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.”