One tricky thing about having a website is finding the time to keep it updated, so I apologize to (and thank) all our staunch fans who have written us, asking for more info.
Much has been happening in the meantime. Most notably, my new recording, “Distant Mirrors” has just been completed. In actuality, it was over five years in the making. I do not expect future recordings to take this long, but this particular one has. It has been quite a musical evolution for me, not only in the compositions themselves, but even the style in which I am using the flutes these days. Expanding my own musical vocabulary on my gold flute, while at the same time exploring more ethnic flutes and styles, where my music-soul is permitted to be without boundaries.
“Distant Mirrors”, the title piece on my recording, came about in the following way. After the September 11 tragedy, I needed to find some way in my music Art to speak to it, to address it. I sought to do through art what cannot be done in life: marry two different cultures/religions. In this case, I ‘married’ Islam to Christianity by borrowing ancient melodies from each culture, and creating new music from them. The melodies contrast greatly, especially in their style of delivery. That was my symbolic point: our diversity as a human race is a richness, not a liability. It was my way of trying to “create” peace, somehow, since I have not yet fully understood the true conflict that caused 9-11. What I know in my soul comes to this: as one human race, we are Distant Mirrors of one another. None better, none worse. Mirrors. Meant to reflect a mutual ‘goodness’ of human kind. Reflect life-giving qualities. This, to me, is the tell-tale key—life-giving. Not taking away. The mistake exists when we are not reflecting this from one human to another, one culture to another, one religion to another. As far as our differences go, I know that I don’t wish to live in a world where everyone believes exactly the same, or lives such similar cultures….the richness I already know from being a musician is truly defined as diversity. Diversity asks for us to care enough to learn of one another, and shake hands on our common human ground. Let us not be distracted by the fact that there will always exist some bad representations of any particular religion, culture, sect, town , or country. That is why I wish to concentrate on something more hopeful, and represent things through music that make me think more about reflecting our inter-relatedness and connectedness as one human race, rather than our problems which are usually self-glorification-generated (whether in this present life or the next)! It is here where my music takes over. It is my music that makes me seek some kind of ultimate peace, and which makes me believe it can be achieved through this Art. It must be possible, since this is what music does for me first, before I give it back out to the public. It is my music that compels me to seek a life filled with gratitude, not dissention.
Let me be honest in admitting that this is where my heart finds itself these days…ruminating over these thoughts of the time in which we live. I could call it “Rumi-nating”, since I have been reading Rumi (poet from the 1200’s), as well as Julian of Norwich, and David Steindl-Rast, (the only voice among my short list here that is alive in our time, whose books I have been reading and re-reading for ten years now). These are the “Distant Mirrors”, as it were–cultures and people that seem to have common meanings from the human soul echoing back and forth across eras, with the same loving intent…