Christmas and winter '24/'25

Winter reigns with cold and wet prevails and Christmas 2024 is coming. Nature has come to a standstill and is resting patiently, waiting for a new time and opportunities. At the same time, this period also offers us an opportunity. The opportunity to reflect on what has passed in the calm of this season and to come deeper to ourselves, in order to be able to blossom and grow again in a new spring.

In the second half of 2025 a new solo piano album will be released with the title 'The Inner Room'. This theme is about a space within us, which is so personal that only we ourselves can enter it and in which we withdraw with what occupies us deeply. Things that we can't help but experience without any filter. It is about our joy and desires, our deepest pain or sorrow. It is the seat of our feelings... With this album I want to capture that feeling and express it with the piano. Because sometimes we can't find words or because they aren't there... The album contains several layers, in addition to a personal and meditative layer, you can also discover a religious layer. For me, that is a Christian perspective.

The recently released track 'Neige de Noël' is a first track from this album and translates a feeling of Peace. It harks back to warm childhood memories and snow, it goes back to the sober but warm Christmas time with our family in the past. We had little but everything was right. The Christmas group under the tree, we listened to the Christmas story in the service and played 'find the light in the tree'. Someone was allowed to unscrew a light (that was still possible back then) and the rest could take turns looking for that light when we were called again. Whoever found the light first won and was allowed to turn out the next. We played it endlessly and the warm feeling when the Christmas lights went on again is still indescribable. We saw each other and I saw Jesus in his manger as one of us. I sometimes long for that togetherness in my personal circle and in church.

Christmas has not changed, Jesus never changes. I think we have changed... In my Inner Room sometimes I go back to that time and especially that manger. A sturdy anchor keeps you in position at sea. In place when life is turbulent and changeable.

Merry and Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year 2025 of hope and peace.

Jacob