Musik Nuz

MICHAEL DEMARIA CREATES NEW AGE AND WORLD-FUSION MUSIC ON SECOND CD

2009-02-19T15:06:00.000-08:00

MICHAEL BRANT DEMARIA

Siyotanka is an ancient American Indian legend that explains the origin of the Native American courting flute. It is a coming-of-age story, a boy’s vision quest to find his personal “soul song” and become a man, and an allegorical message of the importance of music and artistic expression to society. Now it also is a musical recording by multi-instrumentalist, psychologist and soul guide Michael Brant DeMaria.

DeMaria – who plays indigenous flutes, keyboards and percussion – has created instrumental music (with a little native chanting) that tells the tale of Siyotanka (the Lakota Indian word for “flute,” or more literally “great song”). Over the course of a dozen tunes, DeMaria presents an ancient native world where the boy, Takoda, leaves his village on a journey that brings life-altering encounters with Nuka the woodpecker, the sage owl Hinhan, and the great elk Hexaka. When Nuka pecks holes in the limb of a cedar tree to get to the termites, the wind blows through the holes and Takoda hears the first flute sound. He makes the tree-limb into a flute, learns to play it and takes it back to his tribe.

Michael Brant DeMaria’s Siyotanka CD and his other music can be purchased at his website (www.ontosmusic.com) as well as at online stores such as amazon.com or cdbaby.com, and at numerous digital download locations including iTunes.com and Rhapsody.com. Native American charities receive 10 percent of the profits from the sale of DeMaria’s CDs.

DeMaria has played onstage accompanying performers well-known in the Native American and new age musical genres including R. Carlos Nakai, Mary Youngblood, Jeff Ball, Bill Miller, Peter Phippen, Coyote Oldman, Ash Dargan, Raymond Redfeather, and David Darling. DeMaria’s debut album, The River, received international airplay and acclaim as a top album for music therapy, massage, meditation, relaxation, acupuncture treatments, stress management and “soul guiding.” The CD also was the first release in DeMaria’s Ontos Healing Sound Project Series. A second CD in the series, Ocean, has been readied for release later in 2009.

The music of Siyotanka (pronounced see-yoh-tahn-kah) was created as the soundtrack to an original play written by DeMaria and another psychologist, Stephen C. Lott, who also created the artwork for the CD cover. The play premiered at the historic Pensacola Theatre in Florida with eight sold-out performances. DeMaria performed the music onstage as part of the cast. The production (including DeMaria’s musical score) won seven Crystal Awards.

A wide-variety of Native American wooden flutes were used in creating the music on Siyotanka with the higher-toned instruments representing the woodpecker and other birds, the mid-range encapsulating the adventures of the young Indian, and low bass notes evoking the owl and elk. Also heard are drums, wood-rattles and other percussion. The tunes “Grandfather” and “Branched Horn” feature both intricate rhythmic drumming and tribal chanting. “The Quest” contains acoustic-piano gently woven together with flute, while “Beyond The Known” is faster-paced utilizing the sound of acoustic guitar. Intermingled within the music are the sounds of thunder and rain (“The Dream”), crickets, bird trills and eagle cries.

The Siyotanka story, told here through music, has deep spiritual, philosophical and sociological meanings. “Ultimately, the story works as a metaphor for our life journey as we grow, explore and deal with our fears,” explains DeMaria. “It is especially touching because Takoda is a different kind of warrior. It is his sensitivity, spirituality and artistic nature that wins the day, not brute strength. Instead of creating a weapon out of wood, he crafts a flute to bring beauty and love into the world. This is a message we need today.”

DeMaria was uniquely suited to create the music of Siyotanka because of his training as a psychologist and “soul guide,” his years of participating in and leading wilderness vision quests, and his lifelong study of music as a therapeutic tool for healing and growing. On his way to his first personal vision quest in Glacier National Park in Canada, guided by a Blackfoot elder, Michael purchased an album by R. Carlos Nakai and fell in love with the heartfelt and natural sounds of the Native American flute. Although already proficient as a pianist and percussionist, DeMaria soon began incorporating flute into his music and playing it at weekly spirituality meetings. This led to performances at large flute gatherings (Musical Echoes in Florida, Zion Canyon Art and Flute Festival in Utah, and the International Native American Flute Association conventions in Taos and San Francisco). He additionally started using flute music in both private therapy sessions and group workshops. DeMaria also is the author of three books – an academic text (Horns and Halos: Towards the Blessings of Darkness), a personal growth book for general readership (Ever Flowing On: Being and Becoming One’s Self) and a book of poetry (Moments).

When he was seven-years-old, Michael began using music for his own healing of surgery trauma. At first he simply played self-soothing notes on the piano, but he was soon taking classical lessons (Bach, Scarlotti). However, from the beginning Michael found true joy in improvising and creating his own music. Seeing a jazz concert at age nine propelled Michael into drumming and percussion which he pursued in his school’s jazz band. His early musical influences ranged from jazz (Buddy Rich, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock) to pop music (Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel). DeMaria was heavily inspired in his late-teens when he first heard the solo piano improvisations of Keith Jarrett followed by the new age Windham Hill and Fresh Aire recordings.

Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and raised in nearby Wilton, Michael moved to Gulf Breeze, Florida (near Pensacola) when he was 15. He graduated from high school early and at age 17 went to the progressive New College (The Honors College of Florida) where he primarily studied chemistry and math, although he spent most of his free time creating music with his best-friend, guitarist Bill Schulz. DeMaria became fascinated not only with ethnic instruments (from taking an ethno-musicology course) but also with synthesizers (Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons Project, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre). DeMaria bought an early Moog synthesizer and began taking more music courses.

Eventually DeMaria decided to move to the University of West Florida, concentrate on psychology and philosophy, and use music as his artistic outlet and ongoing personal therapy. He graduated at age 20 with two Bachelor Degrees. At Duquesne University in Pittsburgh he received his Masters at age 21 and his PhD when he was 24. While his academic focus was on psychology, he continued taking music courses and began recording original music (five albums that he only shared with family and friends). His musical tastes broadened to include George Winston, Miles Davis, Tibetan monk chants, Romanian gypsy music, African poly-rhythms, Japanese shakuhachi flute sounds and ambient recordings.

Dr. DeMaria became a practicing clinical psychologist. At first he devoted himself to working with abused children and their families (more than 2,000 cases), but after a decade he began guiding adults on their life journeys, helping them in moving towards wholeness, living in balance and becoming more conscious, compassionate and creative. His healing practices incorporate nature, creativity and spirituality particularly utilizing journaling, meditation and artistic expression, along with play therapy and music therapy. He founded ONTOS (the Greek word for “being”), a consulting company and center for research, teaching and training in the healing practices he has developed. DeMaria also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of West Florida, the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute for Integrative Health.

“I first heard the story of Siyotanka on my first vision quest,” remembers DeMaria. “I came to realize it is a mythic, archetypal legend about bringing art to civilization, but also a story about a boy becoming a man by opening his heart and finding his soul song, the individual song we all carry within us. For the American Indians, the flute became part of the courting ritual. But before men and women join in marriage, they need to find themselves, listen to their soul and discover what they have to offer to the world. I hope this music will help lead people on that journey of self-discovery.”

Recording Artist Brian Kelly Influenced by Smooth Jazz and New Age

2009-01-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

BRIAN KELLY
AFTERPLAY

Something I have noticed in the world of music in the last couple of years is that many musicians do not stay within easy categories. Some artists do pop and rock, some folk and pop, some trad jazz and contemporary jazz, some country and Americana, some new age and world, not to mention acoustic and electric, real instruments and synthesized ones. The list goes on and on. That same strategy applies to this album by keyboardist Brian Kelly, AFTERPLAY, his second CD. His sound is absolutely smooth jazz on many of the tunes with other musicians joining him in a jazz group setting including saxophone. But on many of the other pieces, he comes across much more as a new age performer (or what they sometimes pop-new age when there are strong melodies like he writes). This second batch of tunes is much softer and gentler. There is even a little world-fusion sound on a few compositions such as “Celtic Fire.” For the most part Kelly’s acoustic grand piano is in the forefront, but he also mixes in electronic keyboards (synth, samplers, whatever) in the background or for specific sounds or instruments (besides the real players he brought in). So the production is far-ranging. But let’s cut to the bottomline. It works. Mostly because Kelly writes good instrumental music melodies and he has a gift for arranging them with a variety of instrumentation that suits each piece. His piano playing is strong and his solos are captivating. If you are the kind of listener that wants a smooth jazz album to be upbeat and bouyant all the way through with lots of hot soloing, then this album is probably not going to do it for you. If you want very meditative, spacey or ambient new age music, go elsewhere as well. But if you like some smooth jazz and some new age that is catchy, well-played and nicely arranged, then check out this guy. There is never a boring moment and the whole thing goes down easy like a good bottle of aged wine on a Sunday afternoon. I personally can’t wait to hear where he goes next.

-- John Chandler

AFTER A DOZEN CONTEMPORARY INSTRUMENTAL HIT ALBUMS OF HIS OWN PLUS PRODUCING A HUNDRED OTHERS, SPENCER BREWER IS BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM

2008-10-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

SPENCER BREWER
CINEMATIC

Spencer Brewer is not only a multi-million-selling composer, pianist and producer, but also a connoisseur of many of the greatest film scorers of all time. For his latest contemporary instrumental recording, Cinematic, Brewer has turned his talents to creating a collection of original material specifically meant to evoke visual imagery and also serve as his homage to movie music.

“I have been a fan of film music since I was a small boy,” explains Brewer, “and as a tribute to that often over-looked art-form, I decided to make an album filled with pieces I feel have the same ambience of classic movie and television scores.” In fact, some of the music has already been used in films and television. Brewer, who extensively collects recordings by his favorite film composers, has been most influenced by Bernard Hermann, John Barry and Ennio Morricone, but also has studied the works of Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Thomas Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Esquivel, John Williams, Maurice Jarre, Howard Shore, Mark Isham and Danny Elfman.

Cinematic is a two-CD set featuring a cover painting by Salvador Dali. The first CD is subtitled “Black & White” and features Brewer playing solo piano on a dozen pieces with the addition of guitar and flute on the final tune. The second CD, subtitled “Technicolor,” contains compositions played by various artists led by Brewer on piano, synthesizers, Hammond B-3 and a pump organ built in 1888. “Technicolor” has ensemble arrangements of ten of the same tunes that appear on “Black & White” plus four different pieces. The musicians on Cinematic are top new age, classical and jazz players including acoustic guitar virtuoso Alex de Grassi, reedman Paul McCandless (Paul Winter, Oregon), flutist Matt Eakle (David Grisman, Suzanne Ciani), harmonica player Norton Buffalo (Steve Miller, Kenny Loggins), drummer Mark Walker (Oregon, Paquito D’Rivera), and bassists Steve Rodby (Pat Metheny, Chuck Mangione), Todd Phillips (David Grisman, Psychograss) and Cliff Hugo (Rick Braun, Richard Elliott), plus other percussion, wind and string players including the renowned Quartet San Francisco led by Jeremy Cohen.

The music on Cinematic ranges from new versions of a couple of Brewer’s most-beloved compositions (“Quintessence,” “Dreamgift”) to new material (“Into The Mirror,” “Satie’s Forgotten Dream,” “Say What!?”). Some of the music has already been used in the cinema: “Heartwood” was commissioned for the movie of the same name starring Jason Robards and Hillary Swank, and Brewer also wrote the title theme for Lee Mun Wah’s acclaimed documentary film on racism, “Last Chance for Eden.” “Trip to Glory” has been used in several Olympics’ broadcasts, became the Big Brothers-Big Sisters theme, was used as Hank Aaron’s theme song and helped sell Arby’s Roast Beef in television commercials. “Blueberry Street” has a Porgy & Bess-feel to it and displays Brewer’s early blues roots, while the rip-roaring “Lupin Swing” displays elements of vaudeville, Broadway and ragtime. “Caravanserai” would have worked in Valentino’s “The Sheik” or Sean Connery’s “The Wind and The Lion.” “Fellini’s Carousel” pays tribute to the Italian film master. “Walls That Move” was written in George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound huge soundstage where the walls actually are capable of moving. “Cinematic” is a soaring tour-de-force of classic film sounds creating several moods, building tension and then letting the listener down easy at the end as the lights come up and the credits roll.

“I first got into movie music when I was watching the classic monster films from the 1930s – “Frankenstein,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Mummy” – and then “Creature From the Black Lagoon” in the Fifties and “Jason and the Argonauts” in the early Sixties,” remembers Brewer. “The music was so powerful, it knocked me out. I realized how important music is to the mood, storyline and character development in films. So then I started paying attention to the film composers and found music they did in other genres.”

