MEG BOWLES' ULTIMATE AMBIENT-SYNTH CD SHIMMERS

MEG BOWLES

THE SHIMMERING LAND

 

When synthesist Meg Bowles creates her ambient musical soundscapes, she does it as carefully as any classical composer. On her new album, The Shimmering Land, the music has different sections, purposeful movement, counterpoint, shifting textures and specific emotionalism.

 

“When you first listen, it may sound like you are floating in space, but careful discernment unveils a melody and structure there,” explains Bowles, who is a classically-trained musician. “Within the music there are many different layers of listening, and also different ways of listening. I find that whether composing or listening to music, when it’s right I feel a resonance, a moment of truth, like the vibration of a perfect interval in tune.”

 

Bowles has been prominent in the fields of ambient and space music for the past 20 years, since the release of her first two recordings—Inner Space and Solstice Dreams—in 1993. She then stretched the genre’s musical boundaries with a groundbreaking series of commissions from David Bilger, Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, for new works combining trumpet and synthesizer. The first of these, “Night Sun Journey,” was premiered by Bilger at the International Trumpet Guild Conference, followed by the premiere of “Places Where Rivers Meet” at Washington’s National Cathedral. These works and others for trumpet and synthesizer were featured on From the Dark Earth, with Bilger as soloist.

 

Bowles’ next solo CD was the acclaimed A Quiet Light. Her work also has appeared on two compilation albums, The Other World (Hypnos Recordings) and Soundscape Gallery 2 (Lektronic Soundscapes). In addition, Bowles contributed the opening and closing pieces for the Zodiac series of recordings, a 12-CD classical-crossover set released by Angel/EMI.

 

Bowles’ foremost influence is classical music. She began playing flute at a young age and studied classical music throughout her school years, eventually earning her B.A. degree in music from Boston University. “I am an admirer of Bach for his transcendent clarity, Prokofiev for always putting the wrong note in the right place, Handel and Arvo Pärt for their sacred choral music, Copland for his talent as an orchestrator, and Stravinsky for his overall genius. But even as a child I also had a fascination with electronic music which came to the forefront in my life in the 1980s when I started listening to Steve Roach and also to the Hearts of Space radio show. That started me on the road to composing seriously.”

 

There are other influences in Bowles’ music as well. She is a licensed psychoanalyst

specializing in working with dreams, creativity, and trauma. She has extensively studied both Jungian psychology and shamanism. “Jung wrote that the psyche strives towards wholeness and consciousness. One of the questions I always ask is: How do we want to express our creativity in the world? On a personal level, my interest in the psyche cannot be separated from my interest in creating music.”

 

Often inspired by a combination of “awe and wonder” regarding the cosmos, outer space and celestial bodies, Bowles also views more terrestrial nature as “a huge inspiration, whether I’m walking in the woods, listening to the natural sounds found outdoors, enjoying waves on a shoreline, or studying the night sky.”

 

The Shimmering Land album begins with the ebb and flow of “Undulant Sea” with its wave-like rocking motion and powerful underlying emotionalism. “Our oceans are what make life on Earth possible, and humankind first visited the far corners of our world by sea travel, so this piece contains the up-and-down motion, the rocking movement of the sea, symbolic of the beginning of the journey.” The composition “The Sweetness of Mist” was inspired by the haze that sometimes envelops her Connecticut island home. “Mist creates a hushed, mystical, magical environment and recalls the fables about Avalon. I tried to capture the feeling of suspense, the look of diffused light, and the majesty of nature shrouded and not quite seen clearly.”

 

With “Venus Rising,” Bowles says she attempted to musically conjure the sense of a planet rising on the horizon and moving across the sky. “Venus recently came as close to Earth as it ever does, and Venus holds a special place in mythology with its feminine mystique, so I had strong feelings as I was writing.” Regarding “Into The Gloaming,” she states, “Twilight is a very magical time as the sky shifts toward deep blue and then darkness. It’s also representative of the later years of our lives, and the question arises as to how we will handle it—with fear and uncertainty, or with a sense of adventure and growth.”

 

“Beneath the Radiant Stars” serves as a tribute to anyone who has lain outside at night, watching the flickering light of far-off stars as they move across the sky. “Space music seeks to illuminate the wondrous love affair humans have with the stars and the cosmos. The almost flute-like melody represents travel out into hushed space and then returning.” On “Nightwalk Across the Isle of Dream,” Bowles was inspired not only by after-dark hikes with her dogs, but also by the idea of “a dreamland where extraordinary things can happen, a place where we can explore other realities and our deeper consciousness.”

