording. By the way, improvisations, which imply my presence in the music without my own ego, are more often recorded outside studios. But nothing can beats a live performance. In addition, playing live and getting in a state of complete unity with the whole, like the Cosmos, through the music is a bliss, a sacred moment. The grace of God..."