Ceremonies
These sixteen improvisations are accompaniments to imagined ceremonies. The music might be called modern classical or meditative jazz.
Note to Jazz buffs: The cut “Blue Cathedral” is definitely jazz in the blues mode of Ray Bryant and Roland Hanna. The piece builds slowly, but is worth the wait. “Slender Sadness” might be homage to Bill Evans, whereas “The Magician” owes as much to Eric Satie as it does to Keith Jarrett.
The other cuts may or may not fall into your definition of jazz. They certainly fall into mine.
While I was creating the graphics for this album, I kept thinking about D.R. Wagner’s marvelous poem Grace, a fragment of which D.R. has allowed me to use in my presentation of Ceremonies.
We realized that these sounds could
Become more graceful, that one could
Stand in these sound pools for long
Periods; come to realize ideas, music,
The way the weaving went with sense.
Now we look for those places where
The sound ceases for a time; where
We can sit without its insistence,
Watching the spaces it occupies
Open and close, open and close,
Finding the music occasionally,
Finding the small silences within
The melody, the room switching
Identity, negative to positive.
Which were the holes of sound?
Which were the realms of silence?
from Grace by D.R. Wagner
Sample Clips
- Ceremony of the Child
- The Hopeless Optimist
- Procession of Desire
- Baptism
- Slender Sadness
- Blue Cathedral
- Santa Juliette
- Four of Wands
- The Magician
- The Goodly Fool
- Now and Then
- Lions
- Ling Ch’i Ching
- What You Do Redux
- Dance of the Seahorses
- One Last Ceremony