 

Bowles explains, “I’m crafting what I call ambient orchestral soundscapes. There are some symphonic elements that are more classical in structure, and I do tend to specifically have a beginning, a middle and an ending for each piece. I like the idea that music can take the listener out of this world to another place, a deeper space. I want listeners to engage with the music with their mind, body and heart.”

 

Meg Bowles’ musical journey began as a child growing up with a wide variety of classical music at home. Her father is a musicologist and timpanist who has published widely in the areas of medieval musical instruments and performance practices as well as the history of the timpani and the impact of technology on instrument-building. The whole family enjoyed the opera (“We all shared a love of Don Giovanni by Mozart,” says Bowles). She started on recorder at age seven, switched to flute two years later, played in school bands and youth orchestras, performed in major venues (Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap National

Park for the Performing Arts), and studied privately under top musicians throughout college.

 

“We not only played all sorts of classical music around the house, we also had this album of music for electronic tape composed by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky. It was other-worldly sounding, sort of sci-fi spooky like the ‘Outer Limits’ TV show soundtrack. I was fascinated by this early electronic music. When I finally got a synthesizer in the early ‘90s, I realized how much I loved, and wanted to create music with, those synthesized sounds.”

 

After getting her degree in music, Bowles earned an M.B.A. in finance from Columbia University (she worked in investment banking for several years). She then decided to pursue her interest in analytical psychology and graduated from the Westchester Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.

 

“I try to help people reconnect to their inner life by giving them a space to listen to the deepest parts of themselves, and to tell the stories that emanate from that authentic place of soul. That is what gives the outer life meaning. This has a lot in common with creating and appreciating music which also is most meaningful with deep listening. With my music I work with sounds like a painter or sculptor works in their medium, layer upon layer to come up with the finished artistic endeavor. I’m a synthesist in more ways than one because I pull threads together from many different sources, places and feelings.”

 

The Shimmering Land, released on Kumatone Records, can be purchased as a CD or digital downloads at a variety of online sales including CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes and many others. For more information about Meg Bowles and her music, visit her website, megbowlesmusic.com.

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PURE HEART ENSEMBLE BRINGS BLISS TO YOUR BEING

THE PURE HEART ENSEMBLE

Bliss of Being

 

Renowned new age pianist Richard Shulman and four of his musician friends (adding cello, flutes, wordless vocals and crystal bowls) have banded together as The Pure Heart Ensemble and created an acoustic recording, Bliss of Being, that not only celebrates the feeling of bliss, but also the journey getting there.

 

“To me,” states Shulman, “the ‘Bliss of Being’ is to be so present in the moment that all is experienced as Divine. Bliss is a state of calmness, peace, happiness, health and spirituality, and has a feeling of Life, supercharged.  The whole album is a journey towards bliss beginning with relaxation and healing and moving through feelings of beauty, wonder, joy and presence.  Although bliss as an end result is the ultimate destination, the journey is of great importance because it represents learning, healing and individual growth along the way.  The journey not only gets us there, allows us to arrive, but also prepares us to recognize, utilize and enjoy bliss.”

 

On Bliss of Being, Shulman is joined by cellist Adriana Contino, flutist Kate Steinbeck, vocalist Dielle Ciesco and crystal bowl player Bob Hinkle.  Their individual journeys, and the experience of creating this recording as part of a group, imbued the music with a special emotional resonance.  “Each of us had to step through the door of trust into that place of pure heart where the music flows in Divine cadence,” explains Shulman.  “As we passed through that spiritual and emotional passageway, to a place of love and bliss, we surrendered our personal selves, opened our hearts to this ecstatic music flowing through us, and allowed the music to express a level of higher consciousness.”

 

Bliss of Being, on the RichHeart Music label, is available at www.richheartmusic.com as well as online sales sites including CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic among others.

