On An Overgrown Path

One of several notable new publications in 2025 was Susannah Cahalan 's life of Rosemary Leary. Her biography  The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life of Rosemary Woodruff Leary is a much-needed account of Timothy Leary's often overlooked third wife. Importantly, this meticulously researched and sympathetic book provides an objective counterbalance to the many Leary hagiographies. Synchronicities include my unlikely brief personal encounter with Timothy Leary's second ex-wife, and and the surprising story of how Elgar took a trip . And more synchronicity in this passage from The Acid Queen .   ....It took a full day to reach the foothills of the Ahl Srif Mountains in Morocco to visit the famed Master Musicians of Joujouka, musical healers who mended broken people with their ancient songs. The show begins with a violin. Pennywhistles joined in. Rosemary placed a tab of LSD on Timothy's tongue and then one on her own. Men in hoods rose and lifted wooden pipes that sounded ...

"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...

Clickbait correctness - if ain't clickable, don't hype it on social media - means some great albums are not receiving the attention they deserve. My recent rewarding listening has included the new Alice Coltrane release Kirtan: Turiya Sings . Kirtans are sacred Vedic chants, and  Turiya Sings  was originally released exclusively on cassette in 1982 for the students of Alice Coltrane's ashram at the The Vedantic Center, northwest of Los Angeles. For this cassette release synthesizers, strings, and sound effects were added to Alice Coltrane’s voice and organ. Although this mix was never commercially released, it achieved cult status as a bootleg recording. The reason for the absence of a commercial release remains unclear, but the most plausible explanation is that the complete master tapes were not retained, making quality remastering impossible. But in 2004 Ravi Coltrane , who is Alice’s son by John Coltrane and producer of this new release, discovered tapes of just Ali...

Igor Stravinsky's music features on two of Alice Coltrane's albums and in both instances she conducts her own transcriptions with devastating effect. Lord of Lords released in 1972 by Impulse was her first essay into Stravinsky transcriptions. She reported that her take on the Firebird - listen via this link - was recorded after a ghostly visitation by its composer who offered her musical and spiritual advice, and blessings. In her sleeve note Alice reported that Stravinsky brought her a vial of clear liquid, which she drank, explaining that “Divine instruction has been given to me throughout the entire arranging of this music.” She referred again to these visitations in the note for her 1976 album Eternity seen above: Stravinsky has once again wonderfully inspired me. The infinite sound of the eternity permeates his music. I am truly grateful to Stravinsky for his offerings, and for the sharing of his gifts with us; and for the channel through which he communicates to me...

When I mentioned A Love Supreme , Yusef Lateef gave me the same self-effacing response he offered in his memoir, The Gentle Giant : that the inspiration for the composition came from Coltrane's late Muslim wife, Naima. Coltrane heard her recite the fatiha five times a day. "I can only say that John and I, we were dear friends, we were trying to advance our music together. I don't know if I encouraged him to read the Holy Quaran. My guess is his wife, Naima, encouraged him to read the Holy Quaran, Khalil Gibran and Krishnamurti . The prayer that John wrote in A Love Supreme repeats the phrase 'All praise belongs to God no matter what' several times. This phrase has the semantics of the second sentence of the fatiha . The Arabic transliteration is 'Al Humdulillah,' and that means 'All praise is due to God.'" That illuminating perspective on the genesis of a contemporary music masterpiece comes from Rebel Music , an important literary celebrat...

In its early days the Happy Valley School in Ojai, California founded by the Indian philosopher and teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti was supported by the southern California creative community which included Arnold Schoenberg and the pianist Lili Kraus . Igor Stravinsky was a close friend of Krishnamurti, as was Pau Casals who played for him in Rome in 1963, while Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha performed at a talk by Krishnamurti at Brockwood , England in 1975. Krishnamurti certainly moved in exalted music circles; however his teachings are expressed in acerbic prose and are therefore unsuitable for conventional music settings. So as conjunctions of Krishnamurti and music are now rarer than the proverbial hens teeth, an album with a track titled Tales of Krishnamurti is certain to grab my attention. Maqâm Roads is a new release from Zied Zouari (violin, alto sax), Julien Tekeyan (drums, Armenian percussion,), and Abdurrahman Tarikci (bass, vocals) who are seen above. In his sleeve n...

Three sages in the Himalayas sit in silence, meditating. Ten years go by, and the first one tweets, "What a wonderful morning." Another ten years go by and the second one tweets, "It might rain". Another ten years go by, and the third one tweets, "When will the two of you ever get off Twitter". That is my contemporary paraphrase of a story told by Jiddu Krishnamurti and reported in The Beauty of the Mountain published by the Krishnamurti Foundation. I took the photo when crossing a high pass in the western Himalayas en route from Kalka on the edge of the Ganges plain to the alpine desert of Ladakh - see my photo essay about the journey . Krishnamurti, who taught that "Authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing.. leaders destroy the following and followers destroy the leaders" had no time for gurus. But books such as Apprenticed to a Himlayan Master by Sri M, and Living wit...

