Piano Music for Zen Meditation
Released Today! September 11, 2019
- Leaves Fall, Wind Caresses … (8:38)
- In the Shade of a Tall Elm Tree … (4:24)
- Scenes from a Meadow … (4:07)
- Zen and the Art of Stillness … (7:56)
- Peaceful Hope … (2:17)
- Evening Solitude, Calm Mind … (34:06)
The Way of the shadow warrior
This latest album is available today on various music streaming outlets as well as for download on stores like iTunes and Amazon.com. Released on this day to commemorate the victims of 9/11, eighteen years ago to this day.
This album is a compilation of various piano improvisations, recorded at home in my recording studio, Western Sage Recorders. It spans various piano improvisations from the past 5 years. Whenever I felt the creative impetus, at sat down and recorded whatever was on my musical mind at the time. It was all recorded “live”. No overdubs or studio trickery.
Recordings were made on Garageband as well as Logic Pro X, and Ozone 5 and Ozone 8 were used to master the recordings. Studio software was used on a Macbook Air as well as a Macbook Pro.
Duet II by Apogee was used as a Audio Interface. M-Audio studio monitors were used, as well as a Harman Kardon Onyx Studio 4.
the dance of the ivories
My original intent was to create an album that focused on the practice of Zen meditation and the Buddhist Philosophy, expressed personally through the piano improvisations.
The act of piano improvisation is performed in-the-moment, in ‘real time’… no edits or overdubbing… what you hear is what you get, and what you get is what I was thinking at that exact moment.
Piano playing, and music in general, can be thought of as a meditation. Jazz music could be considered meditative as well, since much of it is based on improvisation.
“Adaptation, improvisation; but your weakness is not your technique.” —Morpheus
Morpheus in The Matrix touched on much of Zen Buddhist thinking, as in the above quotation. Piano improvisation (to me) falls into this category of adaptation, of living in-the-moment, of experiencing and performing the music within the moment.
In Zen, the ultimate reality can be found with that moment…