 

Richard Shulman has become one of the leading musicians in the new age genre over the past few decades.  But Shulman also was trained in the classical and jazz fields, and regularly performs and records original jazz with his trio.  Shulman has 23 albums under his own name as well as more than two-dozen other recordings for which he has provided compositions, performances or production.  He studied at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, got his Masters Degree in musical composition from State University of New York at Buffalo, and was a composer-performer for a decade with Theatre of the Heart -- a New York City-based performance group working to bring higher consciousness and environmental awareness to audiences.  Although Shulman’s recordings are varied, he is especially known for creating music for healing, alignment and meditation including A Higher Dimension, Light Music, First Rites, Light from Assisi, Keeper of the Holy Grail, Music of Peace and 11:11 Piano Meditations for Awakening.  Shulman also has devoted considerable energy to a special project, Camelot Reawakened: A Vision Fulfilled which includes a CD, a DVD-video and a theatrical musical (“A Dream of Camelot”).

 

Cellist Adriana Contino completed her studies at Indiana University and became the youngest member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (under Andre Previn).  She went to New York City and founded the Bach Chamber Soloists, and performed with the New York Chamber Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the New York New Music Ensemble, the jazz group String Fever, and Richard Shulman (they released a duet album, New Beginnings, in 2003).  Contino went to Germany and for more than two decades served as professor of cello, baroque cello and chamber music at the Hochschule fuer Musik, and while there also was the principal cellist of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (their first female principal).  She currently teaches at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

 

An international performer, teacher and music producer, flutist Kate Steinbeck (KateSteinbeck.com) is the founder and director of Pan Harmonia (pan-harmonia.org), a professional collective based in Asheville NC, which produces world-class classical and ethnic-world-fusion music.  Kate studied with William Hebert at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio.  As a Fulbright scholar, she earned a First Prize in chamber music from the Belgium Royal Conservatory in Liege and later performed and taught music in Germany for several years.  She holds a Master’s Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory where she studied with Tim Day.  Kate has produced two CDs, Light in the Corner and Luminescence and plays exclusively on a modern wooden flute manufactured by her husband, Chris Abell.

 

Vocalist Dielle Ciesco specializes in the transformational power of the voice to heal and connect us with our own Divinity.  She says, “I am passionate about every voice, be it the one we use everyday to communicate, the ones we hear inside our heads, the silent voice of wisdom, voices raised in song, or the ones that call us to awaken.”  She was a featured vocalist with Visionary Music (creators of DNA Activation Music) on their TLC Series.  Ciesco also is the author of the book The Unknown Mother: A Magical Walk with the Goddess of Sound.  More information is available at DielloCiesco.com.

 

Crystal-bowl performer Bob Hinkle has worn many hats during his lengthy musical career -- singer, songwriter, poet, recording artist, composer/lyricist, corporate executive, consultant, artist manager, executive producer and record label founder-president.  He recorded numerous albums with his trio, The Good Earth, and had a solo album, Ollie Mogus.  He performed with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.  As a manager he worked with The J. Geils Band, Etta James, Harry Chapin, Patti Lupone, Kenny Rogers and many others.  He founded both The Children’s Group (Classical Kids music) and Zoom Express (children and family entertainment such as Early Ears).

 

These five musicians came together to form The Pure Heart Ensemble and record the Bliss of Being CD (and perform select concerts).  Shulman began the musical adventure by composing the lead-off track, “The Bliss of Healing,” and arranging the nearly 11-and-a-half-minute piece to accommodate the other musicians.  The rest of the music initially derived from Shulman and Contino improvisations (they have a strong rapport from having worked together previously).  “I took three of our shorter improvs -- ‘Remembering the Goal,’ ‘Remembering the Bliss’ and ‘When We Go Home We Go Together’ -- and arranged parts for flute and/or voice turning these pieces into more structured compositions,” explains Shulman.  “However, the other eight tunes are group improvisations straight from our hearts.”

 

The second piece on the album, “Beginning the Journey,” starts very slow and appropriately searches for a direction before finding its way.  There are longer tunes such as the more than nine-minute “Heading Home” and the 11-minute “Divine Connection” (the one piece with a synth drone in the background), but these are balanced by several in the two-minute range including the only solo-piano piece, “Resting in God.”  The album ends with the lovely piano-cello duet “Loving All” and the beautifully-melodic “When We Go Home We Go Together” (which Shulman says, “helps to ground our energies in a sweet happiness.”).