To collect, first scatter. To weaken, first strengthen. To abolish, first establish. To conclude, first initiate. This is called subtle illumination. Soft and weak overcome stiff and strong. Fish cannot escape the deep pool. A country's sharpest weapons Cannot be displayed. That wisdom is from a  translation of Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching . My recent rewarding listening has included Azahar (orange blossom in Spanish) from Simon-Pierre Bestion's vocal and instrumental ensemble La Tempête . This new release from burgeoning independent label Outhere Music takes listeners beyond their comfort zones by presenting performances of Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame , Igor Stravinsky's Mass, Alfonso X El Sabio's Cantigas de Santa Maria and Maurice Ohana's Cantigas with the sections of the four works juxtaposed instead of being programmed sequentially. As well as challenging accepted programming conventions this new CD is notable for showcasing M...

There is an art of listening , when you listen to Beethoven or Mozart and so on, you listen, you don't try to interpret it, unless you are romantic, sentimental and all that. You absorb, you listen, there is some extraordinary movement going on in it, great silence, great depth and all that. So similarly if you can listen, not only with the hearing of the ear, but deeply , not interpret, not translate, just listen. That quote comes from a 1985 TV interview with Jiddu Krishnamurti . There is some serious listening talent in the photo. It shows Aldous Huxley - who famously recommended that "if you ever use mescaline or LSD in therapy ... try the effect of the [Bach] B-minor suite" - kneeling in the foreground, while standing from left to right are Krishnamurti, Igor & Vera Stravinsky, Maria Huxley, and Radha Rajagopal Sloss. The photo was taken in 1949 at a picnic in Wrightwood, California. Radha Rajagopal Sloss was the daughter of the American born Rosalind Rajagopa...

In Memory, Music and Religion Earle H. Waugh identifies how music functions as a tool for subconsciously reclaiming the past. Based on research with the mystical chanters of Morocco's Sufi brotherhoods, he proposes that at the heart of religion is ritual remembrance enabled by music. His theory can be extrapolated to propose that memory is the cultural glue that holds classical music together. Ritual remembrance shapes much of the core repertoire, from sacred remembrance - e.g. Verdi's Requiem - through ethnocentric remembrance - e.g. Smetana's Má vlast - and mythological remembrance - e.g. Wagner's Ring - to existential memories evoked by the symphonies of Mahler. The ritual remembrance need not be backward looking: one of the most widely acclaimed compositions of recent times, John Luther Adams' Become Ocean , looks both forward and back in its evocation of climate change. But conversely music lacking the quality of remembrance - e.g. that of Pierre Boulez ...

I have a rule of not publishing press releases On An Overgrown Path . But this one just could not be ignored: Scriabin in the Himalayas is a tribute concert for the great Russian composer Alexander Scriabin taking place on the outdoor terraces of Thikse Monastery in India this June 21st for the Summer Solstice. The multi-sensory performance includes three world-class pianists and one tenor , an interactive light show based on Scriabin's colour tonal system, Himalayan Cham dance and an olfactory score of timed scent diffusions. A limited number of 100 concert tickets have just been released via scriabininthehimalayas.com at £2,000 per person alongside an optional travel package by our partners Quintessentially Travel. This once-in-a-lifetime experience is being offered at a time when the cultures of the Himalaya, unique in the world, have suffered a great loss. Amongst the tragic loss of life, it is believed that four of seven Unesco world heritage sites in the Kathmandu v...

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered. For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only when something can be said . Whereof one cannot speak, Thereof one must be silent. That photo of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing was taken by me a few weeks ago when driving home across the Somme battlefields in northern France. The Thiepval Memorial was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and the quotation is from Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which was set as a motet by the architect's daughter Elisabeth Lutyens. Nicknamed 'twelve-tone Lizzie', Elisabeth Lutyens is another candidate who meets Alex Ross' criteria of "Instead of trying to invent a female Bach in prior centuries, let’s seek her in the present". Her Excerpta Tractatus Logico-Philosophic...

'Borrowed Landscape' ( shakkei ) is the Japanese garden design discipline that imports 'foreign' landscapes into local environments, and the borrowed landscape of Les Jardins du Loriot at Venansault in France featured in my 2012 post The sound of 4' 33" . Shakkei is also practised by architects to import landscapes that are foreign in geographic or temporal terms. My photos show the Medina in Agadir , southern Morocco created by the architect Coco Polizzi in the early 1990s to provide the city with a traditional artisan's quarter after the original kasbah was destroyed in the disastrous 1960 earthquake . Composers also utilise borrowed landscapes, among many notable examples are Britten whose Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra borrowed Purcell, and Stravinsky who borrowed music wrongly attributed at the time to Pergolesi for his ballet Pulcinella . Stravinsky's chamber concerto Dumbarton Oaks is an example of the neo-baroque, a style th...

