New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Today sees the release of HENOSIS, Joep Beving's closing chapter in a trilogy of albums - marking the end of an intensely personal four-year spiritual and philosophical exploration.
"This is my journey, and my search for understanding," says Beving, the acclaimed composer/pianist who rose to eminence in 2015 thanks to millions of streams of the contemplative, atmospheric Solipsism.
Joep is one of the most streamed pianists in the world - his first two albums, Solipsism and Prehension, have been wildly successful with over 250 million streams, including 45 million for his single "Ab Ovo". Fans are flocking to hear Beving live - with new dates just announced in the US and Canada, as well as new orchestral and electronic shows in
Europe later this month.
"I believe that the answers are much more on the inside," he explains. "So this journey, in a way, is also an internal one. My hope is to give people a space to be in for a couple of minutes or hours where they feel things just seem to be right, like a recognition that they're understood or that they can just be."
On HENOSIS, the Dutch composer continues his minimalist and at times romantic style of writing, but this time explores new territories. It sets off where his sophomore album Prehension left us, the warm intimate sound of the Schimmel piano Beving inherited from his grandmother. With the help of producer Gijs van Klooster and through collaborations with Cappella Amsterdam, Echo
Collective and Maarten Vos, Joep Beving opens up new musical worlds using orchestral and electronic sounds alongside the familiar piano.
His debut album Solipsism investigates the self and how it is related to the other by trying to show we have a shared understanding of what it is to be human. For Prehension, Beving describes realizing he had zoomed out from the individual level to the level of the collective. HENOSIS is the last step, in which Beving's destination is the vastness of the cosmos - that great, black void - in search of "ultimate reality and emptiness of the mind".
HENOSIS is an expansive double album, whose 22 tracks draw listeners in and lead them from the calm, contemplative "Into The Dark Blue" to the otherworldly "Klangfall". Beving's quest is based on "a genuine longing for truthfulness and for existential essence". "We're all part of one thing, we're all connected," he adds. "And so we need to love ourselves, each other, and this world we inhabit."
Since 2017, Joep Beving has toured around the globe, playing sold-out shows in the U.S., Canada, UK, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, Australia and across Europe, including Elbphilharmonie and Sydney Opera House. He has made several festival appearances including Reeperbahn, Big Ears, ADE, Best Kept Secret, Into The Great Wide Open, Haldern Pop, Brighton and Burning Man - where he gave a spine-tingling performance beneath an extraordinary light display.
Following his extensive solo tours, Beving will now perform his first orchestral and electronic shows in April with Echo Collective, Cappella Amsterdam and Maarten Vos. He will also return to North
America in June for a series of shows in Washington, New York, Toronto and Montreal, where he performs acoustic Henosis shows together with ACME. Joep will perform in Toronto on June 28 at the Harbourfront Centre and in Montréal on June 29 at the Montréal Jazz Festival.
Joep Beving - HENOSIS:
CD 1
1 Unus mundus 4:18
2 Into The Dark Blue 3:39
3 Whales 2:12
4
Sirius 1:35
5 Shepherd 7:22
6 Orvonton 5:02
7 Sol And Luna 5:52
8 Klangfall 6:15
9 Philemon 3:01
10 Noumenon 5:37
11 Saudade da Gaia 3:59
12 Apophis 7:05
CD 2
1 Aeon 5:48
2 Implikigo 2:25
3 Venus 3:55
4 Anima 2:38
5 Adrift In Aether 4:04
6 The One As Two 5:15
7 Henosis 6:45
8 Anamnesis 3:37
9 Nebula 9:43
10 Morpheus'
Dream 2:15