 

“When I began the album,” explains Shulman, “I had in mind music that could help people relax and heal, and after starting to write the first track, I found that this music was powerfully helping me come to a state of release and gratitude.  There is an experience I have had many times where I bring my awareness in a compassionate, loving and non-judgemental way into an area of pain or density in my body.  I find that in the acceptance of the situation, a grace may come in which presence and love allow the opening of communication with the tension or pain which can then become a communion with Life or God.  The purpose of this music was to create a musical soundtrack in which this process could be awakened.  For me, the bliss of healing is that visceral experience of moving from pain to bliss as tension melts in the presence of Agape or Divine Love.  During the recording, as each of us surrendered our limitations and found our bliss, it made it possible to create this music, and we hope that translates into a healing process and natural inner alignment for the listener as well.”

NATURAL HEALER ANNETTE CANTOR DEMONSTRATES HEALTHFUL WORDLESS VOCALIZING

Annette Cantor’s recording, Songs to the Goddess, contains musical meditations inspired by sacred deities from around the world, but focusing on the universal Mother Earth.  These song prayers -- featuring both Cantor’s wordless vocalizing and acclaimed new age music pioneer C.G. Deuter’s instrumentation -- praise the planet, give thanks for birth and living, and also ask for guidance in creating a good life.

 

“Two of the most common prayers in any religion are thankfulness and asking for help,” says Cantor, “but that is just the beginning.  Goddess figures represent archetypal energies that help us in leading better lives, in going deeper and getting to know ourselves, and pushing beyond our norm.  As individuals we should start with a gratitude for life and our environment, and then explore our inherent creativity, and finally reach out with compassion to others.  I want my music to assist in this growth process.”

 

Annette Cantor’s music can be purchased either as a CD or as digital downloads at online sales sites such as CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and many others.  For more information about Cantor, visit her website at www.annettesings.com.

 

In addition to Songs to the Goddess, Cantor has an impressive series of vocal albums: Songs to the Earth (Gregorian chants and vocalese set to Native American flute, cello and percussion), Music for Yoga (similar to Songs to the Earth but designed for any movement practice), Adore Te (improvisations on Gregorian chants with classic new age music performed by Deuter), Sacred Fusion (ancient Dhrupad singing by Shanti Shivani mixed with Gregorian chants by Cantor), and Die Blaue Blume (a collection of German folk songs with additional singing and accompaniment by Deuter and others).  Songs to the Earth was widely acclaimed for mixing traditional European and Native American musical elements, and the CD went to #7 on the international monthly Top 100 Zone Music Reporter airplay chart, was the #30 album of the year (out of 2,300 recordings) and was a Top 5 finalist for Best Native American Album at the ZMR Awards.

 

Cantor and Deuter are both Germans who met while living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Deuter, long known as a top new age instrumentalist, wanted to explore the addition of vocals, so Cantor sang with him (and played violin) in concert and on several of his recordings including Garden of the Gods, Earth Blue and Mystery of Light.  He returned the favor by performing the music on three of Cantor’s recordings.  On Songs to the Goddess, Cantor and Deuter co-wrote the songs.  Cantor did all the singing, often layering her vocals to create several distinctive parts.  Deuter played all of the instruments including wood flute, acoustic guitar, koto, udu, tongue drum, bells, gongs, shakers, additional percussion and synthesizer.

 

Although Cantor has always done some vocal improvising on her recordings and in concert, with Songs to the Goddess she takes it a step further since all but one small vocal part is wordless singing.  The exception is a background Buddhist drone chant on the song “Tara.”  On “Gaia,” for example, she says, “I felt as if I had made up a new language.”

 

Cantor’s style of incredibly-lovely soaring and floating vocals began its development when she was a child growing up in Germany (“I was mesmerized when I heard Gregorian chants sung in the Catholic church”).  In high school she studied Latin which enabled her to interpret the words being sung.  In college in Vienna she trained as an opera singer.  She was particularly drawn to the most famous female composer of Gregorian chants, Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th Century German religious leader, early human rights activist and visionary.  Even now Cantor tries to sing von Bingen material daily.  Eventually Cantor’s studies revealed that the chants of the Gregorian tradition have historically been open to improvisation by individual singers which gave her the freedom to stretch the boundaries by not only improvising but also bringing the chants into new musical contexts.  In addition, Cantor’s wordless vocals are specifically designed to capture the mood and feelings she is presenting.  She has developed a unique style of soulful emotive expression with her singing strengthened by technical expertise and classical studies.

