As an artist I consider myself a Romantic. I endeavor to create music which reaches across time, and has its own life and being, in a sense. If anything can be timeless, I believe it is music. So I propose for the audience, a journey to unravel something that has always existed, but may be discovered anew.
I believe that an 'art music' is sometimes created using the ideas of jazz. To my mind this would be a love for improvisation, rhythmic nuance, and some truth of existence, expressed often in swing. The 'jazz ideas' have not yet been fully explored, and there are even more ideas and forms to come. So I aim to make music which is living and breathing, both composed and improvised, in a spirit of becoming and unfoldment.
There are many great works by jazz masters which inspire me in this direction – I feel these artists were able to go 'beyond synthesis', and into a place of original, organic unity, where forms and expression exist, outside of idiom or genre. The works of several French symbolist and romantic masters also resonate in the same way with me. There is constant renewal in these pieces; I will find more truth in these arts tomorrow, than I did yesterday.
My foremost technical and artistic goal shall be to remain a beginner. By using the “beginner's mind,” I will see and work within a renewing field of possibility. If I must start over, because I missed a great deal the first time, then so be it. I am purposefully naïve, when it comes to the 'limits' and 'boundaries' of art music – what defines it, who makes it, who made it, etc. I only offer new works with the hope that there will be found in them, something of the sublime. Music is indeed the food of Love! So let us play on.
Ricardo J. Harley
December 21, 2011