New Age, Alternative,
|
|
Previous Page Next Page More Articles |
World
Music |
World
and New Age Music Reviews
By Kathryn Sargent, Editor Balancing:
A Toning Experience by Lisa Baker
is a “meditation experience” with
sounds made purely by the human voice. This
is not a “music” album in the usual
sense, but is instead a meditation with toning.
Baker's voice, acapella, slides up and down
scales like
an Irish penny-whistle, bending notes and vibrating
tones in more variations than I can conceive.
The listener is intended to join in and tone
along with Baker's voice-and if you don't
think that will keep you in the present moment,
just try it! “Being in our hearts, connecting
to the divine within, coming home to God, to
love, to ourselves. This is what life is really
about, and toning is a powerful and
loving way to use our voices to create a deeply
profound 'homecoming' experience,”
Baker writes. If you find meditation too passive
for your restless spirit, or if you want to
experiment with the power of sound and your
own voice, try Balancing: A Toning Experience.
Music
on the grand scale of a film score, Secret
Garden's Dreamcatcher is dramatic
and dreamy by turns. The multi-tracking of voices
is
reminiscent of Enya and Loreena McKinnett, though
unlike Enya's music, the lyrics are in English.
The poetry is beautiful and inspiring. Secret
Garden's Fionnauala Sherry plays
violin with great passion, and Rolf Levland
plays piano and keyboards with a meditative
sensitivity. They both sing lead vocals. The
instrumentation, played by a band too numerous
to mention here, is familiar, too, with Uillean
pipes, whistles, recorders, Chinese flutes,
Hardanger fiddle, bagpipe, oboe, bodhran, spoons,
bones, harp, guitar, zither-you name it-all
backed by the RTE Concert Orchestra and Irish
National Symphony Orchestra and the Irish National
Chamber Choir. Dreamcatcher is
tender, nurturing, and romantic; share it with
someone you love or pamper yourself. You deserve
it!
Secrets
of Love, by Donald Walters, offers
romance on a more intimate scale. This instrumental
album, with cello, flutes, harp, and keyboards,
is warm and personal. Walters composed the music
(he is also the best selling author of Awaken
to Superconsciousness and other books)
so that each one of the eighteen tracks captures
a separate aspect of love. The songs are intended
as tools to awaken loving qualities in the listeners'
hearts, though they will work just as well as
background music for healing work or just plain
living. The music is light-hearted in track
four: “Love is the Doorway to Freedom”;
thoughtful in track six: Love is the “Perfection
of Friendship”; and reverent in track seven:
“Love is a Search for Oneself.” Personally,
I loved the cello in the latter track; David
Eby is to be commended for the sensitivity and
depth of his music. Highly recommended!
Music Reviews article continued next page, click here! |