 

“The music on Songs to the Goddess was created specifically for meditation and healing,” Cantor says, “but also creativity exploration, personal growth, exercise, relaxation, massage therapy, sleep assistance, birthing and childhood development, and creating a life-affirming atmosphere conducive to positivity.  The music allows the listener to explore their own inner consciousness because there are no words to activate the rational mind.  Wordless vocals also transcend languages, cultures and countries.”

 

The album begins with “Tara” representing a Buddhist goddess from Hinduism in India.  “She is the great mother, but also the mother of compassion with an openness to all possibilities.”  The song “Spider Woman” comes out of the Native American tradition -- “very earthy, the provider of good harvests and nourishment.”  The piece features Cantor singing choir-like with eight-layered vocals plus the sounds of wood flute, thunderdrums, rainstick and crickets.  “Yemana” is a goddess from Latin American countries including the Caribbean’s Cuba and Haiti.  “She is the patron of women, especially pregnant women, and she is associated with the ocean. The music is like a lullaby with a single vocal and light percussion, very dreamy.”  “Isis” is from the Egyptian culture -- “the giver of all life, the ideal mother, the patroness of nature and magic, and the goddess of death and rebirth. We used my voice as a drone sound followed by drums and a mandolin toward the end.”

 

“Gaia,” from the ancient Greeks, “is the universal earth mother and personifies the earth.  In creating this music, I wanted to give back, to show it is our turn to care for Mother Earth.”  “Kuan Yin,” explains Cantor, “has different spellings throughout Asia, but is a Bodhisattva, an enlightened Buddhist goddess, the great mother of compassion who chooses to come back to earth to help others.  This slow piece features the koto, a traditional instrument in Japan.”  The “Demeter” goddess comes from Greek mythology, “presiding over the harvest and the underworld, life and death, sunny summer agriculture and the darkness of winter.  We used low-note marimba bells.”  The album ends with “Venus,” the Roman version of the goddess of passionate love.  “The music tries to capture a morning sunrise, a celebration of love and beauty, and the feeling of growth in nature.”

 

Growing up in Germany, Annette studied singing and violin performance, and was involved in school choirs and orchestras.  Her early musical influences ranged from classical (Bach) to jazz (Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson).  Cantor studied voice at the Vienna Academie of Music and earned a degree in voice teaching.  She became involved with the healing arts, initially utilizing dance and movement, and after moving to New York City she also incorporated singing into her healing practices.  In New York she took an intense three-year training program studying the Alexander Technique (an energy-healing practice with the patient developing awareness of physical alignment as they move) and became a certified teacher.  She is now training to also become a practitioner of Reconnective Therapy.

 

To get closer to nature, Annette moved to Santa Fe, drawn by the spiritual community she found there “and the good scent of the air.”  She began pursuing vocal improvisations, both in healing situations and as a spiritual performer.  She sang in front of the Dalai Lama at the World Sacred Music Festival in Los Angeles, at the Resonant Wave Festival in Berlin and at a concert celebrating World Water Day in Santa Fe.  Her deep love of poetry has been expressed in performances with distinguished poets Donna Thomson, Jane Hirshfield, Drew Dellinger, Roger Housden and Rumi poetry presenter Coleman Barks.  Cantor often sings the poems after they have been recited.  She also gives voice lessons and workshops which combine her healing practice with patients breathing and singing for therapeutic effect.

 

Cantor states, “I hope that my music will create an atmosphere that assists people to hear their own inner voice and tap into their creativity. Living from that inner source can facilitate a re-birth, a new phase of a person’s life.  When that happens, the goddess is smiling.”

SINGER-SONGWRITER SORA HAS GREAT VOICE AND MYTHOLOGICAL LYRICS

The extraordinary vocalist and songwriter Sora, who titled her new album Scorpion Moon, believes artists need to show both sides of life -- the light and the dark, joy and sorrow, urban versus nature, birth/rebirth but also death, ancient and modern, this physical realm as well as otherworldly places.

 

Sora is known for her strong, pure voice -- powerful and commanding one moment, then soft, caressing and reassuring the next.  Her vocals have operatic qualities, yet are as accessible as a folk-singer.  Her singing is noble, reverent, passionate and confident.  Her music is melodic and genre-crossing with elements of new age, modern-classical, Celtic, world-fusion, folk and pop.

