Peter Buffett glad not to have father’s money
Herald Tribune has posted an interview with Peter Buffett, who has an upcoming concert in the area.
Peter Buffett, who will appear Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Sarasota as part of a Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice lecture series, does not stand to inherit any of the $37 billion his famous father has made as the head of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
And that, the younger Buffett maintains, is a priceless gift, one that has pushed him to become an Emmy-award-winning musician and composer of film scores, commercial jingles and songs. “I’ve lived an extraordinary life, not because of my father’s money but because of the exemplary life he’s lived as an example to me,” Buffett said during a recent telephone interview from New York.
Read the complete interview here.
Pictures of Mike Oldfield in the Bahamas
We all are dreaming about finding our very own paradise, a place where we can relax and enjoy nature at its best.
One man who obviously has found his paradise, is Mike Oldfield. He is currently enjoying some well-deserved quality time in the Bahamas on his boat. Getty Images has quite a few recent pictures available of Mike Oldfield. Also make sure to read Mike’s wife’s Bahamas diary on fanpage Tubular.net.
As a longtime fan I must say that I am so happy to see him with a smile on his face.
(Never forget that our music genre has lots of album with the paradise island as theme).
Tubular Bells’ studio up for sale
Now you have the chance to own a piece of new age music history! The studio where Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells is up for sale. Online magazine nme.com reports:
A 16th century house at Shipton-on-Cherwell, The Manor was converted by Richard Branson into the UK’s first ever residential recording studio.
The Grade II listed building opened its doors in 1971 and saw the likes of Gong, Sandy Denny, John Cale, Vivian Stanshall and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Tangerine Dream record there in the early ’70s, reports The Independent on Sunday.
Read the whole article here.
Wireless New Age Music
Mobile provider Verizon has a list of 5 productive ways to use a Samsung Reality phone. One of them caught my attention:
Create bedtime rituals that are filled with peace enjoy. Instead of watching the nighttime use, violent drama or your favorite reality show where people yelling and screaming at each other, why not open the drapes wishing you were at the closest Caribbean Lagoon? Why not listen to classical or new age music that programs your subconscious mind for prosperity? At the end of a very stressful day sit on your massage chair if you have one of the line is have a cup of hot cocoa, hot chai tea, hot ginger honey tea and spend 15 minutes count your blessings. You can a cultivate the feeling of serenity that will wash over you when you bring attention to what is good in your life!
I can only say yes, yes, yes. We got that Caribbean Lagoon ready for your right here!
See rest of the list here.
Warren Buffett’s son preaches values as wealth
Reuters has an interesting article about Peter Buffett in connection with his new book:
Musician and now author Peter Buffett preaches the message in his new book “Life is What You Make it: Finding Your Own Path to Fulfillment”. Recently released in the United States, it describes how he wound up a “normal, happy” person instead of a spoiled child to one of the world’s richest people.
Buffett, 52, teaches the rewards of self-respect and pursuing one’s own passions and accomplishments rather than buying into society’s concepts of material wealth.
“I am my own person and I know what I have accomplished in my life,” he said. “This isn’t about wealth or fame or money or any of that stuff, it is actually about values and what you enjoy and finding something you love doing.”
Read it here.
The Incredible Power of Music
Performance coach Nikk Zorbas has this interesting comment to share on web page MesquiteLocalnews.com:
Music can be an effective way to empower the mind, energize the body, and drive you toward achieving your goals.
Psychological studies have shown that the brain absorbs new information 85 percent faster through the repetitious use of music or voice recordings.
And more:
Music can also impact a person’s state of mind, helping to alleviate depression and anxiety and increase creativity and optimism.
Listen to some New Age music and watch your stress level decrease almost instantly—it’s like a soothing bath without the water! And we all know that stress is one of the biggest health hazards to brain and body alike.
Read it all here. But we already knew it, didn’t we? 
Artist Profile: Dechen Shak-Dagsay
Each month New Earth Records presents an artist biography for one of their artists. This month it is the very talented Dechen Shak-Dagsay. Her music has a strong healing element – which can be heard and felt in her most successful album to date; the 72 minute long Dewa Che, Universal Healing Power of Tibetan Mantras.
The biography starts with these words:
Dechen Shak-Dagsay was born the same year her parents fled to India due to the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959. She is the eldest daughter of the late Yishi Tsedön Zatul and Dagsay Tulku Rinpoche. Together with her family Dechen grew up as one of the nearly 2,500 Tibetans residing in Switzerland. Her family played an important role in founding the Tibetan Institute of Performing Art for Switzerland and Dechen was the youngest member of the group.
Read it here. She is a truly fascinating artist – and very talented! I think there are too few Asian new age music artists.
