Drala

1. Opening the Gates

2. Surya Namaskar (Sun Salute)

3. Karuna Canyon

4. Home

5. Deva Loka

Editorial Reviews

Rodney Yee, Director of the Piedmont Yoga Studio
"Traveling inside with Drala's divine sound brings us to uncharted bliss"

Product Description
The music was specifically created to accompany hatha yoga sessions. It features master bansuri flute player Steve Gorn and acoustic guitar magician and producer David Nichtern. While contemplative, the music is lively with world beats and eastern influences. It evokes a sense of large open spaces and is sprinkled with lovely lyrical passages.

Drala

Tracks:

Opening the Gates
Surya Namaskar (Sun Salute)
Karuna Canyon
Home
Deva Loka

Album Description

The music was specifically created to accompany hatha yoga sessions. It features master bansuri flute player Steve Gorn and acoustic guitar magician and producer David Nichtern. While contemplative, the music is lively with world beats and eastern influences. It evokes a sense of large open spaces and is sprinkled with lovely lyrical passages.

Customer Reviews:

Great music for yoga.......2007-06-11

One of my first choices for music while teaching and practicing yoga. Upbeat, energetic, yet relaxing. I think only one track has some vocals, which fade into the background. Good stuff.

Soulful and Chillin'.......2004-11-09

What a joy to listen to. The music has wonderful flute vibes that just fill the soul. It's great music to chill out to.

Good CD.......2002-09-04

i bought luminous ragas by steve gorn which was a really really beautiful album, so i thought i'd check out this one too. i really enjoy it. it seems to have a really unique sound, not too heavy and not too light for my taste. i'm not a music critic so i can't really write something like this, but i really loved this cd.

Dig It!.......2002-09-04

This music is groovin'. About an hour of perfect flow. I dig the guitar licks, I dig the indian flute, i dig the whole thing. I told my friends to check it out pronto.

I love this CD.......2002-08-22

My boyfriend got me this CD and I love it. Just wanted to let everyone know!

Average customer rating:

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Excellent music for a yoga flow practice
Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!
Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!
Midight Flower is a must have

Midnight Flower
Drala
Manufacturer: Dharma Moon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Ambient | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music

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Jala

ASIN: B0000D8L41
Release Date: 2003-10-21

Tracks:

Child Of Illusion
Midnight Flower
Seven Yogis Spinning
Moment To Moment
Home Again
Only Love (Can Save Us Now)

Customer Reviews:

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......2005-05-31

this is a gorgeous composition. Very relaxing.. chill... meditative and contemplative. Exclent background music for art, writing, reading, tripping out, etc. Spiritual and smooth. Highly recommended alongside "Colors of the Mind" by Steve Gorn (who is half of Drala).

~DJ Raven~

Excellent music for a yoga flow practice.......2004-02-09

I love this CD! It has easily become my favorite. It has a great vibe and has a nice assortment of sounds and grooves. This CD will move you through a flow series practice quite nicely!

Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!.......2003-10-24

Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!

Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!.......2003-10-24

Now THIS is the way to relax after work!!!

Midight Flower is a must have.......2003-10-24

Whether you're in deep meditation, or just need
some downtime, Midight Flower is a must have.

Average customer rating:

All technically brilliant, but ultimately leaves me cold
For those as yet unfamiliar with the young giant...
"Kinder, gentler modernism"
Great Late 20th Century Classical Music

Lieberson: Raising The Gaze
Oliver Knissen , Cleveland Orchestra , and ASKO Ensemble
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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The Ocean that has no West and no East

ASIN: B00005QBDJ
Release Date: 2002-02-12

Customer Reviews:

All technically brilliant, but ultimately leaves me cold.......2006-09-02

This entry in Deutsche Grammophon's "20/21" line of contemporary music recordings collects eight pieces by Peter Lieberson, with Oliver Knussen leading three ensembles. Lieberson is a a relatively often performed but rarely recorded composer, and his two biggest inspirations seem to be Stravinsky, who knew his family when Lieberson was a youth, and Tibetan Buddhism. Perhaps due to the older Stravinsky, his music embraces modern concepts like a vague atonalism while at the same time having a smoothness that makes them very accessible.

The disc opens with a really invigorating miniature symphony, "Drala" (1986), in four movements. I lack the formal training in music theory to explain this piece adequately. However, its structure is quite easy to grasp, with an opening "Invocation" that displays timbre and melody, an uproarious "Gathering" concerned with rhythm, a slow and elegiac "Offerings and Praises", and a final "Raising Windhorse". I especially admire how throughout Lieberson expertly employs all forces of the orchestra without making any seem unnecessary. The use of percussion in the second and fourth movements has a powerful and aggressive edge one rarely hears in contemporary music (though Messiaen and Lutoslawski's first symphony comes to mind). My only complaint about the piece is that much of the third movement doesn't really mesh at all with the other movements, occasionally seeming an abberation.

It's a pity that the rest of the material on the disc doesn't quite compare with the first work. The "Three Songs" for soprano and ensemble, sung here by Rosemary Hardy, are frankly mediocre. The serial work "Ziji" for clarinet, horn and piano quartet typifies the dullest product of such a style, and Lieberson doesn't succeed in turing the technique to anything elegant as does Boulez. Similarly "Accordance" seems pointless note-spinning. "Fire" (1995), the first of a projected series called "The Five Great Elements", is one of the most derivative pieces I've ever heard. Still, the six-minute "Raising The Gaze" is charming enough, with shimmering percussion and playful hints at birdsong. I similarly enjoyed the closing "Free And Easy Wanderer", with its virtuoso demands on a sinfonietta and individual coverage of each player over its six-minute span.