 

Her original poetic lyrics tell timeless stories inspired by ancient myths, children’s fairytales, nature’s wonders and modern conflicts.  Her sound is primarily acoustic with occasional electronic shading; and it gets its classical influences from piano, cello, violin and flute; its folk background from acoustic guitar and mandolin; and its world flavors from the Celtic harp, erhu, bamboo flute, dizi, pennywhistle, charango and various ethnic percussion instruments.

 

“My music doesn’t easily fit into any single category,” Sora says.  “That started throughout my teenage years when I was performing on violin in a prominent youth orchestra, and at the same time I was playing in an actively-touring fiddle group.  I was always bouncing back and forth between strict, traditional, classicism and rootsy, folk, home-spun sounds.”

 

Sora’s music can be found at a variety of online stores such as CDbaby and Amazon, as well as many digital download sales sites including iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and others.  For more information on Sora, visit her website (www.soramusic.ca).

 

“I titled my new album Scorpion Moon not only because I liked the natural-world imagery,” explains Sora, “but because it represents the meshing of opposing synergies – the shadow in light, the complexity of contradictory truths within our emotional landscapes along with the ongoing struggle to discern the roots of what moves and shapes us.   There are many threads leading to every emotion, and some are opposing, like a shiver of sadness within a feeling of happiness, or unexpected consequences when loving someone.”

 

Sora, who has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology, has a deep interest in mythology, fairytales, archetypes, feminism, society’s collective consciousness, and narratives that illuminate our life passage.  “It’s always my goal to understand the heart of the myth, rather than to simply re-tell a story,” she says.  “I’m far more interested in discovering why that myth is still meaningful today.  In a song, whether it encapsulates a myth or tells a contemporary tale, the narrative can connect us to a more expansive humanity.  We are all facing similar experiences, and that connection can be helpful or comforting.”

 

In addition to Scorpion Moon, Sora has released three previous recordings -- Winds of Change (traditional folk songs from the British Isles), Light (a four-song EP featuring her first original songs) and Heartwood (a Top 20 album on the international Zone Music Reporter chart, featuring all-original material including several tunes inspired by children’s stories and ancient legends).

 

The songs on Scorpion Moon follow a similar path.  Some come from ancient myths.  The tune “Scheherazade” (named for the female narrator of the legendary age-old tales “One-Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights”) is told from the point of view of the king, who listens to these stories and longs for true love.  Sora’s tune “The Tower” is based on the legend of Rapunzel, who was locked in a tower, but with a twist,  “Young girls often feel locked inside of themselves, but they need to learn they can become a strong, secure woman without having a prince come to save them.”

 

Other compositions on Scorpion Moon have their origins in children’s stories.  “Proof of Life” was inspired by “The Velveteen Rabbit” and addresses the question of who and what makes a life real.  “Mermaid’s Song” derives from the “The Little Mermaid” story by Hans Christian Anderson (“the mermaid’s love led to her ultimate sacrifice”).  The cautionary tale of children following a flute-player provides the basis of “Piper” which is about “a person who leads you to beyond your limited view into worlds unknown.”

 

Sora includes songs about archetypes.  “Hero” points out that “heroes and villains are sometimes only differentiated by perspective,” explains Sora.  “Savage” is about “strong emotion and animalistic desire, pain and pleasure linked, even ecstasy in sacrificial death among the ancient cults.”  “Hiraeth” is an old Welsh word encompassing “a longing for what the soul once knew, homesickness, nostalgia, a place or feeling from long ago.”  “Moving On” -- used on the soundtrack of a short film by that name written by Sora’s husband, Bryan P. Hunt -- is written from the perspective of the spirit of a recently dead woman speaking to her still-living husband.  The lyrics of “Hold” show someone loving and holding a person with deep depression.  Sora’s “City” encapsulates “the hum, pulse and heartbeat of a large city.”

 

Sora mostly heard classical music when she was growing up in Calgary, Canada.  She began piano and violin lessons as a child.  “Music was a strong focus in my life.  I got up at six and practiced, went to school, practiced after school, and rehearsed with both the orchestra and the fiddle group every week.  The youth orchestra performed several times a year and toured every two years, including Europe.  The fiddle group played hundreds of shows each year.  I also taught music after school.”

