György Sebok (1922-1999) - 100 years

A great writer remarked that words of love are not love. In the same way, the notes are not music. Even the most beautiful words about György Sebok, will not reveal the master’s face as it is engraved in my soul.

Our first encounter took place in late 1989 at the Canadian Banff School of Fine Arts. A few months later I found myself in Sebok’s beloved Ernen, a small village in the Swiss Wallis.

I came back for his masterclasses there every summer until 1999. In the beginning it was the body and the piano that needed to be fraternized. I was young and full of ghosts and questions. Then, little by little, music became the center of our lessons: how to free it from the bondage of thought and habit.

Sebok was teaching us to dream with open eyes, to see the whole ocean in a drop of water.

The last time, in August 1999, he said to me; "…from now on, everything is a question of natural evolution".

I understood that this ascent will be never-ending and without respite, and that every goal is deceitful, like 'perfection and stability, which do not exist', as he often used to say. And that one should not regret.

There will always be errors, dragons to defeat… But the truth of tomorrow will be born from the fault of today. The only thing that seemed valuable to him, was the step taken, the movement towards something, to become a human being, a real one.

foto Eddy van Essen

The album The Ernen Recital 1996, released earlier this year as a homage to György Sebok, is now also available as download.

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