There are many bits here of exciting music, but my overall impression with the disc is that it's somehow vacuous. It's often technically perfect, but lacks any distinctive personality or real inventiveness. In fact, Lieberson is the only composer that makes me feel as uneasy as does Thomas Ades. Maybe others, especially neophytes to contemporary repertoire, will enjoy RAISING THE GAZE, but I'd recommend sampling the material before committing to buying the disc.

For those as yet unfamiliar with the young giant..........2005-05-24

Peter Lieberson is slowly gaining a reputation as one of the more important composers of the day. His music has developed slowly and steadily over the past thirty-odd years, and this CD of his works samples much of what has the concert public talking. These works are of the chamber mode and as such are closely aligned with Lieberson's long affiliation with the Buddhist faith - beauty is in and of itself sufficient, with all the technical finesse surrounding it in homage.

Lieberson is currently in Los Angeles as the artist in residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and together with chamber works performed under the highly respected Green Umbrella Series, his newest commission 'Neruda Songs' has now had its world premiere. It is a larger scale work for orchestra and mezzo-soprano based on love poems by Pablo Neruda. It was commissioned by the LA Phil and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is dedicated to his wife Lorraine Hunt Lieberson who sang the premiere. It is a work of extraordinary beauty - lithe, sensual, soulful, passionate songs of love that have some of the sense of the Strauss 'Four Last Songs' while also suggesting the ethereal vocal resonance usually associated with the French songs of Ravel, Berlioz, Hahn, etc. They are mentioned here as a heads up to collectors as they most assuredly will be recorded soon.

Lieberson's language is now more subtle and more luminous than the works on this CD. But that is just applause for the steady progress in this composer's output. Keep you eye and ear on him. Grady Harp, May 05

"Kinder, gentler modernism".......2003-12-12

Peter Lieberson is one of a number of composers around these days (other examples might include Oliver Knussen and Magnus Lindberg) who have taken modernist techniques and the modernist experience to create a more conventionally "accessible" soundworld. This disc explores approximately 25 years of Lieberson's career, from his first chamber work, the serial Concerto of 1973 to the freely tonal/atonal mixture of 1998's Free and Easy Wanderer.

The Concerto for Four Groups of Instruments was Lieberson's first acknowledged chamber work. Like most of the works on this disc, it is brief (weighing in at a mere eight minutes); unlike most it is a fairly strict piece of Wuorinen-esque serialism. Even if it is not representative of Lieberson's mature writing, it is interesting to see that some of the characteristics of the later works (particularly the writing for woodwind and piano) are here in embryo.

A much more sharply defined work is Accordance for Eight Instruments, completed in 1976. This features more melodic writing in comparison to the pointillism of the Concerto, more explicit concentration on tonal centres, and a much more explicit harmonic underpinning of the work.

The three songs of 1981 are almost Webernian in their brevity. They continue the tendency towards greater clarity shown in Accordance, and are delicately orchestrated.

Drala, a 1985 pseudo-symphony written for the Cleveland Orchestra, is at 17 minutes the longest work on this disc, and possibly the best. This begins with an Invocation which sets out the musical material of the work, follows it with a dramatic Gathering and a longer slow movement entitled Offerings and Praises. The finale, Raising Windhorse, is a tumultuous orchestral tour-de-force. This would be a good place for newcomers to Lieberson to start--the language is largely tonal and the orchestration (focusing particularly on woodwind and pitched percussion) delightful.

The remaining works are shorter: Ziji, for clarinet, horn and piano quartet dates from a year later, and was one of Lieberson's last serial works. It's a vigorous, exuberant piece. In comparison, the following year's Raising the Gaze is a little more restrained, though the musical language is similar enough that the casual listener would probably not have spotted that it was no longer serial.

Fire, a fanfare for the Cleveland Orchestra--and first movement of a proposed five-movement work--is an energetic four minutes of orchestra that at times almost reminds me of Copland or Stravinsky, while the final work, Free and Easy Wanderer is a wide-ranging six minutes, ending with a slow chorale.

The performances here are exccellent, with Oliver Knussen conducting the Cleveland Orchestra, the ASKO Ensemble and the London Sinfonietta. If I can't get overly enthusiastic about this disc, it may be more personal preference than anything. However, I simply don't find Lieberson's style and musical material as captivating as I do with some similar composers (particularly Knussen). Others may disagree, though--and I wouldn't wish to discourage anyone from buying this disc if it appeals.

Great Late 20th Century Classical Music.......2003-08-19

A wonderful CD spanning 25 years of Lieberson's music. I came to this CD unfamiliar with Lieberson's music (other than his Piano Concerto) and carrying a more conservative tonal and harmonic bias. However, I found Lieberson's music engaging, challenging and beautiful. Drala's first movement is especially beautiful. I also loved the the three songs, performed flawlessly by Rosemary Hardy.

Conducting is the Oliver Knussen, a brilliant composer in his own right.

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