 

Sora says, “According to my mother I was singing as a child before I could talk, and I remember singing myself to sleep.  But I had only sung informally, never professionally before an audience, until I was an adult and started my recording career in the early 2000s.”

 

Sora’s early musical influences were in the classical field -- Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, “The Pearl Fishers” tenor duet by Bizet, and violin concertos by Mendelssohn and Bruck.  Through her fiddle group she was introduced to traditional folk, bluegrass and Celtic music (“all the Canadiana and Americana music that came from Europe with the early settlers”).  In later years, Sora was inspired by singer-songwriters Loreena McKennitt, Enya, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Jewel and Amy Lee (of Evanescence).

 

On Scorpion Moon Sora works with top Canadian musicians -- her producer Douglas Romanow (piano and keyboards), Sharlene Wallace (pedal harp and Celtic harp), Jason Fowler (acoustic guitar, mandolin, charango), Ron Korb (bass flute, bamboo flute, dizi), Ana Uceda (cello), Wendy Solomon (cello), Lenny Solomon (violin), Xiaoqiu Lin (erhu), Ernie Toller (flute) and Ray Dillard (ethnic percussion).

 

In addition to being a recording artist, Sora also performs concerts.  Primarily a singer, she also often plays some piano and violin.  “In between the music, I like to tell stories about the songs,” she states.

 

“I am not trying to re-create something from the past, but I feel it is important to explore classic traditions and tales, to hold them up and see why these stories have been passed down for generations, and study what makes them meaningful now.  These are stories of what it means to be human, and often they hold secret keys that can open doors in our lives.  I am trying to bridge many worlds and examine the interconnections that hold it all together.  I want to present truths that transcend time, place and worlds.”

NEW AGE KEYBOARDIST TIMOTHY WENZEL INFLUENCED BY MUSIC FROM MOODY BLUES TO LOREENA MCKENNITT

Keyboardist Timothy Wenzel explains that there are numerous meanings behind the title of his second album, A Coalescence of Dreams.  First he asks, “Do we really dream alone or do our dreams intersect?”  Then he points out that we can attain our greatest successes when our various goals and aspirations come together in a symbiotic way.  Wenzel, also a longtime research scientist, explains that he realized his dreams of creating new substances by introducing the right catalysts on the molecular-level.  “And in music, dreaming plays an integral part in the creation, and the entire process is bringing together notes and sounds into an arrangement,” he says.

 

“A Coalescence of Dreams is not only the title and theme of this album, but it also represents the way I live my life and the way I see life unfolding,” states Wenzel.  “It’s about becoming aware of our nighttime dreams and using that knowledge.  It’s about day-dreaming, brain-storming, setting goals and making your dreams come true.  It’s about realizing that many aspects of our lives intersect, and also cross-connect with other lives.”

 

Wenzel, who has played piano all his life, primarily makes his recordings with a synthesizer (including a sequencer and computer), and his albums feature a wide array of instrumental sounds including piano, violin, cello, flute, harp, guitars, drums and percussion (plus occasional musical guests).  His music, which has subtle hints of Celtic and world-fusion, fits into the new age genre, especially because of the haunting melodies and dreamy arrangements that create a sense of peacefulness and relaxation.  There also is a visual element in the music which is often inspired by dreams, films, stories and nature scenery.  In addition, on his website Wenzel has attached an appropriate piece of artwork to each tune on the new album.

 

More information on Timothy Wenzel is available at his website (timothywenzel dot com).  His two CDs -- A Coalescence of Dreams and the earlier Mountains Take Wing -- and digital download tracks from those recordings are available at online sales sites such as CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and many others.

 

“I get most of my musical inspiration just as I am falling asleep,” Wenzel says.  “A lot of my melodic ideas come during my dream state when I am accessing a totally different part of my mind.  I often get up, go into my home studio and quickly record a little piece to capture that thought.  Then later I see where it goes.  I play it back to see if it moves me, and if there is a spark, I get involved and push it further in new directions.”

