Thinking of two different worlds, acoustic and electric with the saxophone at the same time, I was in front of a new mission and challenge to present. How to excecute it technically and musically, was the most important question. 

The solution for the presentation of the project ended up to performing and recording all the music live in a beautifully sounding mid-sized medieval church, since I had been performing my solo concerts in similar churches quite many times alredy.

So, with the sound engineer Mikko Raita, we planned carefully the space and gear for the recording in a way that it would be possible to do acoustic  sound and sound with electeronics with the same setup.  With electronics the saxophone can transform into something like a hybrid sound-machine with endless possibilities that can create vast sonic universe. Being aware of that made me to really carefully choose what kind of sounds and tweaks I´d be using with electronics – the challenge being not to end up usimg them too much and/or sounding too much of like a synthesizers & sax duo.

The overall sound I was after was more like somethimg that the instrument would dialog with an  “electric orchestra” and the common elements of orchestral music –  where contrapunct, different textures, the hierarchies of melody and rhythm etc. would discuss & compliment each others.

The output of the different albums “Times “and “Spaces” –  acoustic and electric, seemed only a natural choice when putting up all the music together.

— Esa Pietilä