Spencer, who was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, began playing piano at age seven, and although he took lessons for several years, he learned the most from his grandmother, who taught him Southern blues and boogie-woogie. He played in rock’n’roll bands throughout high school and then moved to Austin for its thriving music scene. Brewer became the accompanist for modern dance troupes (Deborah Hay, Martha Graham, Daniel Llanes and Suzanne Grace), which “pushed my envelope as to the possibilities of spontaneous and interpretive music.” Brewer also wrote the music for “Once Upon A Time” and “Willowmancifoot the Dragon,” two musicals written in New York City. His first recording, Stellar Notion, was done in 1980 and was vocal music from those musicals.

After moving to Northern California at the beginning of the Eighties, Brewer began recording original instrumental music, became a leader in the forefront of the burgeoning new age music movement and sold more than a million albums under his own name. He also was involved in producing, arranging, engineering and contributing tunes to albums that sold an additional several million units. It began with his albums Where Angels Dance, Shadow Dancer, Emerald, Portraits (a Gold Album with sales over half a million), Dorian’s Legacy (Top 10 on Billboard’s New Age sales chart and #1 on the R&R’s NAC airplay chart with sales of more than a quarter-million), Piper’s Rhythm (#1 on both of those same charts), Romantic Interludes and a half-dozen more. He created the music for several dozen NorthSound concept albums in which he often went uncredited, but stretched beyond new age music by exploring pop, jazz, bluegrass, big band and world music. Spencer also recorded several projects with other musicians who shared credits on the album covers – one with Tingstad & Rumbel, another with electronic music pioneer Craig Anderton and a jazz CD with Paul McCandless.

Brewer opened his own studio, Laughing Coyote, near Ukiah, California, nestled in the redwoods, and from the mid-Nineties to the mid-00s, he spent most of his time recording many other artists (plus some time out recuperating from a head-on car collision). He produced, engineered or performed on recordings by artists such as Alex de Grassi, Holly Near, Gene Parsons, Darol Anger, Steve Erquiaga, Kostia, Joe Craven, Barbara Higbie, Michael Manring, Phil Aaberg, Fred Simon, Georgia Kelly, Kirtana and many others; and oversaw productions that featured acts from John Bucchino to the Duke Ellington Band.

Spencer also contributed music to the films “Home Alone 2,” “The Gifts of Grief” (starring Isabel Allende and Rev. Cecil Williams) and “Color of Fear” (another ground-breaking movie on racism from Lee Mun Wah). Brewer wrote the national theme songs for the YMCA and the Japanese Postal Service. His music has been used on more than 2,000 television shows all over the world including “Sex and the City,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “L.A. Law,” “Sixty Minutes,” “Thirty Something” and broadcasts of the last five Olympics.

In addition to creating music, Brewer has run a record company owns a music store, rebuilds pianos, collects vintage microphones and gramophones, had his own radio show and produced hundreds of concerts in Mendocino County. He contributes to his community in many ways including helping found the Redwood Valley Outdoor Educational Facility for children and the Ukiah Educational Foundation which helps fund students and schools. He also has founded and created patents with the high-tech company HighWired Inc. which allows voicemail or email users to add music, sounds and visual content to their messages.

“Part of what makes movies magical and deeply moving is the music soundtrack married to the mood of what we are watching,” explains Brewer. “In our own lives, we generally pick music to listen to because of how we are feeling or want to feel that day. I hope the music on Cinematic can serve as a soundtrack for people’s lives.”

Many of Brewer’s recordings are available at his website (spencerbrewer.com). Cinematic also can be purchased online at Cdbaby.com and Amazon.com, as well as numerous digital download locations such as iTunes and Rhapsody. Check him out on YouTube as well.

AFTER A DOZEN CONTEMPORARY INSTRUMENTAL HIT ALBUMS OF HIS OWN PLUS PRODUCING A HUNDRED OTHERS, SPENCER BREWER IS BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM

2008-10-10T06:11:00.000-07:00

AFTER A DOZEN CONTEMPORARY INSTRUMENTAL HIT ALBUMS OF HIS OWN PLUS PRODUCING A HUNDRED OTHERS, SPENCER BREWER IS BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM

2008-10-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

AFTER A DOZEN CONTEMPORARY INSTRUMENTAL HIT ALBUMS OF HIS OWN PLUS PRODUCING A HUNDRED OTHERS, SPENCER BREWER IS BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM

2008-10-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

IAN TESCEE CAPTURES EXCITEMENT OF SPACE TRAVEL ON HIS NEW CD

2008-10-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

IAN TESCEE CAPTURES EXCITEMENT OF SPACE TRAVEL ON HIS NEW CD

A Traveler’s Guide to MARS

Humans have been dreaming about going to Mars since the first telescopes were invented four centuries ago, and now that we have spaceships landing on the planet regularly and rovers motoring around, taking photos and digging in the soil, the dream of earthlings visiting the red planet is more real than ever. Space music maestro Ian Tescee, who has been dazzling electronic music aficionados for the past 22 years, has now created A Traveler’s Guide to MARS, the soundtrack for humankind’s pending journey to our closest neighboring planet (sometimes only 40 million miles away).

Inspired by the book of the same name penned by distinguished space scientist William K. Hartmann, this music by Ian Tescee has been used since the fall of 2007 in the major planetarium production about Mars at the Carnegie Science Center’s Buhl Digital Dome in Pittsburgh.

A Traveler’s Guide to MARS is the fourth album by Ian Tescee (pronounced like t-c), who first made waves in the space music field in 1984 with the ground-breaking recording Io (pronounced ee’-oh), named after Jupiter’s moon, the most volcanically active world in the solar system. Tescee, who traditionally takes several years between albums, expanded his space music repertoire into deeper space on his second album, Continua, with compositions such as “The Big Bang” and “The Cosmic Dream.” Ian first got to know W.K. Hartmann in the Eighties because the scientist also is a renowned illustrator of space scenes and allowed the use of one of his paintings on the back of Io, another on the cover of Continua and one inside A Traveler’s Guide to MARS. “My third CD, Breathwork, expanded my electronic experimentation and explored innerspace rather than outerspace,” explains Tescee. “It was all about how rapid, deep breathing can facilitate an altered state without the use of drugs, something that could become important during extended space travel.”

All four of Tescee’s CDs can be purchased from his record company at musicphrenia.com or iantescee.com, as well as at major on-line retailers such as cdbaby.com or amazon.com, and numerous digital download locations including itunes.com and rhapsody.com.

Tescee has garnered a cult following of enthusiastic space music fans because of his mesmerizing sound which features strong melodies, catchy rhythm patterns, complex arrangements and a dazzling final-mix that allows each sound to cleanly emerge. He finds himself on the other end of the spectrum from space musicians who feature ambient sounds or lengthy aimlessly-floating pieces. Tescee’s melodic sensibilities derive from his pop-rock background, his rhythmic sense from many years as a rock’n’roll drummer, and his mixing abilities from two decades of managing a recording studio where he engineered and produced countless records in many genres (from guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy’s Acoustic Sketches CD to the heavy-metal cult-classic Ample Destruction by Jag Panzer).

Tescee’s music was meant to be carefully listened to, which makes it appeal to many in the prog-rock community. But the space themes and captivating instrumental passages also lend themselves to enjoyment by fans of new age music. While A Traveler’s Guide to MARS serves as the score to a current major planetarium show, Ian’s previous recordings have proved favorites for producers of various space-themed multimedia – the backdrop for the website ThisDayInSpace.com, in-house visual productions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (where the Voyager and Viking space missions were controlled), and Andrew Rennie’s Spaceshow Documentaries in Australia.

Ian Tescee was initially inspired to begin recording space music after seeing Carl Sagan’s 13-hour PBS-TV mini-series “Cosmos” in 1980. “I actually tuned in because I heard some of the theme music by Vangelis and I later tracked down the album, Heaven and Hell, that it originally came from.” The ideas explained in “Cosmos” coupled with that Vangelis music not only influenced Tescee’s “Io Theme” on his first album, but also “Billions and Billions of Stars” on the new album.

Ian says he has always been more inspired by particular albums rather than an artist’s entire recorded output, and he specifically mentions The Moody Blues’ In Search of the Lost Chord with its prominent use of mellotron, Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma with its extended live versions of the space-tracks “Astronomy Domine” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” Jethro Tull’s Stand Up, Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn, Chris Spheeris’ Pathways to Surrender, Enya’s Watermark and Enigma’s MCMXC A.D. Less influential, but with sounds worth studying were King Crimson’s The Court of the Crimson King (also featuring mellotron), Yes’ Fragile, and Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene. Tescee additionally has been inspired by philosophy, science and sci-fi literature written by Carl Sagan, W.K. Hartmann, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda and C.S. Lewis.

Born in Indiana and raised in Colorado, Tescee has early musical memories (his dad’s jazz albums and his mother singing showtunes). Soon Ian was listening to rock’n’roll, playing drums, and creating his own light shows. As he entered his teens, he started recording songs and learning to play guitar and keyboards. During high school he played tympani in the concert band (even today he uses the sound of those orchestral drums on all his recordings), played in rock bands (Perihelon was named after the astronomical term for the point in a planet’s orbit that is closest to the sun), and listened to music ranging from classical (Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia and the soundtrack to the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”) to classic rock (The Doors, Iron Butterfly and Focus). After graduation he toured the Midwest for a year in the band Autumn before moving east to attend Cornell University where he took courses on computer programming, classical music appreciation and physics (Carl Sagan was a guest lecturer). Ian’s roommate was majoring in astronomy, which intrigued Tescee, but he spent most of his time in his room recording music.

Soon Tescee was also recording other musicians, and he wrote and published a book, The Musician’s Guide to Recording (used as a college text for several years). He received an honorable mention from the American Song Festival competition and played folk music in coffee houses in New York State. He returned to Colorado where he joined the top regional bluegrass-country-rock band Radford & Lewis (Tescee sometimes took center-stage to sing lead vocals as his rock’n’roll alter-ego, Brian Tuemer). Tescee opened the studio Startsong Recording, Inc. and worked with Firefall, The Auto-No (whose CD won Colorado awards), Zen Radio (another top Colorado alternative-rock band) and Randy Zambola (a national award-winning dulcimer player). Tescee has written and recorded original music in many genres, often with lyrics, but has only released his space music on CD.

Ian recorded the bulk of A Traveler’s Guide to MARS using synthesizers (keyboards and electronic drums), but as with all of his recordings, he plays analog guitars throughout and sings on one track. Also thrown into the mix are a half-dozen authentic NASA commands and a countdown, a cello solo by symphony-player Nancy Snustad, and the faint quoting of a line from Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Lost City of Mars.” Most of the music was composed by Tescee, but “Beneath The Ice” includes music written by electronic musician Russell Storey, and “The Wooden Prince” is based on the theme by Béla Bartók.

“Even though I am awed by the current exploration of Mars and the discoveries there,” says Tescee, “Carl Sagan taught us that the more you know about the universe, the more you realize how much more there is to know. Space music means something to me on a gut, feeling level, not an intellectual one. For me it’s about creating a separate, fantasmagoric reality that can be shared with others. A human has not yet traveled to Mars, but we can certainly imagine what it would be like, and I hope my music on this album can serve as a soundtrack for that imaginative experience.”

And, yes, the tire-tracks on Mars shown on the back cover are real (that’s a NASA photo of a rover trail, the first tracks made on another planet by a human-created vehicle).

