Meet Dee Yan-Key

String Quartets Nos. 2 & 3 - Released 2014
String quartets were the focus of my interest right from the start. After dealing with the chamber music of Grieg and Haydn for a long time, I found my own answers to whether classical music has a right to exist in the 21st century with my quartets 2 and 3. - Dee Yan-Key

Concertino for Piano and Orchestra - Released 2014
I'm also fascinated by the colorful timbres of a larger orchestra. I can best create darkness and warmth at the same time with a symphony orchestra. It's the same reason I love the traditional sonata form so much, because it effortlessly encapsulates life's stark contrasts. - Dee Yan-Key

Jazzz! - Released 2017
The sonata form is also the basis of many of my jazzy pieces. This also gives them the double face of our modern world, between seemingly carefree cheerfulness and abysmal melancholy. - Dee Yan-Key

Tjark - Released 2015
I was so struck by the tragic life story of young sailor Tjark Evers, told to me during a summer vacation on a small island in the North Sea. Realizing he was inevitably drowning, Tjark wrote that heartbreaking farewell letter to his family, stuck it in a cigar box, and entrusted it to the sea. I read this letter 150 years later in a museum, cried, went home and wrote the tone poem Tjark as a tombstone for the young man because his body was never found in the ocean

It's Christmas Eve, 1866. Tjark Evers, a young sailor and navigation student, is stranded on an offshore sandbar in the middle of the sea. The tide is rising and there is little chance of help. Caught between water and sand, between dreams and reality, the young man seeks refuge in words and sentences. Recognizing the power of the sea, he challenges his fate and starts to write. He fills three pages with loops of beautiful writing, writing that should be set in stone:

“Dear parents, brothers and sisters, I am standing on a shoal and must drown, I will not happen to see you once more nor will you see me again. May God have mercy on me and comfort you. I will put this book into a box of cigars. God make it so that you receive these lines written by my hand. I am greeting you for one last time. May God forgive my sins and receive me in His Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.”

He was so alone. Nobody has missed him, no one was expecting him. His fellow students and the boatmen think he's on the island, his parents, and brothers and sisters are sure he's in Timmel. But he was out here on a sandbar. They will be thinking of him, he belongs to them, he's part of their lives, but they'll have the wrong pictures in mind. None of their thoughts can find him here, no one can touch his fate. He can do nothing more for his body. He can say goodbye with hope. - Dee Yan-Key

Niobe - Released 2017
At first glance, Niobe's fate resembles that of the drowning sailor. But the rock-solid hope that Tjark placed in God is completely absent here. On the contrary, divine beings intentionally bring about utter misfortune. The only consolation is the memory.

Niobe boasted of her fourteen children, seven male and seven female: the Niobids, to Leto who only had two children, the twins Apollo and Artemis. Using arrows, Artemis killed Niobe's daughters and Apollo killed Niobe's sons. One Niobid was spared. Their father, Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo for having sworn revenge.

Devastated, Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus and was turned into stone, and, as she wept unceasingly, waters started to pour from her petrified complexion. The only Niobid spared stayed greenish pale from horror for the rest of her life, and for that reason she was called Chloris, the pale one. - Dee Yan-Key

Second Ambient Sonata - Released 2022
My Ambient Sonatas represent the greatest possible contrast to this. As is usual in a sonata, small clouds gather here as well. But they pass high above, driven by the winds of confidence and ataraxia. - Dee Yan-Key

Dee Yan-Key has over 140 albums on Free Music Archive, this is a small glimpse of his growing catalog, see his entire Discography here.