"[...]
- Well, because of this illness, I was forced to look at what I was doing as if it would be the last thing I would ever do. I had to stop playing, because of this illness ... there was no solution to this thing. I wasn't able to play for two years. And when I started to recover, I realized that the time off I had wasn't such a bad thing. I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute -- unless something drastic occurs.
So when I started recovering, I said to myself that I'd better be my own worst critic. I didn't know if I'd keep recovering; I thought I might relapse and never be able to play again. I would listen to stuff I'd recorded and a lot of it I didn't like. I realized I didn't like the long intros. I didn't like digging into the keyboard so much. Because when you do that the piano doesn't open up as much. I decided to pare things down. I wanted to get to the heart of my playing, and to do that I really had to slice away. That's what happens to mature artists. But it does not happen without reflection.
- There is very little improvisation on "The Melody at Night, With You."
- So many people don't understand "The Melody at Night," because they think it's cocktail piano. So it was gratifying to hear someone say, "Nobody knows how hard it is to do what Keith did with that record." It's a lot harder to play softly. But after I made the record I thought, "We're gonna release this, and nobody's gonna hear it." What I was doing was not typical of what I'm known for, like improvisational virtuosity. There are no trappings. There's no echo. And some people made the mistake of thinking they were hearing the sickness. They think it's pale or something. But the record was actually a celebration of my recovery. I was in a state of grace. I was connected to the heart of these songs.
Some of the tunes were not even in my head when I sat down to play them. "Be My Love" was one of those -- not in my wildest imagination did I think I'd play that one. But obviously it was an emotion I was trying to get out. "The Melody at Night" was an ecstatic moment in my life. I look for that experience every time I play, but how often do you get it onto a recording? [...]" - (dir.salon.com | David Rubien | 2000-Dez-04)