Dear Bob, I am a freelance pianist-composer from the smallest state in the USA, and I have a personal stake in some themes you have blogged about recently, to wit, the difficulty faced by new composers in getting heard, and the low income of composers at large. Regarding the first of these themes - Liberty resides in the rights of the music you find most odious - naturally I completely agree with John Stuart Mill's dictum, which is identical in substance to Voltaire's much more famous statement on freedom of speech . I also think that in the particular case you spoke of, where the BBC paid for the Proms and agreed to include the new composition in the live performance but left it out of the broadcast, the composer got horribly shafted and deserves a make-up broadcast from the BBC. But after a cursory Internet search I can't find anything that says that the BBC had actually agreed to broadcast the entire concert; correct me if I'm wrong but the BBC seem to be within ...

It was with considerable sadness that I learnt of the death of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos at the age of 80. It is always very sad when a great musician passes on. However there was also sadness at a personal level. In 1977, while working for EMI, I was involved in the marketing of maestro Fruhbeck de Burgos recording of Mauel de Falla's opera Atlántida in the posthumous completion by Ernesto Halfter. But there was an earlier and far more important link. In 1973 I took a young and beautiful lady on our first date to hear Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducting Brahms and Stravinsky at the Royal Festival Hall. Three years later we were married, and thirty-eight years on that love duet is still going strong . Muchas gracias maestro. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

My recent post speculating on links between the Rite of Spring and Sufism quoted Turkish pianist Süher Pekinel on Stravinsky's "global understanding". One of classical music's most enduring works may or may not have its roots in Turkish-Islamic trance rituals, but it is incontestable that classical music has a long history of embracing Eastern traditions. This stretches from Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail , through Rimsky-Korsakov's homage to Arabia Scheherazade and Mahler's setting of ancient Chinese poems in Das Lied von der Erde , to Britten's Curlew River  based on a Japanese Noh play . But while classical music has a long history of fraternizing with the East, it also has a long history of moulding those influences so they, to quote Jordi Savall , "fit into the mental schemes of Western audiences". In the past this remoulding to Western tastes was a form of cultural imperialism , but today it has become just another part ...

That painting on the cover of Harry Oldmeadow's Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions is by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947). Russian aristocrat, Theosophist, and artist Roerich is well-known as the designer of the controversial 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring , but his wider role in the gestation of the Rite is less clear. In his monumental life of Stravinsky biographer Stephen Walsh describes how "early collaborators like Benois and Roerich found to their surprise that their part in the creative process had been conveniently forgotten or trivialized" in the composer's self-serving Chroniques de ma vie . While elsewhere pianist Süher Pekinel tells how "before beginning to compose Le Sacre du Printemps , Stravinsky was apparently interested in the rituals of pagan tribes and contacted Roerich to ask for detailed information about them". Süher Pekinel , who was born in Istanbul, recorded t...

Research for yesterday's post revealed that Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood once worked as a sales assistant in the Our Price record store in Oxford. Back in the late 1970s I went into Our Price in Staines and asked if they had the new LP of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms , only to be told "We wouldn't sell that my luv - he's dead you know". Fortunately I found the copy seen above elsewhere. The typographical view of Bernstein's LP appears here because, ten years later and after a protracted selection process, I was verbally offered the post of buying director of Our Price which was part of the WH Smith empire. When considerable time had passed without the offer being confirmed I asked what the delay was; to be told the personnel director was waiting for the results of an analysis of my handwriting from a graphologist in New York. Eventually the offer was confirmed, but I turned it down for other reasons. Even if I hadn't, I certainly wouldn...

No, not under ‘Stravinsky’ and not even under ‘Classical’. L’Oiseau de Feu (Firebird) is a CD of improvised music and recitations for ney, santour, Eastern percussion, viole de gambe and voice inspired by texts from Sufi poets and Christian mystics. There is not a note of Stravinsky's music on the disc, but there is a connection: his Firebird ballet has its roots in Russian folklore and the legendary bird also appears as the simorgh in Persian mythology , notably in the Farid ud-Din Attar's Sufi masterpiece Conference of the Birds . Hence the title of the CD. This new release from serial innovators Accords Croisés - sample it here - challenges conventions beyond that of the Firebird as an exclusively Stravinsky property. With its juxtaposition of viol and traditional Persian instruments it challenges an even more rigid convention - the definition of classical music. Despite the presence of a Western classical instrument played by early music specialist Jonathan Dunford...