LIGHT ON THE WATER BY TIMOTHY COOPER

2008-07-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

TIMOTHY COOPER – ALREADY KNOWN AS A NOVELIST, PHOTOGRAPHER, FILM-MAKER & ACTIVIST – RELEASES FIRST MUSICAL RECORDING

TIMOTHY COOPER
Timothy Cooper strives to bring enlightenment to the world through his art as well as his job as Executive Director of Worldrights, the human rights advocacy organization. His goal of calling attention to today's problems, and offering solace and solutions, is evident in his latest artistic endeavor, the new age solo piano recording Light on the Water.
The album, influenced by the tragic terrorist acts of 9/11 and the subsequent healing process that the American public went through, is available for purchase at the record company website (http://www.new-piano-age.com/), online retailers such as http://www.cdbaby.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/, and various digital download locations including iTunes.
Cooper, who lives in Washington, DC, creates thought-provoking art in several fields. In addition to being a pianist and composer, he is a novelist, photographer and film-maker. His first novel, World One, was about "nuclear war with a happy ending when the entire planet finally learns to live together in peace." His second novel, 2008, deals with Jesus Christ returning to earth and running for President. "This time around instead of being a religious leader he becomes a politician. It's a comedy."
With his visual art, Cooper has created his Worldlights collection (www.world-lights.com), photographs taken all over the world showing the globalization of culture and the exultation of commercialism. The photos are placed in large-format lightbox triptychs that emphasize light and shadow "to symbolize the dramatic tension between consumerism and humanism, and the diminishing of individualism." Cooper also has long been involved with film-making and his most recent projects are three documentaries on human rights ("China Rising" will debut in the autumn of 200 from his company Freedom's Gate Films.
Beyond shining a spotlight on world problems through the use of art, Cooper also heads Worldrights (http://www.world-rights.org/), whose mission is "to promote and protect human rights under principles of international law, recognizing that a violation of human rights anywhere is a violation of human rights everywhere." The organization makes appearances on behalf of political and religious prisoners, disenfranchised populations and victims of racial discrimination. Worldrights utilizes diplomacy and legal petitions, lobbies governing bodies, and uses speeches, lectures and publicity to disseminate information and build awareness. Cooper has spoken before numerous international human rights organizations including various United Nations' committees.
"I want to help our global society any way I can to make it more peaceful and harmonious," explains Cooper, "and another way to do that is to release positive and peaceful music into the world." The Light on the Water CD "represents two essential ingredients of life - light and water; and more philosophically it stands for my deep hope that out of the darkness can come light, out of tragedy can come renewal and rebirth. I began recording these pieces during the week following 9/11 when there was a lot of pain and tension in the air, and I could hear jet-fighter planes screaming over Washington, DC, even in the middle of the night. But after contemplating the depressing aspects of those terrorist acts, I also understood there was a positive side to the events as people bonded together with a sense of patriotism and brotherhood, spirituality increased, and society began rebuilding in many ways. I continued recording new music for the CD for several years."
Light on the Water contains 19 instrumental tunes recorded as solo piano improvisational pieces without overdubs. "Some of the tracks begin with progressions or melodic motifs that I had played around with lightly on previous occasions, but had never fully explored. Other pieces were simply a sudden musical expression being entirely created at the very instant of recording it. But all of the material is improvisational from the standpoint that it was not worked out in advance or written down. I never knew where the music was going, but let it reflect the emotions I was feeling in that moment."
The CD begins with "Worldscapes" which is "a hopeful clarion call for global unity." "Why" asks "why the destruction, the catastrophic deaths, and the lack of resolution of the conflict that caused it?" "Rising" is "deeply optimistic that despite wars and attacks, we will overcome and make a better tomorrow." The piece "Soundings" represents "sounding out how we are going to move forward as individuals and as a people to deal with tragedy." "Curve of Madness" expresses "the sheer terror and confusion we felt about the events, but also the wonder at why some people on this planet would want to do what they did to others. But the next tune makes the statement that simple gestures of love, goodwill and kindness are needed, and maybe peace begins with 'One Smile'."
The tune "Open Soul" characterizes "the need to listen to other people and to try to understand them." "Autumn Tears" turns to "the on-going mourning and grieving" the terrorist acts brought. In the aftermath, everyone faced "The Struggles," "how do we cope with this and what is my duty to my country and to the world?" "Glad Sorrows" sums up "the conflicting emotions we felt for the sacrifice and heroism of the firefighters and rescue workers as well as the citizens on the plane who fought back." With "Ribbons of Starlight," "I was thinking about the light shining on our planet from throughout the universe and that we must never forget that what we do here on Earth matters." "Solstice" expresses "the need to get back on the trail of a united human destiny." The recording ends with "Advent," "a call for shaping a better future."
Cooper began his musical career at age seven singing in the choir at the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, DC. At the Washington National Cathedral, one of the largest sanctuaries in the country, he spent two years as a chorister in the junior choir and then moved up to the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys while also attending and singing at the St. Albans School for Boys. "I received a very deep exposure to choral and sacred music, and I got to sing many of the best compositions by the top composers from the 16th Century through the modern era. It was very, very rigorous training because we rehearsed five days a week, sang programs four times during the week, and then performed at two services on Sunday. We also toured the United States and United Kingdom, and recorded several albums."
When he was 17 and 18, Cooper traveled extensively and began taking photographs, primarily of people, in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, England and Ireland. "I was beginning to understand humanity and the human condition. It gave me a sense of the global community." During his high school years Timothy also learned to play guitar, but after hearing Ravi Shankar on sitar, Cooper began playing that instrument for several years. Cooper also had a passion for film-making. One of his short student films was about the Spanish Inquisition ("man's inhumanity to man"), and it won numerous national and international film awards. This led to Timothy being the youngest student (at age 1 ever accepted at that time to the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies in Los Angeles, which primarily offered a two-year upper-graduate program. There Cooper studied classic films, wrote scripts and shot videos for critiquing, and attended lectures by Steven Spielberg, David Lean and Martin Scorsese. After graduation, Cooper produced a feature film, "The Big Deal," about the end of the Sixties.
At age 19, while at the American Film Institute, Cooper began learning to play the piano, and from then on he has regularly practiced his improvisational creativity. "I love the piano's ability to create oceanic sound, that floating feeling, countless waves tossed across endless seas." Over the years Cooper has been inspired by acoustic-oriented artists such as Keith Jarrett, Liz Story, Will Ackerman, Philip Aaberg and Suzanne Ciani.
"Even though the events of 9/11 are reflected in Light on the Water, the music is really my plea for peace and understanding in the world among all people."

INCREDIBLE CONCERT -- FEATURING DAVID ARKENSTONE, NICHOLAS GUNN, LOREN GOLD & JOHANNES LINSTEAD – SOLD AS A COMBINED PACKAGE INCLUDING A CD AND DVD

2008-07-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

GEMINI SUN RECORDS PRESENTS
THE AUDIO & VISUAL CONCERT EXTRAVAGANZA
Live!
Starring DAVID ARKENSTONE,
LOREN GOLD, NICHOLAS GUNN
and JOHANNES LINSTEAD

Gemini Sun Records, one of the top new age music labels, has released their first concert recording, appropriately-titled Live! and featuring four of the company’s best-selling musicians – David Arkenstone, Loren Gold, Nicholas Gunn and Johannes Linstead. In addition, the package comes with both an audio CD as well as a DVD containing a full-length film of the show.

This is Gemini Sun’s fifth CD/DVD package in their “Audio Visual Connect Series.” Distributed by Ryco/WMG, this two-disc set (and the entire Gemini Sun catalog) can be purchased at many record retail stores throughout the United States, and is available internationally at online outlets such as amazon.com and cdbaby.com. The audio portion can be purchased at numerous digital download locations including iTunes. For more information on this package, the artists and the label, go to GeminiSunRecords.com.

The 74-minute concert, taped at an intimate Southern California theater in front of an enthusiastic audience of fans, features the four “Gemini Sun All-Stars” playing separately and together with dynamic backing from an eight-piece band of top pop, new age and world music musicians specially-selected for this show. While the four featured performers sometimes play a variety of instruments when they record in the studio, on-stage for this event they are spotlighted on their main instruments – Arkenstone on electric guitar, Gold on acoustic grand piano, Gunn on flutes and Linstead on nylon-string acoustic guitar. The backing band adds violin, accordion, bass, drums and a wide variety of percussion.

The resulting sound combines the best elements of both energetic new age and world music for a unique global fusion sound. Even though the 15 instrumental tunes presented here can be found on other albums in their original studio versions, this collection contains unique and special arrangements of the material that comes across with an energy and excitement that can only derive from a live concert.

One of the show’s highlights is when Arkenstone, Gold, Gunn and Linstead all appear on-stage together with the full backing band for the concert climax – the seven-and-a-half-minute world-beat jam on Linstead’s “Djunga.” The recording kicks off with Arkenstone’s eight-minute Mid-East-flavored “Desert Crossing” with Gunn sitting in on congas. In addition, Arkenstone performs a Latin-inspired tune (“Gypsy Camp”). Other world music influences are evident throughout. Johannes Linstead is known for his Latin-style acoustic-guitar playing, but he also exhibits his versatility by showcasing Greek influences on “Ambrosia” and Caribbean stylings on “Streets of Old San Juan” and “Spanish Town.”

Except for the finale, each featured artist gets his own segment in the spotlight. Nicholas Gunn begins with a short bamboo-flute piece “Earth Bones” followed by the Grand Canyon-inspired “Elves’ Chasm.” “Apasionado Uno” features passionate percussion (even Gunn lays down his flute long enough to join in on congas), and the tempo cranks up another notch on the fast-paced “Breathe.” Pianist Loren Gold starts softly with “Falling” (a piano-flute duet with Gunn), but cranks up the energy on “For My Baby” where he shows his pop sensibilities, and the jazzy “Sunnyside” with backing by the band as well as Gunn on flute. “On the studio version,” explains Gunn, “there was a piano and saxophone interplay, but for this concert we changed the sax to flute which gives you an idea of how different some of these tunes sound in this live setting versus the original recordings.” Arkenstone’s portion of the show includes what he describes as the “happy and carefree” tune “New Day” and the complex, vibrant, rocking “Dance in the Desert” (he says it is “born out of my love of swash-buckler adventure movies”).

In addition to the spectacular musical performances, the CD and DVD both include brief interview interludes that give insights into each artist’s personality and music. Nicholas Gunn produced the music on Live! and Girshon Rutstein directed the film (they co-produced the visuals). Gunn also is the founder and CEO of Gemini Sun Records which during the past decade has become one of the leading new age music companies.

According to Gunn, “Fans of our music are constantly asking us about performing concerts. By offering this Live! album as both an audio and visual package, we feel it gives those fans a very good indication of the experience of attending one of our shows. By offering the concert on CD and DVD, it makes it easy to enjoy the music anywhere, anytime.”

The first two decades of David Arkenstone’s career includes garnering three Grammy nominations and millions of fans. His music is a modern orchestral amalgam of electronic technology and warm, earthy, acoustic instruments that create progressive sonic textures behind mesmerizing melodies. This multi-instrumentalist and masterful arranger debuted with Valley in the Clouds and over the course of 16 more solo recordings he has explored both the known universe as well as places from his imagination on a stellar series of albums including In the Wake of the Wind, Quest of the Dream Warrior, The Celtic Book of Days, Caravan of Light, Atlantis: A Symphonic Journey and his new Echoes of Light and Shadow.

Loren Gold began playing Beatles songs on the piano at age five and soon after started his classical training. But the classical world could not contain his exuberance and experimentation as he went on to play Mozart piano sonatas a la Fats Domino followed by jazz improvisation in the style of Keith Jarrett. Gold has composed pieces for films on HBO, Showtime and Cinemax. In the music industry he is known as a consummate professional backing pianist (and often concert music director as well) for singers such as Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, Taylor Hicks, Tiffany, Jeff Trachta and McKenzie BC. Gold has two contemporary instrumental solo albums, All Around Me and the smooth jazz Keys.

One of the world’s best-selling flutists (more than two-million albums sold), Nicholas Gunn was born in England and classically-trained at Great Britain’s prestigious Royal School of Music. After moving to the United States, Gunn embarked on his solo career with albums such as The Sacred Fire, Crossroads, The Great Southwest and Breathe. His awareness and appreciation of the importance of nature inspired him to create a series of beloved recordings based on the beauty of America’s National Parks (with a portion of the proceeds donated to help preserving these landmarks) – The Music of the Grand Canyon, Beyond Grand Canyon, Through the Great Smoky Mountains, Journey to Yellowstone, and others.

Johannes Linstead has quickly become one of the most popular and best-selling acoustic guitarists in the nouveau flamenco genre. He was immediately acclaimed with the release of his first CD, Sol Luna Tierra. His Guitarra del Fuego was named “Best Contemporary World Album” by New Age Voice magazine and his Mediterranea CD won the New Age Reporter Lifestyle Music Award for “Best World Album.” Other CDs include Kiss The Earth, Zabuca and Café Tropical. Much of his inspiration has come from extensive traveling in Latin and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Mediterranean region. He performs regularly throughout the United States.

“It’s interesting that all four of us started our careers playing in pop and rock bands, and we are all experienced live performers,” explains Gunn. “By putting all of us into one concert situation, it really keeps the action moving. From artist to artist and style to style, there is lot of powerful music being presented in this Live! recording.”

HEAR ACOUSTIC GUITAR LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD IT BEFORE ON NEW LAWRENCE BLATT ALBUM

2008-05-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

LAWRENCE BLATT

Lawrence Blatt is quickly moving into the upper echelon of finger-picking acoustic guitarists, but with a background that includes a degree in microbiology, he also has deep insights into science and mathematics. On his second instrumental recording, Fibonacci’s Dream, Blatt combines his passions for music and math into a tribute to one of history’s most important mathematicians. This is album that will appeal to fans of jazz, folk, new age and acoustic guitar mastery.

