** Edition of 300 copies. Hard cardboard gatefold cover ** To Keith... “You were so afraid of death, you spoke about it often… often with lucidity, with reason, but this fear disappeared very quickly when you sat down at the piano… There, the demons vanished, The ghosts disappeared, the beauty s 'installed… Your piano, you caressed it for so long, barely out of adolescence. In 1975, in Nancy, you deployed nearly a hundred feet to play your music, this "Septober Energy", the energy that one has at 28, and already the experience of the greats ...

More recently, we meet in Puglia with your Italian friends: Roberto Ottaviano, Riccardo Bergerone, Pino Minafra. And your brother, Bra Louis… and Julie… in the meantime, we had locked ourselves in to record what will become l’Étau. I listened, I closed my eyes, or I looked at you, your face, your hands, this muffled elegance and this incomparable poetry, this warm radiance inscribed in an extreme concentration. "The Amazing Tippett" had a newspaper headline about a Tapestry concert ... That was right. You had come to Châtenay-Malabry following my request, you had kindly accepted after a very short hesitation, knowing of the proposed quartet only your other friend of Mujician, Paul Rogers. Michel Pilz and Jean Noël Cognard, the master of ceremonies, were apparently strangers to you, in any case you had never played with them both. But the agreement was immediate. Listen to « Premiers Rôles", a perfect duet. With humility, you insisted with Jean Noël so that he decides who played with whom, bending with this legendary phlegm to his decisions… I asked you if it was possible to include a piece of these South African musicians exiles in London. You chose "Sonia", then changed your mind to finally play the theme of "You Ain’t Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me", by the same Mongesi Feza. Michel didn't know it, so you took out a pencil, a musical staff and you scribbled the notes for him… I also remember one of your sentences: "everything we play must be recorded and published". Not to lose anything, not to spoil anything, this is one of the fundamental principles of improvised music. Because nothing will ever be the same, the fleeting moment will not be repeated. So, thanks to Jean Noël and his accomplice Patrick Müller, here is engraved what could not be in the box "Clandestines", already quite substantial. These are not « drops", far from it, but a beautiful tribute that we can pay to this incomparable man, whom I had the honor to meet on several occasions and who marked my life as an amateur forever. Keith was only 72 years old, but that music is gone to live on forever ... " - Philippe Renaud