Forwawrd

When the saxophonist Harry White asked me, if I would write a piece for him based on Max Beckmann, I immediately said yes without really knowing very much about the famous German painter.
I have since learned much about Max Beckmann the man, although I must confess that his paintings remain somewhat of a riddle. But it is precicely this quality that inspired the piece.
“Beckmann in New York” is in three movements, and is therefore a kind of triptych, which was a very important formal structure for Beckmann.
I have tried to utilize this visual form in a musical context. The three movements of the piece do not concern specific paintings by Beckmann; rather, as a native New Yorker, the work is more my fantasy about Beckmann’s own time im New York, i.e. the last ten years of his life, and more specifically his last walk from his apartment, through Central Park, to visit hier triptych “The Departure” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He never made it – on the way he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

Ari Benjamin Meyers