In an earlier Journal I referred to a commission I had to write the Trail of Dreams Suite. As stated, I was able to do this at our winter retreat at the Sandpiper in Barbados. Once again this year, after being buffeted and bruised with tragic losses to my family and the world of music, I retreated once more to the Sandpiper in Barbados, not only to avoid part of the harsh winter that Ontario was suffering, but also to attempt to rid my mind and system of the depressing and oppressive thoughts of my losses.

In this wonderful environment as stated earlier, I used my time there not only to heal some of the hurt but also to involve myself musically in several ways, which I could not do at home with what seemed like ongoing and endless phone calls of illnesses and departures of various friends and relatives.

I used part of the time to hunker down with a very musical friend of mine in Barbados (Ebe Gilkes) and had some wonderful musical moments discussing and rehashing some of my procedures in the operation of my quartet, musically speaking. Ebe uses a trio (bass, piano and drums) at the Sandpiper and asked me to give him more personal insight into some of my musical procedures pianistically and harmonically. This I attempted in several sessions, along with his bassist, Clarence Green. These sessions once more heightened my intention to do some seminar-like CDs and DVDs about my pianistic and quartet procedures. I was also able to conceive what I feel will be appropriate lyrics for a piece that I composed earlier titled “Peace” (for South Africa). This seemed most appropriate at this time with the tragic war-like situations not only in Palestine and Israel, but obviously more blatantly in Iraq. I believe I have completed a proper draft of these lyrics and will be adding them to that selection for publication. I was also able to conceive several new musical ventures, which we will be premiering in our upcoming intended tour of Japan. Hopefully we will subsequently be recording them for public release.

I have just returned from Barbados and am making the obvious preparations for our Japan tour, which I will chronicle in a further episode of this Journal.

©2003 Oscar Peterson