The Whole Music Experience

Ayurvedic humors, Wikipedia For those of you familiar with the Ayurvedic medical tradition of India, you will know about the three doshas--Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. You'll probably even have a handle on which dosha(s) fits your body and personality type. But did you know, that your dosha also determines the best type of music for you for healing your unique mind body spirit? For instance, I'm a Vata-Pitta and during the windy and cold fall months, I experience an imbalance of the Vata energy which rules air and space. This causes me to feel more irritable, shaky and spaced out when the wind is blowing. The cold and dampness brings on a Kapha imbalance which rules water and cold despite my Vata predominance, yet I'm not likely to catch a cold, more likely to suffer from head aches, sore throats, and trembling. I've tries listening to nostalgic rock songs of my past and while my mind enjoys dancing down memory lane, my nerves scream at me in pain. So right now I...

World   Yungchen Lhamo & Anton Batagov Tayatha   Cantaloupe Music In 1998, I attended WOMAD USA and witnessed an entrancing performance by Tibetan vocalist Yungchen Lhamo on a small stage.   I witnessed a second performance by the vocalist, equally mesmerizing but on the main stage at WOMAD USA in 2001.   Although I acquired Lhamo’s recordings 2nd and 3rd), on the Real World label, I didn’t care for the musical production on the recordings which buried Lhamo’s vocals underneath high-end guitar washes and programming.   Lhamo has one of those voices that works best in an a cappella setting or lightly framed by a single musical instrument. Fortunately for us, the vocalist paired up with Russian classical pianist Anton Batagov on the recording, Tayatha where the musicians read each others' instincts.   Batagov’s piano though light on the keys possesses shades of virtuoso and waxes musical poetry.   The piano and vocals show up...

World Hector Del Curto   Eternal Piazzolla Green Parrot Records Since the moment a music librarian in Seattle introduced me to the tangos of bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla, I have admired and loved this music.   I have delved into several of Piazzolla’s recordings with his quintet and other ensembles, and I have heard tribute recordings from other musicians, both inside and outside of Argentina.   Similar to Franz Liszt and the American blues legend Robert Johnson, we wonder if Piazzolla also sold his soul to the devil in exchange for mastership of his instrument and genre.   Of course, I don’t mean this literally and I’m referring to the bursts of passion found in Piazzolla’s compositions. When I saw a listing for Argentine Hector Del Curto’s Eternal Piazzolla I decided to review the recording.   As usual, I was concerned at first about the musicians’ interpretation of Piazzolla’s repertoire, but in this case, there was no need for conce...

Classical/ Blues Knut Reiersrud Band   Trondheimsolistene   Infinite Gratitude   Kirkelig Kulturverksted Last month I ran across a YouTube video of Norwegian bluesman Knut Reiersrud’s band playing along side a chamber orchestra.  The result was so astounding that I paused to compose my thoughts.  Normally, we wouldn’t think of blues and classical chamber music coming together on the same page.  Yes, we have heard pop, jazz, and rock versions of famous classical pieces.  And in reverse, symphonies performed pop or rock classics with mixed results.  On the album Infinite Gratitude , Knut Reiersrud and his blues band pair up with the chamber ensemble Trondheimsolstine where they explore the 2nd movements of Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C major and Johannes Brahms’ String Sextet in B flat major .  The musicians literally wed blues to chamber music.    I much prefer the dreamier slower pass a ges ...

World/ Classical Ballaké Sissoko At Peace Six Degrees Records West African kora, cello, guitar, and balafon (a West African xylophone) comprise Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko’s At Peace .   After the success of his duo project with French cellist Vincent Segal, Chamber Music , the musical partnership remains strong.   However, At Peace is clearly Sissoko’s spotlight recording with Segal, Moussa Diabate (guitar), Aboubacar Diabate (guitar) and Fassery Diabate (balafon) coming aboard as guests.   During a time when Mali experiences war and oppression, At Peace comes as a sweet breath of air.   During a time when the brightest stars of Mali (the country’s musicians) have been shut out, this music ripples throughout the world.   To put it mildly, the warring factions banned music and musicians in Mali.   However, that hasn’t prevented the musicians from gathering and recording CDs and videos which you can find on YouTube. The...

Jerusalem Quartet Mozart String Quartets K. 157, 458 & 589 Harmonia Mundi Who doesn’t love a composer who can turn 4 stringed instruments into an orchestra? The virtuoso composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart even on one his earliest quartets, K. 157 performed so lovingly by the Jerusalem Quartet, composed this full-bodied work. Although this early quartet is described as sad in the liner notes, the first and third movements sound lively to me. The slower second movement Andante , portrays aching sadness, and definitely sobs of grief. Just listen to the lamenting cello below the surface of the weeping violins and viola. And yet, this movement in all of its woeful melancholy recalls later work by French composer Erik Satie. In fact, I listened to this movement before watching a movie with Satie’s music in the soundtrack, which caused me to draw comparisons. String Quartet No. 17 in B flat, K. 458 composed much later in Mozart’s short life, recalls the work of JS Bach. If th...

Ballakè Sissoko Vincent Segal Chamber Music Six Degrees Records When we think of the cello, we hear a somber, melancholic sound, mostly attached to European classical music. And when we hear the shimmering sound of a West African kora, the mood that arrives, (though no less sedate than the mood of a cello), feels spiritually uplifting. So pairing these two instruments might seem awkward at first. That is until you hear the beautiful marriage of tones and timbre. While I’m not sure that I would call Ballakè Sissoko (kora) and Vincent Segal (cello) album Chamber Music groundbreaking, certainly it represents one of the most spellbinding albums to come along. The moods of the cello and kora appear to balance each other out, leaving listeners somewhere between melancholy and relaxation. I find this music healing, even powerfully so. Personally, I find Chamber Music deeply relaxing, so relaxing in fact, that I want to crawl back in bed and absorb its warm tones, rather than ty...

Annalivia Barrier Falls 5-String Productions I don’t know how many Irish ballads I’ve heard with the title John Riley since I began covering world music, but a few. And since each ballad has its own distinct signature, I visualize Irish phonebooks containing pages of John Riley. The version that appears on Boston-based Celtic quintet Annalivia’s Barrier Falls , delights my ears. Lead vocalist/guitarist Liz Simmons possesses one of those voices, clear, immaculate, and chockfull of delicate emotions that does the Irish tradition proud. Annalivia with its Celtic chamber sound comprised of banjo, dual fiddles, acoustic guitar, double-bass and vocal harmonies, hits the spot on this rainy Sunday afternoon. The band performs both melancholic love ballads and heartwarming jigs and reels, hailing from Cape Breton, the British Isles, and the US. The musicians polish each track, adding a few twists and 3-part vocal harmonies in the opening and closing tracks. I envision this band pla...