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New Zealand musician DAVID PARSONS had a unique and fascinating musical career. In fact, you probably couldn't make it up if you tried. Back in the early 1960s, he was a jazz drummer, longing for a more melodic instrument. Years before The Beatles brought the sitar to pop music, Parsons heard a recital in New Zealand by RAVI SHANKAR. That was it. Inspired to make the sitar his new

At the nadir of winter, the time of deepest cold and lowest natural activity, the sound of the resonant percussion family of instruments takes on a special appeal. The metallophones—bells, bowls, gongs, chimes, and cymbals—speak eloquently in the chilled, quiet air. Whether used for religious ceremonies in ancient Buddhist mountain cultures like Tibet; for sound healing and the

The latter days of winter bring a special kind of fatigue mixed with impatience. For residents of snow-crossed parts of the country, winter has begun to overstay its welcome; while here in California, the trees are blossoming, and February feels like spring. As the sound of the season evolves, music of the far north and Arctic countries still resonates, connecting with contemplativ

For ambient and electronic artists, the music of the winter season holds a special appeal. Dense drones, chilled harmonies, bright bells and percussion, and the psychoactive power of minimalist patterns — add up to a powerful palette of musical elements. The small but artistically mighty countries of Scandinavia and the Arctic north produce far more than their share of world-clas

We're at the nadir of winter in the Northern Hemisphere...a time when the yearly journey around our native star seems arbitrary and endless. Battered by storms, challenged by cold, starved for light, we have no choice but to wait...for the return of the sun and the bright promise of spring. It's a trial we repeat in miniature each long winter night, as we turn away from the sun int

In 2016, Icelandic film composer ATLI ÖRVARSSON was having a great career — working with industry heavyweights, scoring dozens of movies and TV series, and winning awards. But after more than a decade in Los Angeles, he was moved to return to his small hometown in the north of Iceland, build a film-scoring studio, create a record label for Icelandic artists, and help establish t

If you’re old enough to have been watching network television in 1990, just the first two notes of this music should have sent an involuntary shiver down your spine. It conjures up atavistic, possibly suppressed, memories of the strange, disconcerting world of the late film and television director DAVID LYNCH—creator of the award-winning series “TWIN PEAKS,” who passed away

Last year, the Surgeon General of the United States released a report warning about “an epidemic of loneliness.” What’s being called “an anti-social century of self-imposed solitude” was becoming a social fact, with negative effects on health equivalent to tobacco or obesity. In 2020, over half of Americans were unmarried, separated, divorced, or widowed. Of those, two th

The serene spaces of contemplative minimalism have attracted some strange bedfellows over the years, including classical, new music, and experimental composers, serious jazz artists, ambient-electronic sound sculptors, and native musicians from the far north. They share a taste for consonance, repetition, slow tempos, electro-acoustic instrumentation, and expanded ambience. In thes

Smooth...chilled...and mysterious: the electronic orchestrations of the late German electronic music pioneer KLAUS SCHULZE — just one of the new styles to emerge from the hyper-creative incubator that was Berlin in the 1960s and 70s. Electronic synthesizers ultimately fueled dozens of new genres, the most famous being “Kraut Rock.” But the confluence of cosmic electronic soun