November 2009

New CD of original songs based on the Beatitudes and Rumi poems

November 9, 2009 15:54

On November 20, 2009 I am releasing a new CD, One Being Inside All, containing two song cycles for soprano, violin, and piano. They are performed by Tonja King, soprano, Jodi Marshall, piano, and myself, violin. The first eight songs are based on the Beatitudes of Jesus Christ, in the original Aramaic, the King James Translation, and new translations from Neil Douglas-Klotz featured in his 1990 publication Prayers of the Cosmos (see www.abwoon.com). The other ten 'Ruminations' draw their texts from poems by the Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, with vivid new English translations by Coleman Barks (used with permission). For those not familiar with Rumi, here is one of the poems that I turned into a song: "Gamble everything for love/if you're a true human being./If not, leave this gathering./Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty./You set out to find God/but then/you keep stopping/for long periods/at mean-spirited roadhouses." For more information, visit my website at http://web.me.com/pitchfixer

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