The Whole Music Experience

Storybook with CD/Children’s Music   Songs from A Journey with a Parrot Lullabies & Nursery Rhymes from Brazil   &Portugal Collected by Magdeleine Lerasle   The Secret Mountain My journey with music consciousness has led me to explore children’s music on occasion.   Perhaps this is because when I was a child I listened to music written for children and this helped greatly with my development.   In the US especially, music programs have been cut out of many public schools which leaves it to parents to bring quality music into the home and expose children to music of varying genres.   The storybook and CD, Songs from A Journey with a Parrot offers parents that opportunity while also giving the parents sophisticated world music for their own listening pleasure.   I don’t have children and I’m enjoying this delightful project. First off the book portion features colorful ethnic illustrations by Aurelia Fronty that pop of...

World / Classical   Joji Hirota   London Metropolitan Orchestra   Japanese Folks Songs II   Arc Music Over the years I have enjoyed listening to a few Japanese traditional songs which I describe as delicate and flowing.   The Japanese folk songs that appear on Joji Hirota’s Japanese Folk Songs II (I liked this CD so much I would like to hear the first volume) remind me of a cultivated garden because the musician methodically arranged each song.   Backed by the strings of the London Metropolitan Orchestra, a Japanese children’s choir on a few of the songs, and embellished with shakuhachi (Japanese flute), Taiko drums and percussion and plucked harp, Hirota provides us with a lush musical canvas that dazzles the senses.     Included on the recorded are two suites (one of children’s songs and another including a lullaby, girl’s handball game song and a ballad), as well as, work songs, love and dance songs from different pr...