Recommended New Age music (#1 - #10)
New Age
DANA CUNNINGHAM: The Color of Light
Featuring Grammy Award-winning artists including cellist, Eugene Friesen, percussionist, Glen Velez, and Will Ackerman, on guitar, The Color of Light is no predictable new age piano album. While one can expect to be transported to spacious and serene worlds of lush and tender reverberating piano, mapping out limitless terrestrial sound worlds, Dana’s delicate and deliberate playing sparks a uniquely colorful conversation between her musical voice and those joining her. With jazz harmonies creeping in from time to time and an evocative and imaginative classical minimalism that might be compared to George Winston, there is a sense of great prosperity and emotional generosity far beyond what is typical for the genre. Each of these fifteen tracks seem to pour from a wellspring of universal knowledge and natural abundance. Much like how the earth comes back to life in the spring and into its fullest expression in summer, The Color of Light evokes a sense of quickening, of something on the verge of becoming, of long-awaited catharsis and fruition.
CD price: $16.00 / MP3 price: $16.00
SAGGIO: Hollow Bone: Healing Songs of the Native Flute
A former student of R. Carlos Nakai, a member of The International Native American Flute Association, and an honorary member of the Arizona Flute Circle, Saggio has been playing native American flutes for 13 years. It is clear through his playing that his spirit and mind are inseparable from the music- that the music moves through him as a vessel. Although there is no lack of gifted, inspired flute players today, Saggio posseses an inforgettable quality in his "voice." This deeply moving sense is particularly tangible in this release, largely because of his creative play with instrumental color and sound shaping. Accenting his playing with strings of an Indian tuned zither-harp, a baritone dulcimer, an udu, a meditation tongue drum, Jew's harps, a German Sansula and an extraordinary kalimba mounted on a drum head, the subtle explorations and metaphysical atmospheres are exquisite and powerful. This is easily one of the best flute releases we have heard in months.
CD price: $16.00 / MP3 price: $16.00
VISIONSOUND - BEN DOWLING/MARK WAGNER: The Path of Peace (DualDisc: Audio CD/Multimedia DVD)
Highlighting melodies that are so plaintive and mood-shaping, you would expect to hear them in a film score, The Path of Peace effortlessly moves through twelve mesmerizing tracks of new age piano. It is quite an accomplishment these days to stand out as a new age artist, particularly on piano, partially because of over-saturation of artists doing similar things, but largely because of the repetitive and indistinctive direction that New Age can tend to lean. Visionsound, however, finds that subtle space between music that is relaxing and suggestive but also with enough personality and substance to be engaging and affecting. Steering away from the cliche application of arpeggios and instead, creating a liquidy, gentle and natural sense of flow and movement, this disc evokes deep and rich imagery, awakening the imagination and stirring the inner eye. With the same emotive nd touching quality found in a piano soundtrack, The Path of Peace serves perfectly as a background for contemplative, reflective times.
CD price: $19.95 / MP3 price: $12.95
VARIOUS ARTISTS: Sleep
Featuring music by some of the most well-known relaxation artists in the industry, including Grammy award winning composer, Kitaro, Susan Mazer & Dallas Smith, Stephen DeRuby, Dave Eggar, Uma, Yu-Xiao Guang, Toshiyuki Honda, Akasau and Lee Blaske, this compilation is specifically designed to induce sleep and create a tranquil atmosphere for full-body relaxation. With ten tracks of well-varied and yet cohesive sound journeys, Sleep does a beautiful job of taking the mind, body and emotions through delicate and nurturing worlds of imagery and sound, from tapestries of silky flute and strings, blending with guitar, erhu and koto, to new age piano and synthesizer soundscapes. Based on the latest in psychoacoustic research, each carefully chosen song is specifically designed to ease tension, direct the mind away from stress and comfort the heart and soul of the listener. If you’re looking for an album to accompany you in meditation or general relaxation as well, this disc comes highly recommended all around, combating the rush and pace of life today.
CD price: $12.98
FRANK SMITH: Gardens Of Hope
Rather than jump into the production, the skill and the technical virtues of this album, it is necessary to first reflect on how deeply this album moves and soothes its listeners. To understand the genuine spirit of this man and the generosity of his musical gift, it is important to first listen, let go and allow the music to shape you, the same way you would sit on a hilltop, looking out at a landscape and let the wind blow through your hair. His guitar inhales and exhales just like this kind of gentle, mountain wind, gathering in instrumental color with violin, English Horn, cello, piano, percussion, bass and flugel horn. Even before understanding this man more deeply through the nature of his songs and the stories which inspire them, the distilled simplicity and beauty comes through on a somatic level; his writing perfectly captures the magic of meeting a new person who instantly feels like an old friend. Like the opening track on this CD, “Inspired by a True Story,” Frank Smith’s album is founded on personal experience, from family reunions that resonated deeply in his soul for years to brief and fleeting moments with friends and family; sometimes these moments were just a phrase an old buddy used to sum up life’s intrinsic goodness (“It’s All Good”) and at other times, these moments are as simple as the memory of a smile (“Anything for a Smile”). It is this pure, unfiltered approach to songwriting that gives Gardens of Hope such an intimate and familiar feel, right from the beginning. With production by Will Ackerman, founder of Windham Hill Records, the warmth and humility of the music, as well as its intention, are perfectly conveyed. The title track speaks to the last five years of performing at Naples Community Hospital to soothe patients, staff and visiting loved ones; it is only natural that his music has been so successful in bringing hope and instilling peace among those who search. Regardless of the struggle, whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual, Smith’s musical voice softens the most resistant, roughened places of the human condition.
