Ari Hoenig Trio - Golden Treasures

2023

It was a sign of the times. Concerts and tours were canceled and like everyone I was forced to reassess. I used some of that new found free time to go back and listen to some song sketches that almost made it to the printed page: songs that were not yet tried out by a group, possibly because of some sort of interruption in the composing process.

While going through old voice memo files, I came across one in particular, featuring yours truly improvising and developing a song on the piano. Simultaneously, the song itself was being interrupted and somewhat overshadowed by kids coming in, singing and banging on the piano, clearly wanting a piece of the action for themselves.

After hearing some value in the old voice memo, I extracted the song from it and aptly named it “Bratty Kids.” I referred to it as such for the beginning stages of the song’s existence.

I did, however, feel a bit guilty keeping this as the title, because my kids in reality are anything but bratty. So I changed the name of the song using the plural of what my grandmother, “Oma,” used to call me. She called me Goldener Schatz, Golden Treasure in German, so the name of the song became Goldene Schätze, referring to my own two Golden Treasures.

—Ari Hoenig