 

Sometimes Wenzel’s music is inspired by places -- a scenic drive in Hawaii (“Road to Hana”), a Michigan forest (“A Walk in the Summer Woods”), or hiking in the wilds of Germany (“Mountain Rain”).  Other times it is the history of a place that causes Wenzel to create music.  “Ice Wind,” which features guitarist Michael Rud from Denmark and drummer Lenny Lavash from Nevada, is a sequel to the tune “Birka” from Wenzel’s previous album.  Both tunes are about a Swedish island where a major city existed in ancient times but disappeared in the 8th Century.  “Desert Sky” is what Wenzel calls “an alternative soundtrack to the film ‘The Sheltering Sky’ directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and an adaptation of the novel by Paul Bowles set in North Africa.”  With “The River Niger,” Wenzel says, “I tried to make the music take the listener through the fascinating history of this African river from the Guinea Highlands to the Sahara to Timbuktu.”  “Follow the River” captures the tale and trail of Mary Ingles who was kidnapped by Shawnee Indians in the Eastern United States in 1755 and transported a thousand miles, but escaped and made her way home with no supplies.

 

Other compositions are more contemplative and mystical.  “Apparition” is about a comet that could be seen from earth a few years ago, and how “it appeared as a ghostly, spiritual vision.”  Wenzel states that “Miles From Nowhere” is “about that feeling of being in the middle of no particular place, so far away from everything that nothing matters.”  “Oasis of Souls” features Middle Eastern sounds and a spiritual theme (“When you are crossing a desert in life or in a dream, your soul needs a resting place, a sanctuary”).  “We Walk Together” is Wenzel’s tribute to his deceased younger brother.

 

Wenzel was born and raised in South Haven, Michigan, where he spent a lot of time outdoors enjoying nature.  “There was always a piano in our house.  It was built by my grandfather who worked in a piano factory.”  Tim’s mother played piano and he started plunking on the keys when he was three (“she encouraged me”).  Two years later his mother sent him to a piano teacher.  “I remember I did a recital when I was six,” Timothy says, “and the unusual thing was that they let me do an original piece that I came up with.  I was deeply into classical music and I took lessons until about the time I got to junior high.  I continued to play music on my own, but I started being influenced by rock’n’roll and what I heard on the radio.  My entire life I have not been able to walk by a piano and not sit down.  In grad school my biggest purchase was a parlor grand piano.”

 

Initially Wenzel enjoyed Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull and The Moody Blues, and later U2.  As he got older he began to appreciate new age music (“George Winston and the whole rosters of the Windham Hill and Narada labels”).  His next journey was female singers that incorporated some Celtic sounds -- Loreena McKennitt, Clannad, Enya and Sara McLachlan.  In recent years Wenzel also has begun working with female singers from around the world (he contributes the music and often the lyrics too).

 

In addition to music the other steady theme in Wenzel’s life has always been science.  He earned a BS degree in Chemistry at the University of Missouri, then his Masters and PhD in Physical Organic Chemistry at Cornell University.  He followed this as a post-doctoral researcher in organometallic chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.  This led to a career in research science, first with Union Carbide in West Virginia, and then with Dow Chemical in Michigan where he still lives.

 

“I primarily worked in making polymers using catalysts -- discrete molecules with a metal atom that does most of the work.  Polymers are a chemical compound of repeating structural units.  My work was primarily in polyethylene using a new generation of catalysts to make different plastics.  The culmination and highlight of my career was when they let me run with a far-out idea I had, and I headed a team that found a way to make two catalysts talk to each other.  First one would weave a strand and hand it off, and then the other would weave one, and they created building blocks together.  It is a powerful technique to make new types of polymers.  It was a major discovery, a home run.”

 

Wenzel sees a correlation, or coalescence, of his two careers.  “Science is very much an art full of creativity.  Exploring a scientific concept is very much like writing a song.  In both cases you start with an idea and then explore the possibilities of where it can lead.  Part of the experience is based on education, training and knowledge, but the other part is intuition, experimentation and a touch of magic that makes things work out.”

 

Wenzel first recorded some original material using primitive recording equipment when he was in grad school.  “I remember listening back to an improvisational piece I did and realizing the importance of capturing inspirational musical moments.  As I matured I got more and more serious about my music.  I bought an electronic keyboard and a four-track recorder in 1990 and started seriously writing original material.  Over the years I got more sophisticated keyboards and recording equipment.  About three years ago I began creating material for my first album, Mountains Take Wing,” he says.

 

“Music, like science, needs a little alchemy to help in the creation process,” says Wenzel.  “I really enjoy it when two different chemicals or sounds or ideas or people’s paths intersect and something new comes into being.  When my music is heard and affects someone else’s life, that is another coalescence, another dream coming to fruition.”