CD price: $14.95 / MP3 price: $14.95
ERIC TINGSTAD: Southwest
Beautifully capturing the dry, amber expanse of the southwest, dotted with sagebrush, both nurtured and pressed by a life-giving/life-taking, hot sun, Eric Tingstad’s album merges acoustic folk, country, new age styles and Native American echoes, fully captivating not only the ear, but also deeply engaging the heart and spirit. “Southwest” conjures the incredible peace and heartening inspiration that can be felt as one looks out at a desert landscape, where life forms are stunningly resilient and preciously simple, yet bear flowers and fruit and exotic aromas in spite of an unforgiving environment. There is an exquisite beauty in that barren, sparse and elemental manifestation of life and this unique landscape, which he depicts with the gentle paintbrush of his guitar, produces a silence like no other. This renewing silence, captured in every track, settles into the bones, deeply soothing the psyche as only Mother Nature herself can. While this Grammy award-winning guitarist directs each of these tracks with his inspired and sublime performances, each song inhabits a world of its own, exploring the voices of percussion, singers, oboe and many other complementary instruments. Put simply, this nine-track CD expands the awareness and being human and softens the buzz of every day consciousness much like a dream state can.
CD price: $15.97 / MP3 price: $12.97
MIKE GARSON (PIANO) AND JIM WALKER (FLUTE): Tranquility
Featuring Jim Walker on flute and Mike Garson on piano, Tranquility beautifully merges the classical world with the new age one, delighting in fluid and soothing melodies floating on the delicate but full sound of the flute, richly supported by lush piano. With occasional orchestral accompaniment, Garson’s compositions do a wonderful job of challenging the typical approach for new age, relaxation music; you won’t find tracks beating arpeggios into your head, loops of synthesizer string patches or chord progressions repeating ad nauseam. With hints of jazz subtly threaded through the layers, there is a consistent and notably refreshing sense of real and applied musicianship here, exploring possibilities in texture, structure, and instrumental color. Appropriate for meditation, relaxation or general background music to set a gentle mood, Tranquility’s fourteen tracks dance and lilt through the imagination, evoking an aware stillness of mind and a hushed sanctuary of calm in the heart.
MP3 price: $14.95
VARIOUS ARTIST: Music For Yoga
Featuring such dynamic and renowned groups and artists such as Deva Premal and Kitaro, this compilation for yoga practice rivals them all. From relaxed chanting to instrumental electronic tracks, whether wandering into acoustic folk or resting gently within string and electronic textures, Music for Yoga presents twelve earthy and organic tracks that aid in the process of grounding oneself and opening in full awareness to ourselves and the world around us. Highlighting a full spectrum of lightness and darkness, from tracks that turn you inward to your body's sensations to those that open your perception to where your being blends with everything else in creation, these songs are all based on an elemental, natural and fully-present concept. As well as being ideal for yoga, this album couldn't be more effective for general relaxation and unwinding.
CD price: $12.98
JO BLANKENBURG: Floatovations
Perhaps the perfection of a relaxation/meditation CD is one that leaves you with very little to say at all; one that stills the mind so completely and smoothes over every rough spot in your psyche so thoroughly that you are cast into the role of receiver alone. Jo Blankenburg’s album, Floatovations, is the aural equivalent of drifting on the open ocean (a Caribbean one for certain) with only the lulling sounds of nature to fill your head, replacing the hum and buzz of the outside world. With a watery, liquid theme, this album easily surpasses most relaxation CDs in focusing in on lush and full atmospheres, somewhat akin to a film soundtrack but using simple textures and structures with natural ebb and flow. As a whole, the album narrows in on the quality of levitation and buoyancy, and much like the title, floats the soul along on a sound journey of soft keyboards, strings, ocean waves and birds, joined by guitar, pan flutes, didgeridoo and several other colors along the way. For those seeking deep rest, meditation, general relaxation or just a way to decompress on the way home from work, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more appropriate selection of compositions.
CD price: $14.99 / MP3 price: $9.99
PATRICIA BURGE: Songs of the Earth
Using the simple, evocative beauty of nature's voices as her inspiration for these musical gems, pianist, composer, teacher and renowned artist Patricia Burge, takes us from the depths of the churning ocean where we are surrounded by the haunting calls of dolphins to the grassy meadows of Rocky Mountain National Park where we hear the primal, chilling call of bull elk. Burge has a style that is so strikingly fresh to the classical-new age scene. Unlike so many new age-tinged piano albums, Songs of the Earth is passionate, emotional and shaking. Her blend of classical, jazz and blues writing with an accessible presentation reaches young children, teenagers, adults and the elders, for no matter what age we are the Earth's beauty, conveyed through sound, taps into something older than our own lives, our generation. Burge has a unique gift to let the voices of this magical Earth live through her songs. When you hear the cry of the red-tailed hawk, lifted up by Burge's playing just as much as the wind streaming through its wings, you can't help but feel you are joining the hawk in its play. These are truly musical conversations with majestic creatures. From the voice of the bear to the bull elephant to the jay to the artic fox, this album will remind you that you too are part of this eco-web and that between human beings and the animal kingdom, there is a fragile, endangered relationship we must nurture. By far, this will be one of CD Baby's sparkling piano CDs I will heartily recommend whenever I can. I simply adore and love this album.
Recommended if you like Frédéric Chopin, Yanni, George Winston, Peter Kater, Jim Brickman, Paul Winter, Ravel.CD price: $10.00