Leonardo Fibonacci, a 13th Century Italian, published a pivotal book, “Liber Abaci” (Book of Calculation) when he was 32. He introduced Europeans to the use of Arabic numerals (the system we use today) and discovered the “Golden Ratio” that appears frequently in nature (petals on a sunflower, seeds in a pinecone, a nautilus shell or the cochlea in human ears).

Much musical theory follows Fibonacci mathematics, so Blatt decided to take it a step further on his recording and consciously apply math structures and sequences to his compositions by utilizing numerical ratios in his chord patterns, repeated phrases and tonal intervals. All music is naturally built on a mathematical foundation, so Blatt’s tunes do not sound academic or sterile, but rather melodic, colorful, accessible and exhilarating. While the song structures may have a mathematical consistency, Blatt points out that the emotions within each composition are inspired by people, places and life experiences.

“One thing I learned from my biology studies is the axiom that simple rules lead to complex behaviors,” explains Blatt. “So by integrating some of Fibonacci’s math into my music, I started with fairly simple structural rules. However, the result was music that became not only more complex, but more intrinsically-beautiful in its cohesiveness.”

Blatt’s fluid acoustic sound – sometimes created purely on a single guitar and other times featuring several layered and entwining instruments – can feature subtle counter-melodies, rhythmic interplays or even multiple parts played simultaneously on one guitar (lead, rhythm and bass at the same time, for example). Blatt’s exceptional technique mixes delicate nuances one moment with passionate fire the next. On the album, Blatt played all of the instruments -- both steel-string and nylon-string acoustic guitars, acoustic bass, an Hawaiian 8-string ukulele, a 128-year-old bowl-back mandolin, two small South American 10-string guitars (a charango and a ronroco), piano (on one tune) and ethnic percussion. He also composed, arranged and produced all the music. Blatt’s style bridges many genres including new age, neo-classical, folk and world music with subtle, hinted-at elements including Latin, Mid-Eastern, jazz, bluegrass, Hawaiian and pop-rock.

A rising star in the world of instrumental music and acoustic guitar finger-picking, Lawrence Blatt won an international radio LifeStyle Music Award and was named last year’s “Best New Artist” by New Age Reporter for his debut CD, the Top 10 airplay Out of the Woodwork. In addition, the album was selected as a finalist for the 2007 Independent Music Awards’ Best New Age Album. Meanwhile, Fibonacci’s Dream is already #2 on the international NAR chart. Both CDs can be purchased online at his own website (lawrenceblatt.com), CDbaby.com, Amazon.com, Tradebit.com, Musicishere.com, and digital download locations such as iTunes and Napster.

Blatt has studied under guitar players and recording artists such as Laurence Juber, Pierre Bensusan and Brian Gore. Following the technique used by those teachers, Blatt picks the strings using his fingertips rather than utilizing real or fake fingernails. Blatt uses both standard and open tunings on his guitars. Blatt also believes in “complete takes” when recording (rather than seeking perfection with patched-together solos), and does only minimal studio manipulation of the sound after it leaves his instrument.

Lawrence grew up initially in the Los Angeles-area (Van Nuys) through grade school, and then moved to Carmel, Indiana, where he attended junior and senior high school. He began classical violin studies at age eight (immersed in Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn and Bernard Heiden) which continued through his senior year (although Lawrence also played classical bass for two years and learned basic piano skills). While still in junior high, he became the youngest member of the Indianapolis Youth Symphony (conducted by Jackson Wiley). In addition, when Blatt was twelve, he began learning guitar, and over the next decade became a part of the Indiana folk scene as a singer-songwriter-guitarist while continuing to study classical music.

In high school, Blatt was influenced by singer-songwriters such as Neil Young, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Carole King, Jesse Colin Young, Van Morrison, Dan Fogelberg, America and Boz Scaggs. Blatt went on to graduate from Indiana University where he studied both microbiology and music (Leonard Bernstein was on the adjunct faculty giving lectures and concerts). Lawrence’s musical interest expanded to include artists such as John Lee Hooker, Al Jarreau, Joe Jackson and Chicago. Blatt moved to Los Angeles and earned his MBA and PhD degrees in science (“it was something I enjoyed and had an aptitude for”), and listened to a lot of folk (Steve Earle, Steve Goodman, John Prine, Lyle Lovett) and jazz (Larry Carlton, Brandon Fields). Blatt went to Boulder, Colorado, for five years, began his “serious music career,” and delved deeply into finger-style playing. In addition to studying with Juber at this time, Blatt was influenced by other finger-pickers including Dave Wilcox, Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, Ottmar Liebert and The Netherlands’ Harry Sacksioni. In 2001 Blatt moved to San Francisco (where he now lives) and started performing regularly, recording and studying intensely with Brian Gore.

Shortly after Blatt released his first CD, Out of the Woodwork, several tunes received airplay on John Rothman’s current-affairs nationally-syndicated radio program, and listener response and sales were immediate. The album went on to be one of the most-played albums in its genre on radio stations around the world for several months. The title tune was chosen to appear on the compilation CDs Care Packages (distributed to American troops in Iraq) and GOA Chill Zone. “Here We Go” was licensed to appear in a Tom Green film (“Shred II”); “Under the Sun” appeared on the CD No Cover’s Best New Bands; “Z Squared” was included on the Java for Javelins compilation; and “Keiki Lullaby” will be used on the PBS/Showtime-TV magazine show “This American Life.”

On Fibonacci’s Dream, Blatt’s ability to perform multiple parts on a guitar without overdubs is showcased on the tunes “I’m Leaving Now” (influenced by Lindsay Buckingham), “Bern ‘The Bear’,” “Just Before Dawn,” and two that include a little percussion added -- “Five Nights” and “La Selva (The Rainforest)” (featuring the tiny South American ronroco). But in addition to these single-guitar spotlights, Blatt also creates wondrous multiple-guitar arrangements on the Latin-influenced “Una Vida (One Life)” with its 35-second solo charango coda, “Catalina,” “Fibonacci’s Dream” and “Song For Chava” (an homage to Blatt’s Eastern European heritage).

Several of the pieces develop interplay between the guitar and bass, such as “In A Heartbeat” and “A Little More Sunshine.” “‘In A Heartbeat’ is example of two guitars talking to one another,” Blatt explains, “like a first and second violin in an orchestra, where the melody only emerges when the two are playing together.” “I Remember When,” written in Hawaii using a “taro-patch tuning,” incorporates an eight-string ukulele. The album ends with a tune dedicated to “the senselessness of war.” “Move Um Out” moves from delicate harmonics to a marching pace and, following several brief lulls, into frenetic strumming and percussion.

“I didn’t set out to make an album of any particular genre. My music includes simple tunes, ones that are harmonically and rhythmically complex, some with a modern-sounding edge, and others with a mysterious quality and feeling that could have been written in the 18th century. As a solo instrumentalist, my guitar is my voice, and I have a lot I want to say.”

AHN TRIO SHOWCASE MODERN-CLASSICAL, NEW AGE, FOLK & HIP-HOP ON FIRST SONY-BMG RECORDING

2008-05-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

AHN TRIO

From the moment the Ahn Trio stepped onto the international music scene stage, they have defied categorization, broken musical barriers and revolutionized perceptions of classical music. They have become leaders in diversifying classical music in the 21st Century. Their trendsetting legacy continues with their fifth recording, Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac, their debut CD on SONY BMG Masterworks (RCA Red Seal).Korean-born and Juilliard-trained, the Ahns are sisters – violinist Angella, pianist Lucia and cellist Maria. The trio builds bridges between diverse musical genres and transcends any preconceptions that exist in the classical music scene by embracing 21st century classical music as well as utilizing elements of new age, jazz, pop, folk, minimalism, avant-garde, chill, lounge and hip-hop. The trio works with composers who have many diverse influences, and the Ahns also continue to collaborate with many different types of artists."Every century has its own distinctive style of classical music," states Angella, "and our album reflects classical music in the 21st Century which, of course, is influenced by all different types of music in this modern era. We live in New York City and can't help but be inspired by all the exciting new music and art around us. Incorporating these elements feels like an entirely organic progression to us. We don't purposely set out to be rebellious."These musical sisters thrive on dissolving the barriers between art forms. They have fused their music with that of modern dancers (such as the David Parsons Dance Company), pop singers, club DJs, performance artists, photographers, lighting designers, installation artists, ecologists and even kite makers. Ahn Trio tours regularly and has sold out concert venues, from packed clubs to prestigious concert halls, all over the world.
Possessing an enviable combination of talent, style and beauty, the Ahn sisters have long been favorite subjects for the international press. The group initially made a big splash when they were featured early on in Time magazine (the cover heralded "Asian-American Whiz Kids"). They have gone on to be frequently featured on fashion pages in magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Harpers Bazaar, W, Marie Claire and Town & Country. Angella, Lucia and Maria also were named three of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2003, not just for their beauty but also for their outstanding musical accomplishments.Their first album of trio compositions by Ravel and Villa-Lobos won rave reviews ("This is one of Ravel's best, and never better played" - Audion Magazine). Their second recording won an ECHO Award (Germany's Grammy equivalent) and featured interpretations of pieces by Dvorak and Shostakovich. The trio then recorded two albums that introduced works that were written especially for them and which highlighted living composers. For their new CD on SONY BMG Masterworks, the Ahns planned an album they had been dreaming of doing for several years: their modern classical take on what they call “lullabies fit for 21st Century insomniacs.”
"Lullabies are traditionally very simple and beautiful melodies that are small yet powerful in their emotional content. In every culture they are the same. We started by choosing lullaby-worthy material and then did 'modern classical' treatments of them which for us meant creating something edgy but at the same time minimalistic since lullabies should always be simple," explains Maria Ahn. "Primarily our ingredients were our acoustic instruments with some very, very subtle electronica elements and a few non-classical singers."In addition to the title track by Kenji Bunch, they chose his "Dies Irie" and "Magic Hour" (the latter the fifth movement of his "Swing Shift" suite), and also had him arrange the classic Rodgers & Hart standard "My Funny Valentine." "We met Mary Rodgers, Richard Rodgers' daughter, while at Juilliard so we chose this tune as a tribute to her."
Also on the CD are two compositions by acclaimed-film-composer Michael Nyman – "Big My Secret" and the famous theme from the score for the film “The Piano” ("The Heart Asks Pleasure First") – with special transcriptions created by Nyman for the Ahn Trio. According to Lucia, “Nyman is one of our absolute favorite composers of our time. He is truly the innovator of a brand new approach to the modern soundscape.” Nyman, equally enthusiastic about working with the Ahns, calls them "my all-time favorite piano trio with a rare passion for new music.”On the new recording, the Ahn Trio also perform "Song On The Land" by piano prodigy and composer Ronn Yedidia (another who attended Juilliard), whom they enlisted to transcribe two other tracks – an instrumental version of the Korean pop hit "Dream" by JY Park (considered to be the Korean "P. Diddy") and the classic folk song "Solitary Singer" (written by folk icon and Disney film composer Terry Gilkyson for his 1948 Armed Forces radio show). "We fell in love with Laurie Lewis' version, so we used her arrangement as our starting point," Angella explains.The album contains eight pieces new to the group's recorded repertoire including Susie Suh's "All I Want," arranged by the Ahn Trio with Susie singing. The CD also includes newly-recorded versions of four compositions that appeared on previous CDs: "Magic Hour" by Kenji Bunch, "The Heart Asks Pleasure First" by Michael Nyman, Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion" and their instrumental transcription of the David Bowie-Pat Metheny hit "This is Not America." Club-mix versions of four tunes are included as bonus tracks. "The remixes were pure fun," states Lucia. "We wanted international sound designers to take our music and make something completely new out of it."Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac was recorded in Prague in the Czech Republic. The trio had recently traveled there to perform at the Czech Angel Awards (that country’s Grammys) with one of the country's top rock bands, the Tata Bojs, and two of the best Czech music producers – Dusan Neuwerth (also a member of Tata Bojs) and Jan P. Muchow (who plays in the experimental rock duo The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa). The Ahn sisters then asked Neuwerth and Muchow to co-produce the album with the trio.The Ahns feel that Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac is “a reflective yet impulsive album” acknowledging who they are at this moment in time. "It's a concept we wanted to explore at this time in our career, and it is very personal because it is the first album that we were involved in the production," Maria explains.The Ahn Trio is already looking ahead to the future. Their next album will consist of all original works written especially for the trio. They are waiting with great anticipation a new Triple Concerto being written for them by Mark O'Conner. Upcoming plans include a recording collaboration with the Tata Bojs; performances in New York City, Mexico and Chicago, a new recording of their Christmas EP, and a tour in China and Korea that will include the premiere of Kenji Bunch's Hardware Triple Concerto in China.
Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac can be purchased in stores nationwide as well as at online sales outlets including the Sony-BMG Music Entertainment Store (shop.myplay.com) and Amazon.com, or digital download locations such as iTunes. For more information on the Ahn Trio, visit sonybmgmasterworks.com, ahntrio.com or myspace.com/ahntrio.

