about Alauda

My grandfather was a fruit farmer and when my mom was little, he used to take her and her brother with him into the fields. He made them listen for larks, pointing out their peculiar song and their high flight early in the morning. This has always been a fond memory for my mom.

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Nowadays, there are increasingly less larks in the fields, my grandfather passed away and all this is largely in the past. But every so often, a lark can be heard in the fields and it will bring a smile to my mother’s face.

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When deciding on the program of the album, my general idea was that the binding element in this seemingly random collection of music was "Memory" in its various stages and forms. On top of that, memory as a concept has always fascinated me.

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By nature, memory is inherently fleeting. A mere reflection of a moment, a place, a person. Yet some memories stand out to us more than others. Sometimes we see a clear picture, sometimes it's a sharp outline, but more often the edges are blurred and smudged. It’s forever altering, shifting, drifting into and out of a shadow zone, our brain filling in the gaps with misinformation: exaggerating one thing, omitting another. Memory is coloured by feeling, often setting our loved ones in a softer light while our perceived villains become darker still. Memory is highly unreliable, and yet it is the thing we cherish most.

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Like the lark, memories have a tendency to disappear. Sometimes you think you remember something or something stirs up a feeling of recognition, but it’s not always accurate or actually there. For me, the lark - and the sweet anecdote behind it -became the ultimate metaphor for memory and as such became the inspiration for the title of the album.

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In Latin, lark is translated to 'alauda', or 'alaudae' for plural. It also coincidentally bears resemblance to the Portuguese word 'alaúde' meaning 'lute' (the predecessor of the classical guitar as we know it) and the word 'aloud' in English.

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My grandparents on my mother's side played a big role in my deciding on the program for the album. I lost them both in the last 2 years and - being close to them - it left a lasting impression and inspired a lot of the artistic choices and the timing of the album. Not only the title, but also the release date ties into my grandparents’ legacy: December 13th would have been my grandfather’s 97th birthday.