The Peaceful Being Music Video is comprised of 1 minute excerpts from the 8 songs on the album with a related photo image for each song. I invite you to watch the video for an overall introduction to my music.
Peaceful Being begins with Calling The Rain, a simple instrumental piece that suggests a call, or a musical prayer, that could be prevalent among native peoples living in arid, desert environments, inviting the blessing of rain to their parched lands.
The song, Grace, explores the magic and inspiration that enhance human life with a touch of the divine and a sense of wonder. A sonorous keyboard accentuates the beautiful harmonies throughout the song, celebrating Grace in bright, clear, resonant and glowing tones, both uplifting and enlivening.
The title song comes next, Peaceful Being. It came to me while playing my flute by a small mountain stream in the wilderness and evokes for me the lush, spacious and nurturing presence of the pristine Earth, the quality of feeling alive, nourished and supported in Nature.
Early Spring is a playful dance of soprano recorder melody, tenor recorder harmony, rhythmic piano accompaniment and Shaina Noll’s beautiful vocal countermelody that evokes, for me, a celebration of awakening life after a long winter and consciousness awakening from unwitting slumber.
Nightfall celebrates twilight, the transition from the light of day to the dark of night, when the diminished light softens the edges of all things, from trees to humans, and evokes the imagination to view beings and things we don’t normally see in the light. The haunting harmonies created by the two violas provide a musical environment over which the sonorous flute soars and glides in an homage to the magical shift in realities possible when the known world meets the unknown.
Open Heart was the first song that came to me after moving to the Northwest United States, so it occupies a special place in my heart. I played the alto sax melody and tenor sax harmony lines on the EWI 4000, an electronic wind instrument that plays like clarinet but can be adjusted to sound like a number of different musical instruments. The sounds of the EWI dance and mingle with a beautiful viola countermelody, evoking in me the waking heart, falling in love, being inspired, freed from judgment and feelings of isolation.
The inner journey gets underway with a simple piano arpeggio, then adds piano, tabla and viola lines enhance it and express a richer and deeper theme dancing about the simple repeating arpeggio. All the instruments together create a sea of undulating musical tones that support Shaina Noll’s beautiful and evocative vocal melody, then Richard Noll’s complementary countermelody, both dancing in harmony at the calm center of this musical inner journey. A return from this center commences when, first, the male vocal and, next, the female vocal, then, all the instruments, one by one, slowly fade into silence, leaving only the simple piano arpeggio to gently usher us back to our usual awareness.
Invocation features a resonant tenor recorder solo that to me has the feeling of an invocation, a prayer-like request for inspiration and blessings. The music is meditative and peaceful.