LONG WAY HOME BY DON IMMEL

2008-05-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

DON IMMEL STARTS A REVOLUTION BY MAKING THE TROMBONE ONE OF TODAY’S MOST VERSATILE INSTRUMENTS

Don Immel is passionate about re-introducing the trombone into the music scene spotlight. With the release of his debut solo album, Long Way Home, he showcases his talents as a world-class trombonist and one of the few who can play equally well in the fields of jazz, classical, pop and chill.

“It has always bothered me that the trombone has fallen out of fashion as a melodic lead instrument during the past 40 years,” explains Immel (pronounced em-uhl). “I have found that listeners love the smooth, silky, sliding sound of the trombone, but they just don’t get exposed to it much anymore. Even though so few trombone-oriented recordings are made these days, I finally realized I shouldn’t let that stop me. If you have lemons, you make lemonade. If you play trombone, you should make a trombone album, which is why I gave a tongue-in-cheek title to one of my tunes, ‘Lemonade Alchemy’.”

The CD is loosely-categorized as smooth jazz, but contains elements of pop, traditional jazz, neo-classical, chill, new age and lounge music. The recording also shows Immel’s skills as a composer, producer and arranger. Long Way Home can be purchased online at CDbaby.com, amazon.com, digital download locations such as iTunes and Napster, and at his own website (donimmel.com).

Immel is one of the only trombone performers in the world who has served as the principal trombonist in major orchestras (the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and the national Danish South Jutland Symphony Orchestra), performed onstage with top jazz acts (Chris Botti, Doc Severinson, Cyrus Chestnut, Jon Faddis, Billy Childs, Larry Coryell), backed renowned singers onstage (Renee Fleming, Elvis Costello, Bernadette Peters, Linda Ronstadt), and played on Hollywood film soundtracks (“Matrix 3: Revolutions,” “The Newton Boys,” “The Mothman Prophecies,” “Keeping The Faith” and “Crocodile Dundee in L.A.”).

But Don’s versatility doesn’t end there. He has led The Bryggeriet Chill Project (currently performing in Europe), his own jazz groups (The Don Immel Septet, Jazz Talk Octet), both a rock’n’roll horn band and a ska group, and small neo-classical ensembles (Quake, Lyric Brass Quintet, Hollywood Brass). Immel also has performed music for television (“Buffalo Soldiers,” “Rough Riders,” “Super Fire”), top video games (“Enter the Matrix,” “Total Annihilation”) and IMAX features (“Mission to Miur,” “Elephant Kingdom”).

However, Immel’s uniqueness as a musician primarily stems from his ability to bridge the considerable gap between the worlds of classical and jazz. A former university professor in charge of teaching classical trombone as well as jazz band and “The History of Jazz,” Immel says, “Classical music is very precise, almost completely written out, and only subject to slight variations of interpretation. Jazz is on the other end of the musical spectrum with tunes often loosely structured so that they can change with every performance; and in the case of the improvised sections, some of that music is actually being created right at that moment for the first and sometimes only time. There is strict knowledge and technical expertise required in the classical world while jazz is more about freedom, the interchange of ideas, pushing the envelope and interacting with the audience during concerts. With my music, I am attempting to incorporate the best of both fields, and mix in some ideas and sounds from a few other genres to spice things up even more.”

Long Way Home kicks off with the smooth jazz title tune and ends with “Last Dance” which moves into the modern classical realm with the trombone soloing over an unusual combination of cello, vibes and the South American bandoneon. In between those bookends there is even more variety such as two songs with guest vocalists – Jake Bergevin on “Fool’s Full Quiver” and Chandry Moore on “Whole Lotta” (a slow-and-sultry complete overhaul of the old Willie Dixon-Led Zeppelin classic). Immel’s gliding, sliding trombone is spotlighted on the soft-and-slow “Leaving Paradise” and “Still In Love.” There is funky band-interplay on “Lemonade Alchemy” and “See The Memo.” Avant-garde chill-out sounds are explored on “Dualife” and “Charm Offensive” (the chill music genre – also known as smooth electronica and soft techno -- originated in relaxation rooms just off dance floors and rave arenas).

For the recording, Immel brought together many of the best jazz musicians in the Seattle area including pianist Marc Seales (Larry Coryell, Bobby Hutcherson, Slide Hampton, Jackie McLean), drummer Gary Hobbs (Randy Brecker, Eddie Harris, Bud Shank, Glen Moore), bassist Dave Captein (Tom Grant, Rick Braun, Wynton Marsalis, Paul McCandless), guitarist Chris Spencer (Ernie Watts, Tom Scott, Mimi Fox), and percussionist and vibraphonist Ben Thomas (Jovino Santos Neto, Stephen Rush, Laura Caviani).

Don Immel has a musical bloodline. His grandfather Earl was a Professor of Music at Los Angeles Valley College; father Dean was a public school music director for 43 years; and uncle Jerrold composed music for film and television (the themes for “Dallas,” “Knots Landing” and “How the West Was Won”). Don was born in Simi Valley in Southern California, was raised in San Diego and went to high school in Auburn, Washington (a few miles south of Seattle). Don began studying classical piano from ages seven to eleven, but also started on trombone when he was nine. Early influences included classical (Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and later Gustav Mahler), big band (Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey), jazz (Bill Watrous, J.J Johnson) and pop-rock (Chicago, Tower of Power, Blood Sweat & Tears, James Brown). Immel played in school bands and orchestras, and in college had his own rock’n’roll horn band (Otis Elevator and The Shafts).

Immel graduated from Central Washington University with two Bachelor of Music degrees (performance and music education), and taught music in public schools for two years while playing in a ska and reggae band (The Groove). He then attended Rice University in Texas where he earned his Master of Music degree in trombone performance and also performed regularly with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He joined Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, as Director of Jazz Studies before moving to the University of Washington as Professor of Trombone. In addition, he played regularly with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, Seattle Pops Orchestra, Tacoma Pops, numerous chamber ensembles and the top traveling Broadway productions visiting the area. Immel’s growing love of jazz brought new influences such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Cannonball Adderly, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Stan Kenton, Freddie Hubbard and Michael Brecker. But Don also began listening to Air, Talvin Singh and Thievery Corporation.

Don moved to Hawaii to serve as the principal trombonist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, and while there he also played with the Honolulu Pops and his own jazz group. Most recently he was hired as the solo and principal trombonist for the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra in Denmark where he currently lives. He teaches select students and clinics, performs in various chamber and brass ensembles, and tours Europe with his Bryggeriet Chill Project (“It’s the Danish word for brewery because we got our start playing at micro-breweries”). In recent years Immel also founded Quake -- an avant garde chamber group with woodwinds, strings, percussion and trombone – that mixes Schubert, John Cage and pop tunes with painters, dancers and storytellers for a multi-media presentation that has featured such guests as Walter Gray of the Kronos String Quartet.

“With my music I want to bring the warm, earthy sound of the trombone back to the attention of today’s audience,” explains Immel. “I also am excited about combining the technical aspects of classical music with the freedom of jazz along with the energy and excitement of contemporary pop forms. I don’t feel restricted by my instrument. I truly believe the sound of a trombone can fit into and enhance virtually any style of music. I hope to open people’s ears to the possibilities.”

NEO-CLASSICIST JEFFREY FISHER CREATES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC ON TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT CD

2007-11-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

Inspired by visual art, Jeffrey Fisher’s Triumph of the Spirit recording uses the sounds of orchestral instruments to create music reflective of humankind’s consciousness serving as the bridge between the heavens and earth. “There is an evolution of the human spirit that will triumph over the forces of darkness,” explains Fisher. “It’s a progression of enlightenment that leads to understanding both our world and our place in the universe.”

Although he has played many different types of music, from rock to jazz, during his career, Fisher chose to make this music orchestral because he feels the sounds from these symphonic instruments are universal. “European musicians created and refined the instruments in a symphony orchestra over hundreds of years. Those sounds are proven to affect the listener’s mind, body and spirit in a positive and uplifting way. Yes, this music can be looked at as ‘modern classical music’ because of the instrumentation, but many of the melodies and motifs are more influenced by jazz, blues, indigenous music and pop-rock than by traditional classical repertoire. The idea is not to mimic or re-configure Beethoven, but to create something new for today’s audience.” While the melodies and instrumentation are mentally stimulating, the music also resonates deeply within the listener on several levels. This combination provides a calming and relaxing atmosphere for enjoying the music which allows the recording to fit well into new age lifestyles from massage therapy to Reiki.

Fisher’s CDs can be purchased at record stores and specialty shops throughout the United States, as well as online at his website (HealingMusicOfTheSouthwest.com), webstores such as amazon.com and cdbaby.com, and many digital download locations including iTunes.

Fisher composed this music a decade ago while living in the artistic community of Taos, New Mexico, where his friend Charles Collins (a renowned painter and one of the leaders of the modern Southwest style) was creating a collection of work titled Triumph of the Spirit (also the name of the painting that appears on the cover of Fisher’s CD). As Collins unveiled each new sketch and began his painting, Fisher used the imagery and symbolism as inspiration to simultaneously write a new orchestral composition. When Collins finished the initial five large paintings, Fisher unveiled his associate musical pieces in a collaborative show. Some of these Collins paintings (known for their use of light, translucent glazes and timeless themes) can be viewed at charlescollinsgallery.com in the section “Between Worlds.”

Now Fisher’s Triumph of the Spirit CD is being released and marketed internationally for the first time. The title composition relates the feeling of an indigenous person leaving a place of classic perfection to make his way in the earthly world. Fisher explains “The Beginning of Wisdom” as an attempt to capture “a moment of enlightenment, a leap into another world to see who we really are.” The music for “Emperor of the Soul” is “symbolic of two worlds coming together, two forces colliding, until man emerges from the ocean reborn.” The piece “Rituals of Paradox” represents “the birth of civilization.” “Eternal Companions” brings together the companionship theme of humans with other beings, with nature, and with God.

“Because I’ve played in various kinds of bands and orchestras all my life, I hear the sound of each instrument, and have studied their combinations. I work in a very traditional way, using score paper to put down each instrument. However, today’s composers have something that did not exist in the past — a digitized orchestra. This allows the composer, in a cost-effective way, to achieve his or her vision exactly, to paint freely with the sounds.”

Fisher is an incredibly versatile musician who has professionally performed new age, world music, neo-classical, traditional jazz, blues, rock’n’roll, folk and R&B. He has played more than a dozen different instruments, and is highly proficient on piano and acoustic standup bass. His last album was the orchestral Fairy Tales (a score for the ballet “Hans Christian Andersen”) premiering in Palm Springs in 2006, and the CD winning both iParenting and Parent-to-Parent awards [??1] . He also has five other previous neo-classical/new age CDs (Moon Song, One Hundred and Eight, Clouds, The Healing and Angels of the Rays), several specifically designed for healing and massage therapy. Other compositions include works for string quartet, solo piano, marching band, jazz band, jazz vocals, woodwinds, and acoustic bass in various ensemble settings.

Fisher has performed with jazz great Frank Morgan, the Thelonius Monk-inspired traditional jazz group Evidence Quartet, the Charles Connally Texas Blues Band, Stax Records vocalist Lee Sain, folksinger Sun-Day Martinez, Spanish music legend Antonio Apodaca, world-music bandleader Achyutan [??2] , and New Mexico’s Trio Jalapeno, among others. Fisher even performed Gaelic music on ice instruments at a ski resort situated at 11,000-feet elevation. He graduated from the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles with a certificate in composing and arranging, and went on to study under top teachers to further explore film scoring, orchestration and acoustic bass performance (taught by Terry Plumarie and Frank Tusa).

Beyond the world of music, Jeffrey is a true Renaissance man. He is an accomplished painter (oils and watercolors) who has exhibited in both museums and galleries. He has published five volumes of poetry and a book on Chinese philosophy and martial arts (T’ai Chi Basics). He teaches T’ai Chi Chuan; gives acupressure, Reiki and reflexology treatments; and lectures widely on nutrition and healing. Over the years he has taught a wide variety of skills to others including music, painting, writing, cooking, mathematics, philosophy, and general “educational improvement.” When he wasn’t making a living playing music, Jeffrey worked at a variety of jobs including designing and building stage sets off-Broadway, being a motorcycle messenger in New York City, tuning pianos, working in a print-shop and book-bindery in San Francisco, “bucking hay” (stacking bales), picking cherries, cleaning acequias (irrigation ditches) in New Mexico, running art galleries, framing pictures, and building houses (and other construction jobs).

Jeffrey attended Pomona College, where he studied writing, music, acting and experimental theatre. An avid reader, especially of French poetry and the Beat Generation writers, he found the academic world too limiting, and at the age of 17 left for San Francisco to work on his writing. After attending the Aspen Writers Workshop and New York University’s School of the Arts, Fisher moved to Buffalo to attend the state university and studied everything from computer languages and neuro-physiology to William Blake and vibraphone. After playing drums in a popular local rock band and attending the original Woodstock Festival, Fisher began learning guitar and decided to study the origins of blues guitar. He spent several years playing in coffee houses and bars, and traveling across the country several times – one night hanging on to the back of a freight train with one hand while the other held his 1945 Epiphone acoustic guitar. Fisher ended up in Berkeley where he started playing electric guitar on the blues and R&B “chittlin’ circuit” backing legendary artists. Eventually he switched to standup bass and began to explore the world of jazz with his own group.

After several years of intense musical studies in Los Angeles, Fisher moved out of the big city to focus on composition and painting. In the early Nineties, he composed and performed his first full-length orchestral composition, and also enjoyed the first solo museum exhibition of his paintings. Fisher relocated to New Mexico for nearly a decade and lived in a small village outside of Taos. Fisher began teaching T’ai Chi, a method for training the mind and body. “T’ai Chi is the basis for my own philosophy and my life, and is integral in preparing me to create music.” Fisher returned in recent years to the San Jacinto Mountains near Palm Springs, the area where he was born and raised. His home, ranch and studio run on solar energy and are totally off-the-grid. He often uses nature as inspiration for his art, whether it is fruit groves in his paintings or naturalness [??3] in his music.
“Music can be a transformative tool,” explains Fisher. “Music is like the food we eat or the air we breathe — it goes very much deeper than ideas, philosophies of social change or even religion. I try to make my orchestral music very accessible so that anyone, even without formal training, can easily appreciate it. I like to think my music tells a story, and all the instruments are characters with something to say.”

JAZZSTER CHRISTIAN FABIAN LOOKS AT HIS RECORDINGS AS EXPERIMENTS TO SEE WHERE THE IMPROVISATION TAKES HIM AND HIS FRIENDS

2007-11-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

CHRISTIAN FABIAN
and the FABIAN ZONE TRIO

On bassist Christian Fabian’s new recording, The Masters Return! featuring the Fabian Zone Trio and special guests, it’s like jazz’s quantum theory (“the transformation of radiant energy”) where each of the talented individuals shine, but the collective mass is heaviest when all the elements come together. Fabian looks at each of his recording sessions and concerts as a unique jazz experiment where he never knows exactly what is going to happen during the improvisation, but counts on the creativity of the musicians to bring forth musical magic.

As on his previous recordings, Fabian started with a complimentary core of first-class musicians -- in this case, pianist Mike Longo and drummer Lewis Nash. On a few tracks the trio is supplemented by trumpet and flugelhorn player Jimmy Owens and tenor saxophonist Andres Boiarsky. Christian selected several jazz classics to re-work with the new band including Charlie Parker’s “Billies Bounce,” Dizzy Gillespie’s “Bebop,” Miles Davis’s “All Blues” and “Milestones,” Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon,” and the standard “Willow Weep For Me.” In addition, Fabian contributed three originals and invited bandmembers Longo and Owens to each bring in an original composition.

Then they went into the studio without rehearsals and recorded live-to-two-track (with the mix happening at the same time and no overdubs). Most of the tunes on the CD are first takes. “If I am put on the spot to improvise as a musician, the best music comes out,” explains Fabian. “These are all marvelous musicians and all feel comfortable playing ‘in the moment.’ When you only play a piece once or twice, there is a certain energy connected to it that the listener senses. Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra were both strong believers in first takes. John Coltrane didn’t even show Tommy Flanagan the changes to ‘Giant Steps’ until the recording session. It’s an attempt to get to a different level of music through spontaneous creative interaction between the musicians.”

The Fabian Zone Trio CDs are available at Christian Fabian’s website (christianfabian.com), the CAP record company site (jazzbeat.com), online webstores (including cdbaby.com), and various digital downloads locations such as iTunes.

“I called the album The Masters Return! for three reasons,” explains Fabian. “Many of the songs were written by some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. The players I chose to work with are all master musicians themselves and all played with some of the legends. The third reason is based on spiritualism and the belief that there will be a time when ‘The Ancient Masters’ return to our planet and show us how to live in peaceful harmony.”

Currently considered to be a strong youthful presence in the New York City jazz scene, Fabian was born in Sweden, raised from the age of six in Germany and began his college studies in The Netherlands. He came to the United States to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. He was Lionel Hampton’s bassist for many years and still performs in the Lionel Hampton Big Band. Fabian also has performed onstage with Gary Burton, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Joe Lovano, Roy Hargrove, Al Gray, David Sanchez, John Stowell, Lou Rawls, New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble (Mike Longo’s big band), Jon Hendricks, Chaka Kahn, and Cheryl Bentyne of Manhattan Transfer. Christian’s own band, the Fabian Zone Trio, has released three CDs.

The musicians on The Masters Return! bring a wealth of experience to the recording. Mike Longo played piano with Dizzy Gillespie for 25 years (and served as his Music Director). Longo’s other credits include Cannonball Adderley, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Krupa, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Williams, Paul Chambers, Lee Konitz, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Roy Eldridge, Astrud Gilberto, James Moody and Buddy Rich. Drummer Lewis Nash, who has served on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, also played with Dizzy Gillespie as well as the Tommy Flanagan Trio, Betty Carter, Sonny Rollins, Oscar Peterson, Wynton Marsalis, Joe Lovano, Diana Krall, Ron Carter and many others. Special guest horn player Jimmy Owens has performed with Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Joe Zawinul. Saxophonist Andres Boiarsky’s credits include Gillespie, Paquito D’Rivera, Al di Meola, David Sanchez, Nancy Wilson and Claudio Roditi.

There is a common denominator among the four musicians Fabian chose to work with on this recording – they all played with Dizzy Gillespie, an early influence on Fabian. When Christian was 12-years-old, he saw a Dizzy Gillespie concert, and also went backstage and spoke with Dizzy. A few months later Christian saw Lionel Hampton perform, never dreaming he would eventually become Hampton’s bassist. Those two concerts inspired Christian to pursue music and opened the door to the world of jazz. Soon he started learning to play electric bass, and when he was 16 began studying upright acoustic bass.

Fabian left Germany to study at the Maastricht Conservatory in The Netherlands for nearly four years. At that time Christian was listening to Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Tribal Tech which inspired him to start the jazz-rock-fusion band Time Design which eventually recorded three albums and built a strong following in the Maastricht area. One of his instructors, Emiel Van Egdom (John Patitucci, Alex Acuna, Brian Bromberg), had attended the Berklee College of Music in the United States, and when Van Egdom went to Los Angeles to record a CD, he invited Fabian to visit him for three months. “The great musicians I met at that time gave me the courage, motivation and enthusiasm to seriously pursue jazz.”

After meeting many Berklee College graduates, Fabian decided he should study there. His classes included advanced harmony, composition, horn arranging and film scoring. Fabian graduated with honors and received his BA degree in performance and film scoring. While at Berklee, Fabian had his own band and they recorded some demos and performed in Japan. During this time, Fabian played onstage with Gary Burton, Makoto Ozone, Sebastian DeKrom and Antonio Sanchez. Fabian also studied the musicianship of legendary bass players such as Charlie Mingus, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers and Oscar Pettiford.

While still in college, Fabian was hired as the bassist for the Lionel Hampton Big Band after being recommended by Brian Bromberg. Fabian played at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (where he also got to back numerous top jazz greats), and after graduation he toured regularly with the group. Fabian was invited by the Thelonious Monk Institute to study with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Bill Taylor and Diana Krall, among others. Since moving to New York, Fabian has regularly played with a dozen different jazz groups on a freelance basis in addition to starting the Fabian Zone Trio. Fabian has studied with Mike Longo, and has become a music mentor/teacher in his own right. He also founded a non-profit organization, R.U.B. (Records of Universal Bandwidth), specifically to honor elder music greats and capture their knowledge and wisdom for future generations.

The first Fabian Zone Trio recording, Across the Tracks, featured pianist Andy LaVerne (Woody Herman, Stan Getz) and drummer Danny Gottlieb (Bill Evans, John McLaughlin) plus three guests: Claudio Roditi on trumpet (Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner), Corey Christiansen on guitar (John Pizzarelli, John Pisano) and Mike Longo on percussion. The second album, Curtain of Life, had Fabian on electric bass with a more fusion-funk trio – keyboardist Steve Hunt (Stanley Clarke, Freddie Hubbard) and drummer Steve Michaud (Alan Holdsworth, David Hines) with guest saxophonist Lance Bryant (Bootsy Collins, Lou Rawls) and sax/clarinet player Bill Vint (Aretha Franklin, The Temptations). On The Masters Return!, Fabian is back on upright bass (which he bows on a couple of tunes). He says the new recording “is rooted in the bebop tradition and is swinging like crazy.”
“I named the group Fabian Zone Trio to identify a territory as a bandleader. There is total freedom within the ‘zone.’ It is not so much about me, but an opportunity for great musicians to come together to try new things, stretch boundaries and create music that has never been made before. Only by being totally open to the moment can you hope to make something innovative and special in jazz.”

ON HIS INSTRUMENTAL CDS, MARSHALL STYLER BLENDS THE SOUNDS OF PIANO, MODERN DIGITAL KEYBOARDS AND CLASSIC ANALOG-BASED SYNTHESIZERS

2007-11-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

Since the beginning of the Nineties, pianist, synthesist and composer Marshall Styler has been quietly, but steadily building a large and loyal following of fans who enjoy gentle, melodic, impressionistic instrumental music. The music on his latest album, A Face In The Clouds, as with his previous solo recordings, is inspired by both strong human emotions and the Central Texas scenery he finds endlessly fascinating.

The son of a fireman killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 sees a face in the clouds and feels that his father is watching out for him from the heavens. A ballerina dances across a stream on a bridge in an autumn forest. Good friends and family, who have passed on, leave warm memories. In the early morning a neighborhood wakes and the city begins to bustle with activity. An old German town in Central Texas is surrounded by orchards, vineyards and wildflowers. An old house on an abandoned road, the late-night rain on a city’s downtown warehouse district, and the view from the top of a dam that separates two picturesque lakes.

These are the varied feelings and imagery that inspired A Face In The Clouds, Styler’s new CD of contemporary instrumental music that is perfect for relaxation, healing, spiritual meditations, yoga, massage and other new age lifestyle activities. Styler’s CDs can be purchased at his website (marshallstyler.com), in many record stores and specialty shops across the United States, through major online outlets (amazon.com or cdbaby.com), and at many web digital download locations (including iTunes and Rhapsody).

Unlike many synth-players who are always searching for the very latest technology, Styler feels he creates a unique sound by using a combination of piano, modern digital keyboards and older classic analog-based synthesizers. “I love the warmth and feel that some of the early synths create, and some of those sounds are only available on that original equipment,” explains Styler.

After saying goodbye to a successful rock’n’roll career where he sold hundreds of thousands of albums and concert tickets with his band Duke Jupiter, Marshall Styler moved to the other end of the musical spectrum and began creating his best-selling soft solo recordings. While his earlier music was inspired first by traditional jazz and then by jam-bands and progressive-rock groups, his current instrumental albums owe a debt to his childhood love of classical music and more recent inspirational new age acts such as Andreas Vollenweider and Deep Forest.

Styler’s earliest musical memories include his grandfather playing ragtime (he was a piano player in vaudeville and movie houses) and his mother listening to classical music all the time when Marshall was growing up in his hometown of Rochester, New York. “I gravitated toward the piano concertos by Beethoven, Bach and Mozart.” In grade school he played tuba and saxophone, but when he was 12, his father purchased a piano. Marshall took a few lessons, and also immediately began making up his own songs. He also was drawn to jazz – Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Erroll Garner and Thelonius Monk. Marshall put his first band together when he was 15 and on weekends they played at the high school or at a downtown coffee shop until 4 a.m.

When the musical “British Invasion” hit in the mid-Sixties, Styler bought an electric piano and switched to playing rock’n’roll. He formed Lincoln Zephyr in 1967, Rochester’s first psychedelic band, and they opened a concert for Jimi Hendrix. “We played a lot of original material that I wrote, did a lot of blues jamming and covered a few things by the Grateful Dead, Cream, Ray Charles and Steve Winwood.” After a stint in Southern California, Styler headed back east to start the band Duke Jupiter which had strong major-label national success, but Marshall believes they were ultimately hampered by being too musically eclectic. They began as an instrumental band blending jazz and blues-rock, eventually added vocals, and often jammed improvisationally onstage. Throughout their career, Styler wrote approximately 80 percent of their material and shared the lead vocals.

Duke Jupiter got a major label deal with Mercury Records for their first three albums. The first recording, Sweet Cheeks, was produced by Chuck Leavell (who had played with the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones), and he steered the band in the direction of Southern Rock. Recorded in Macon, Georgia, at Capricorn Studios, the album included special guest percussionist Jaimoe (Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels). For the second album, Taste The Night, the band re-explored its jazz roots a bit more, this time using famed producer Glen Kolotkin (Jimi Hendrix, Joan Jett, Santana, Electric Flag). Legendary guitarist Steve Katz (The Blues Project, Blood Sweat & Tears) produced the third project, Band in Blue. During these years Duke Jupiter toured with ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bob Seger and BB King.

The band switched to another top label, Epic/CBS, for the next two albums and enjoyed their biggest success with a more pop-rock sound. Produced by Kolotkin again, the album was titled Duke Jupiter 1 to signify that the band felt like they were starting over. A live version of “I’ll Drink To You” was filmed and the video aired repeatedly on MTV (Top 15 on their charts). The next year Duke Jupiter released You Make It Look Easy produced by Ashley Howe (Ted Nugent, Hawkwind, Uriah Heep). Meanwhile the band was touring the country coast-to-coast with acts such as REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, David Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult and The Outlaws. In their hometown, Rochester, Duke Jupiter headlined in front of 25,000 fans. But as their popularity ascended, the band suffered hardship too. In the group’s first half-dozen years, two band-members died.

Duke Jupiter went on to sign with Motown Records’ rock’n’roll subsidiary Morocco Records and recorded two albums again produced by Kolotkin, White Knuckle Ride and The Line of Your Fire. Blending pop-rock with straight-ahead rock, Duke Jupiter continued to gain fans and sell well. They toured with Huey Lewis & The News and Toto. Finally, in the mid-Eighties, after a decade-and-a-half of non-stop recording and touring, the band called it quits. Their final album was a best-of collection, The Band Played On. However, they reunite every few years for special concerts, usually in the Rochester area. Information updates and CDs are available at their website: www.dukejupiter.com.

On his own musically after helming a hard-working rock band for so many years, Marshall moved to Texas and played with several Austin-area rock groups, but finally decided he wanted to try a different musical approach. He had recorded a demo of instrumental piano music a few years earlier and sent it as a valentine to his future wife Katherine. With her encouragement he decided to pursue that direction further. Katherine became his manager and he was soon performing in public on piano and synthesizers four or five nights a week. In 1990 he recorded his first solo album, Camden Road, which was only released regionally, but it opened the door for his full-fledged solo recording career.

In 1992 Styler began releasing an acclaimed, best-selling series of new age, emotion-filled, piano-and-synthesizer CDs beginning with his “Red River Trilogy” comprised of the albums Bluefields, Mockingbird Station and Red River Crossing, all containing musical impressions of the Hill Country of Central Texas. “Its scenery and people continuously inspire me,” he says. He continued to mine these themes in subsequent releases – Jericho, The Twilight Concertos and the new A Face In The Clouds. Selections of his original music were joined with breath-taking photographic images by James Innes to create the Dreamaker DVD. Marshall’s only foray away from writing his own material came with Silent Night, containing his renditions of 14 traditional Christmas carols.
“I consider myself an impressionist,” Styler explains, “in the spirit of the French Impressionist painters – Degas, Monet and Renoir. They worked with color and emotion, and have a powerful elegance, and those are qualities I strive for in my music.”

MOVE OVER SINATRA AND BENNETT, RON KAPLAN CROONS WITH THE BEST OF THEM

2007-11-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

One of our finest contemporary singers of jazz standards, Ron Kaplan has spent his entire career championing the Great American Songbook, with much of that classic material written in or about New York City. So it makes perfect sense that this tradition-oriented vocalist dedicates his latest album, New York, to that remarkable metropolis.

“Although I am from California,” explains Kaplan, “every time I go to New York City I am always struck by the energy, excitement and exuberance of the place. Everything about it is exciting – the history, the architecture, the people, the culture, the arts. It’s the jazz capitol of the world. It’s the home of Broadway theatre, Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building and countless legendary songwriters over the past century. There is so much to do and the atmosphere is so intense. It’s the city that never sleeps. It is one of the few cities in the world that has had many, many songs written about it. The difficulty wasn’t finding New York-themed songs for this recording, but deciding which ones to sing.”

Ron Kaplan's New York and his other CDs are available at online sites (such as cdbaby.com and amazon.com), digital download locations (including iTunes.com, rhapsody.com) and Kaplan's own ronkaplan.com.

In addition to his career as a concert performer and recording artist, Kaplan also is the founder and executive director of American Songbook Preservation Society, a non-profit organization whose mission statement is: "To preserve our cultural treasure known as the Great American Songbook by performing this music at home and abroad as Ambassadors of Song." For more information, go to greatamericansongbook.org. "The Great American Songbook is full of what is known as popular standards -- great songs written generally between 1920 and 1960, most often for Broadway shows or Hollywood musical films, but sometimes simply in the Tin Pan Alley tradition of pianists and lyricists working together to create quality material for the big bands or the pop singers of the day."

Kaplan has carved out an exemplary singing career by following in the footsteps left by legends such as Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett. Ron has superb command of his flexible baritone that literally cocoons the listener within the cozy atmosphere of the images and feelings that he sings about. His trademarks are his sophisticated phrasing, the mature tonal qualities of his vocals, and his relaxed style.

On the New York CD, Kaplan uses a hot jazz quintet. He co-produced with arranger and pianist Larry Dunlap, who has worked with Cleo Laine, Mark Murphy, The Swing Fever Big Band, Jules Broussard, Bobbe Norris and Jeremy Cohen, among others. The rhythm section is comprised of bassist Seward McCain (Vince Guaraldi Trio, Richie Cole, Kitty Margolis, Jeff Linsky, Dave Eshelman) and drummer Akira Tana (Lena Horne, Pat Metheny, Art Farmer, Zoot Sims, James Moody, Ruth Brown, Lee Konitz, Kenny Burrell). They are augmented by a horn section – Erik Jekabson on trumpet (Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, Kermit Ruffins, Howard Fishman) and Noel Jewkes on saxophone and clarinet (Jon Hendricks, Michael Bloomfield, Mary Stallings, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers).

Kaplan selected a dozen classic compositions that reflect a myriad of different aspects of New York City. “The chronology of the songs is like taking a trip to New York City, seeing the different parts of the island, experiencing the nightlife, riding the subway or the buses, walking around or going uptown.” A couple of the tunes are better known as jazz instrumentals than vocalized compositions, but Kaplan did extensive research to track down the lyrics, often going back to the earliest versions or sheet music, and sometimes singing verses seldom heard today.

While most of the CD’s tunes are from the first half of the Twentieth Century, the stage is set with a song from the Seventies, Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” (“He’s saying that once you’ve been a New Yorker, you always feel the pull to go back to that city.”). Lester Young’s “Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid” is about a famous New York disc-jockey playing the swing, R&B and jazz of the Forties over the air. No trip to NYC would be complete without a stop on Broadway, represented by both “Lullaby of Broadway” and a medley, “New York New York/Broadway,” where, as the lyrics say, “the night is brighter than day.” Then it’s off on a historical ride around the city with Billy Strayhorn’s classic “Take the ‘A’ Train” which became one of Duke Ellington’s signature themes. Appropriately, next comes the Ellington-penned “Drop Me Off in Harlem” and a Cotton Club standard, “Harlem Nocturne,” which Kaplan first heard as an instrumental on a noir-ish private eye television show years ago.

The journey around the big city continues with “Forty Second Street.” Kaplan says he loves the historical content (“it talks about everything from dancing girls and chorus lines to Times Square and Wall Street”). Another side of the city is presented in “Sunday in New York” (“it reminds me of strolling along the streets and people watching”). For many years striving, struggling artists have flocked to this important entertainment capital determined “to make it” and this drama is described in the Sixties Brill Building hit “On Broadway.” Kaplan injects a little humor with the cynical tongue-in-cheek “Give It Back to the Indians,” written by tunesmiths Rogers and Hart. The recording closes with another song by the same team, “Manhattan” (“perhaps the quintessential song about New York”).

Kaplan’s other albums are High Standards, Dedicated, Jazz Ambassadors, Lounging Around, Saloon and a special-edition fund-raising live recording American Songbook Preservation Society Singing the Great American Songbook. In the past few years Kaplan has performed in Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington DC. He has made television appearances on "Musician's Weekly" and "BETonJazz." He has played with musicians such as pianists Shelly Berg, Smith Dobson, Geoff Eales, Tom Garvin, Weber Iago, Mark Levine, Dick Whittington and Jessica Williams; guitarist Larry Scala; bassists Art Davis, Stan Poplin, Perry Thoorsell and Tom Warrington; horn-players Paul Contos, Ted Curson, Dmitri Matheny, Donny McCaslin Jr. and Kenny Stahl; and drummers Dan Brubeck, Donald Dean, Tootie Heath, Guiseppe Merolla, and Matt Wilson.

Kaplan was born in Hollywood and was immediately surrounded by music. His father played trumpet in jazz-bands in the Fifties and his mother had the radio or record player on constantly. From his toddler-days onward, Kaplan's parents indoctrinated him with the great singers of 1950s. His earliest influences were Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, Dean Martin, Sarah Vaughn, Sammy Davis Jr., and Louis Armstrong among others. Ron played drums and percussion at school. In junior and senior high schools he sang in musical stage productions, did standup comedy at talent shows and his uncle's bar, and competed in speech tournaments ("sometimes it was extemporaneous speaking which is sort of like jazz soloing"). Ron studied in an actor's workshop in Hollywood, and then went to Los Angeles' Valley College where he got his Associate in Arts degree. He taught himself to play guitar and piano, and started writing songs influenced by Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Cat Stevens. Ron also performed original material professionally accompanied by a viola player. In addition, Kaplan learned to play congas at Venice Beach and later played in drum circles every Sunday for a number of years in Griffith Park. Kaplan moved north to attend the University of California at Santa Cruz where he majored in psychology and received his Bachelor of Arts degree.

From 1985 to 1995, Kaplan decided to immerse himself in instrumental jazz and began listening to classic material from 1950 to 1964 – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Wayne Shorter and countless others. About a dozen years ago Kaplan turned to his first love, those songbook standards, and began his recording career with a style reminiscent of those great jazz vocalists he first heard as a child.

“All of my albums are an acknowledgment and tip-of-the-hat to those who came before us and paved the way for us to have a truly American soundtrack of music for our lives,” explains Kaplan. “My greatest desire is to keep this wonderful music before the public for the next hundred years and beyond. This music needs to be elevated and cared for, which is why I started the not-for-profit American Songbook Preservation Society.”

FOR SWINGING, DEEPLY-ORGANIC JAZZ IMPROVISATION, TRY NEW FALKNER EVANS CD, ARC

2007-11-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

ARC - THE FALKNER EVANS TRIO WITH BELDEN BULLOCK AND MATT WILSON

“The beauty of jazz as an art-form is the freedom of expression allowed,” explains pianist Falkner Evans. “There is nothing more free in music than jazz improvisation.” So the third recording (Arc) by the Falkner Evans Trio (with bassist Belden Bullock and Matt Wilson), once again uses the classic format of introducing a melody primarily as a jumping off point for spirited, swinging, deeply-organic, exploratory improv and trio interplay.

“When I approach a piece of music, I try not to over-arrange it,” Evans states. “I want to be as open to possibilities as I can. With only a bare structure, it allows each musician to bring many more ideas to the tune. This trio is continually trying to expand its reach. Of course the further you stretch, the more likely you will occasionally slip and fall, but the excitement and the journey to new places is worth it. I truly believe that when you go somewhere new for the first time, the audience senses that and appreciates it.”

Arc (on CAP Records) can be purchased online at cdbaby.com and the label’s website at jazzbeat.com, and at digital download sites including iTunes, Rhapsody and others. For more information on Evans, go to his website at falknerevans.com.

In subtle ways, Evans’s diverse musical background influences the improvisational solos he performs. He grew up playing pop, rock and blues before turning strongly toward jazz. For several years Evans also toured and recorded with the western-swing/country-rock legends Asleep at the Wheel. In addition Falkner has played Brazilian music and Latin-jazz extensively. Falkner’s first album was Level Playing Field followed by Climbing the Gates, both of which featured several original compositions. As before, on Arc Evans recorded in the studio live-to-two-track with no overdubbing or additional mixing.

There are several changes evident on this third recording by Evans. Matt Wilson returns, but the bassist on Falkner’s two previous outings was Cecil McBee. On Arc Evans brought in Belden Bullock, whom Falkner has worked with frequently in concert for the past 13 years. This new trio played together regularly for seven months before recording Arc to become completely attuned to each other. Falkner feels this may be his most cohesive recording to date. It is evident that the band-leader is relaxed and confident, and that his playing has matured and deepened in the four years since the sessions for his second CD.

Matt Wilson has spent the past decade as one of the more creative drummers on the jazz scene having played with Dewey Redman, Lee Konitz, Fred Hersch, Janis Siegel, Dave Liebman, Charlie Haden and Curtis Stigers, among others. Belden Bullock is a bass-playing stalwart in the New York City area and has recorded with Ralph Peterson, Taja, Oliver Lake, Abdullah Ibrahim, Jay Hoggard and The Cartwright/Oppenheim Quintet.

“At the recording sessions for Arc we kept ourselves completely open to the improvisation,” Falkner says. “We specifically did not choreograph the solos. We just let the music flow. It all felt natural and right. What I learned from listening to John Coltrane and Miles Davis is to be as free as possible. They were the masters at perfectly blending the melody and the improvisation so it becomes one thing with no lines between.”

Arc features five compositions by Evans beginning with “Regatta” (inspired by a flotilla Falkner saw in Italy) and this samba reflects his love of Brazilian rhythms. The one-take “Singing Darkness” features a strong bassline by both Evans and Bullock, plus “a solo section that starts off very quiet, but by the end of the 16-bars we are really flying with Matt accenting everything beautifully.” “Bar Enigma” (also one take) is one of the more complicated pieces with a difficult chord change, but Evans says, “I have always been interested in taking a complex tune and seeing if can make it sound simple so that it is very accessible to the listener.” “Lucia’s Happy Heart” (inspired by Falkner’s wife) evolved out of playing some Thelonious Monk chord changes and then adding some twists, “but the key to this one is the sense of dynamics.” Evans wrote “Make Tracks, Child” to challenge listeners to “get out in the world and experience life,” and musically to explore his own bluesy roots.

The trio also does deep exploration of tunes by other composers. “I am a huge John Coltrane fan,” states Evans. “I chose ‘Central Park West’ as a short, simple interlude ballad for the album. I wanted the silence within the tune to speak to the audience gently.” Falkner chose “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” because “I consider Wayne Shorter to be one of the greatest jazz writers ever. We put our own intro on this and end up really swinging.” Evans says “the band specifically never rehearsed the Harold Arlen tune ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ to see if we could approach it with open minds and be totally fresh with it. It has a great looseness, especially when we push and pull the rhythm a bit.” Falkner ends the album with a solo piano piece, Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” because “I wanted a simple, poignant exclamation point to close the CD.”

Falkner has lived and performed regularly in New York City for many years, but he was born and raised in Oklahoma where his eclectic musical background began. Initially a drummer who formed his first band in sixth grade, Falkner switched to playing piano four years later performing material by Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and The Band. But in high school Evans also began listening to jazz like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis. Evans joined one of Tulsa’s most popular bands, Friends, doing material by acts such as Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Evans then formed his own group, The Edge Band, to play blues-rock (Allman Bros., Johnny Winter). The group evolved into Essence which became Tulsa’s top jazz band playing five nights a week at the Nine o’ Cups jazz club. Playing music by Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Essence opened shows for Pat Metheny, Thad Jones & Mel Lewis, and Stan Kenton. Jazz acts traveling through Tulsa often stopped in (Bill Evans caught a set) and sometimes sat in (Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Milt Jackson). For several weeks each year, Falkner would travel to New York City to take piano instruction from Dan Haerle and to catch shows by top jazz acts there.

In the early Eighties Falkner got the call to join the country’s top western swing band Asleep At the Wheel. He stayed with the band for four years of national touring, two albums (Asleep at the Wheel on Dot Records and The Best of Asleep at the Wheel: The Milennium Collection), and appearances on television (“Austin City Limits” and the CBS-TV special “From Texas to Tennessee”). One notable concert was at the closing night of the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin on New Year’s Eve with Commander Cody (Lost Planet Airmen) and Maryann Price (Dan Hicks, The Kinks) sitting in.

Evans moved to New York City in 1985 and contacted Cecil McBee who also is from Tulsa. The first time Evans played with McBee was at the Sweet Basil club after Falkner had only been in town a few days. “I was asked to sit in with Cecil’s group featuring Chico Freeman and Billy Hart. It was quite an introduction to New York.” In the mid-Nineties, Evans became enthralled with Brazilian music, so he put together a band in that genre that performed at Birdland several times a year. This Latin-jazz band, which also went into the studio to record, at times included guitarist Romero Lubambo (Herbie Mann, Grover Washington Jr.) and drummer Portinho (Paquito D’Rivera). Evans also began writing his own compositions, which is appropriate because Falkner shares his first name with the last name of his third cousin, the famous novelist William Faulkner (whose publisher added the “u” to his last name). In addition. Evans has studied with jazz pianists Joanne Brackeen (Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz) and Mike Longo (music director for Dizzy Gillespie). Some of Falkner’s biggest influences have been Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Billy Strayhorn and Kenny Barron.
Evans says, “The beauty of the trio is that the pianist gets to lead and control the harmonies, but there also is the group interplay that can inspire each of us in our improvisation and push the music to loftier heights. What is great about this current trio is that we are flexible, open to new ideas, and willing to go wherever our mood takes us.”

PIANIST OMAR AKRAM CREATES JAZZY WORLD MUSIC

2007-11-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

Omar Akram encourages listeners to come with him on an exotic Secret Journey, an appropriate title for his new Real Music album since he grew up traveling around the world as the son of a United Nations diplomat living in such diverse locales as France, Cuba, Afghanistan and the Czech Republic. On Omar’s third contemporary instrumental CD, strong melodies are presented within tapestry-like arrangements carefully interweaving his acoustic grand piano with acoustic guitar, violin, duduk, flute and ethnic percussion performed by a group of world-class musicians.

“I look around me and see people who are bored, restless, stagnant,” explains Akram, “and I know they often take ‘secret journeys’ in their mind as they daydream about other places they could be. The lucky ones get to take an actual trip where they escape from the pressures of their lives. They see new places and have uncommon experiences. I like to think the music on my album can serve as the soundtrack for their journey, whether it is a mental or a physical trip. Everyone needs to get away sometime.”

In addition to the title track, “Secret Journey,” all of the tunes were inspired by what might be seen or felt on a special trip. Some of the compositions capture the heritage of Omar’s distant Afghani ancestors (“Caravan,” “Nomadic Rhapsody,” “Gypsy Spirit”). On such a journey you might see a distant lake-like “Mirage,” a “Shimmering Star” in the night’s blue-black heavens, or a rare but beautiful “Desert Flower.” Omar says “Seven Secrets” was influenced by the ancient architectural “Seven Wonders of the World” like the Great Pyramids, but also references all the lost knowledge of past generations. “I want the music to sound multi-cultural,” explains Akram, “but not be tied to any particular country.”

Often the best trips include romance which is reflected on the new recording with “Running Away With Me,” “Passage of the Heart” (“Love can be quite a journey in itself,” says Omar) and “Whispers in the Moonlight” (“It can be shared intimacies between lovers or the sound of wind-shifting sand in the desert at night”). The album closes with the gentle piano-violin duet “Angel of Hope” because “in today’s world with all the war, famine, pollution and loneliness, everyone needs hope for a better future.”

On his first two albums, he was simply known as Omar, but now he performs under his full name. Meanwhile, his music continues to change and develop. His first album was Opal Fire on Real Music, which went Top 15 on Billboard magazine’s national New Age sales chart, and featured Akram’s piano backed by additional keyboards played by Omar and David Dial. On his second CD, Free as a Bird, Omar again composed all the music, but this time produced half the album and utilized top keyboardist Gregg Karukas to produce the other half. Omar also expanded his sound by bringing in guest musicians including saxophonist Eric Marienthal (The Rippingtons). The recording was ranked the #2 contemporary instrumental album of the year by the prestigious Wind & Wire publication. Now on Secret Journey, Akram and Karukas are working together even closer by co-writing the music which features rich textures and a variety of world-music elements including Latin and Mideast. Omar continues to compose memorable melodies, and has developed a close-knit interplay with the other musicians.

Each of Akram’s collaborators brings a wealth of talent and impressive credentials to the project. Gregg Karukas has a strong smooth jazz background having played with or produced such chart-toppers as The Rippingtons, Peter White, Boney James, Richard Elliot and Dave Koz. Ramon Stagnaro returns on guitar and his credits include Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Kenny G, Andrea Bocelli, Luis Miguel and Alejandro Sanz. Pedro Eustache – once again on flute, duduk and Persian nay – has performed with Yanni, Paul McCartney, James Newton Howard and Andrae Crouch. Violinist Charlie Bisharat is known for playing with Kitaro, John Tesh, Tracy Chapman, Neil Diamond and Stone Temple Pilots. Percussionist Ron Wagner spent nine years with Ottmar Liebert, but also has performed with Stephane Grappelli, Peter Cetera, Richard Searles and Peppino D’Agostino. Also on Secret Journey is special guest acoustic guitarist Ardeshir Farah (on four tunes), best-known for being part of the popular duo Strunz & Farah, but who also has played with Al Stewart, L. Subramaniam and Cyrus Chestnut.

Omar Akram has been influenced by many cultures because he grew up as a world-traveler. He was born in New York City while his father was representing Afghanistan at the United Nations. “I was always fascinated by musical instruments as a child, so when I was six, I began taking piano lessons from a member of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, who was one of the top music teachers in the Czech Republic.” While growing up, Omar went to many symphonies and ballets. His early influences were classical -- first Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, but soon the “Russian School” of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Shastakovich. When Omar was 14 and in Cuba, he got to chat with Fidel Castro at a diplomatic reception. Omar’s curiosity for Cuban culture led him to local clubs where he talked the musicians into letting him sit in and play Cuban music with them which is when he developed a love for Latin rhythms and Latin-styled acoustic guitar sounds.

Omar returned to the United States to attend high school and was introduced to the international electronic music of Jean Michel Jarre (France), Kitaro (Japan) and Vangelis (Greece) “which got me into synthesizers and new age music. That shifted everything and I knew I wanted to try that type of music so I started composing.” A few years later Akram heard piano soloists such as George Winston and David Lanz which brought him back to the piano. But Omar has far-ranging musical tastes and during those formative years he also listened to Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Prince. Akram attended the University of Maryland studying political science for nearly four years with a plan of following in his father’s footsteps in the state department. But a few credits shy of graduating, Omar realized he had to pursue his musical goals instead, so he moved to Los Angeles in 1993 and began performing anywhere he could (whether it was solo piano gigs or in bars with Top 40 cover bands). He continued to travel, not only throughout the United States, but regularly to England and France too.

Akram kept composing original music, but a turning point came when he met Dr. E. Mike Vasilomanolakis, a heart specialist who became his executive producer and encouraged him to begin recording. This material led to Omar’s signing with Real Music. In addition to his studio recordings, Akram also performs concerts. At the International Book Expo in Chicago, esteemed authors Deepak Chopra and Carolyn Myss saw Omar perform and became fans of his music. For the next two years, Myss had Omar return to Chicago every month to perform at her seminars in front of audiences of 500-to-700.

“Every culture I have encountered has influenced my music,” explains Omar. “Also reflected in my compositions are elements of my classical training, the early new age synthesists, and the melodic content I learned from solo pianists. I am trying to develop a deeper, closer interplay between the instruments with counter-melodies, echoing-melody-lines and instrumental harmonies. I love collaborating with other musicians and getting their fresh perspectives. I am totally open to new musical ideas. In a world where communication and understanding between cultures is sometimes difficult, I try to have the instruments speak to one another in a manner that crosses any cultural barriers.”

Omar Akram’s recordings can be purchased at record stores and specialty gift shops worldwide and online at the record company’s website (www.realmusic.com) and the artist’s site (www.omarmusic.com), webstores such as www.amazon.com, and many digital download locations including iTunes.