New Age Music and the Lute
It is interesting to see how New Age Music can be considered to be “a special sound”, like a musical doorway into something divine and heavenly. An example of this can be seen in the quote below about the ancient Lute instrument in the Washington Examiner:
“Everything old is new again as the Bach Sinfonia and lutenist Ronn McFarlane perform Vivaldi’s Complete Works for Lute and the world premiere of McFarlane’s “Firedance” at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Performing Arts Center. The lute has incredible variety and malleability,” Ronn McFarlane says. “At some point in history, it was described as a folk instrument of high art that transports the listener to a high consciousness. That sounds like something you’d hear about new age music, but it’s true. The lute is not just an instrument of the museum and ancient times.”
Wherever he performs, he wants the audience to leave filled with vitality, because the role of music is not merely to entertain, but to lift spirits, he hays. The lute, he promises, enables that to happen.
Read the article here - and check out Ron McFarlane’s homepage here.
New Age Music and NHL
Well, this is just in. What do you do when there’s no sport on TV right now – but you know that the next weeks will be filled with lots and lots of sports? NHL.com Correspondent Paul Kukla writes:
Monday night I was lost. No hockey for most of the night, unless I watched replays of the Eastern Conference Playoffs preview on the NHL Network.
I sat, bored, restless and wondering what the next two months will be like. Turned on a music channel on my TV, it was called New Age music and I then realized this was going to be the most relaxed I would be for the next eight weeks or so.Taking advantage of the down time, I played every first round series in my head, trying to figure out which teams will survive and move on to the second round of the 2010 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
And it was all thanks to the relaxing effect of new age music! Read the complete article here.
Mike Oldfield at sea
Mike Oldfield is in many ways the only true celebrity in New Age Music. At least the only artist that that has had his share of scandals and negative tabloid headlines. Artists such as Enya, Kitaro or Edgard Froese are, well, more down-to-earth and have never been given that role in media. To see that this is true you only have to read this recent article in Sunday Express by Adam Helliker. It starts with the words:
SO DISILLUSIONED is multi- millionaire composer Mike Oldfield with Britain that he has rejected a formal education for his children and is teaching them himself while he sails his family on a yacht around the Caribbean.
And more:
“Unless you want to be a nuclear physicist there is nothing you can’t teach yourself on the internet,” Oldfi eld tells me from his yacht moored off the Virgin Islands. “My children are getting a wonderful education learning all about sea life and meeting other children who sail into the harbour.”
Hopefully the time at sea will give Mike new inspiration – or at least some peace of mind, far away from the UK and the tabloids.
Source: Tubular.net
New Age dude
Singapore magazine Todayonline.com has an interview with Kitaro entitled simply New Age Dude. Which is an ok title, since he is the Asian New Age Dude. In this interview you get to know things about Kitaro you probably didn’t know.
Although he’s best known as a musician, Kitaro is involved with many spheres outside of music. For instance, he has a fireworks group which performs at festivals in Japan.
“We use the traditional bamboo fireworks,” he said, adding that they carry them like upright bazookas. “It’s very dangerous and my wife and managers have told me not to do that. But I like to do that. It’s a man thing.”
Let’s hope he doesn’t blow up!
Read the interview here. There are 4 nice pictures of Kitaro too.
When animals make New Age music
It is true. They can. Connecticut newspaper TheDay.com has this interesting comment:
The first time I ever heard whale music — which became sorta popular at the dawn of the New Age phenomenon — I literally thought it was a joke. But, no. People literally recorded the mournful cries of whales and either released them as “solo” works or put gentle, peace-inducing backing tracks comprised of lush strings or oboes or flutes or even the sound of incense sticks smoldering into a microphone.
And more:
Think about this in light of the latest killer whale/human tragedy at amusement parks. Maybe the whale’s music was a sort of primitive Siren’s Song — designed to lull us into trust and comfort so they could turn on us and shred us like sides of mutton tossed into a hay thresher!
Or perhaps killer whales have their own music distinct from the New Agey peace-shrieks of the other whales. And the killer whale music sounds like Norwegian Satan Metal, only with a slight, effervescent bubbly tone because, after all, it’s underwater.
As a Norwegian I can only say; this is very likely. Very likely indeed. I will make sure to check iTunes often for this new Satan Metal/whale music crossover.
Read the whole article here.
A Winter Blessing
On PRWEB.com is an interview with Seay, who music critic Michael Debbage choose to be on his “Top 30” albums of the decade 2000-2010. It was her album A Winter Blessing that made the list.
Speaking from her Franklin, TN-based Tuscan Sun Studios by phone, Seay (pronounced “say”) explains her delight at receiving the honor, saying “I was shocked and humbled to be included in such an amazing list. There were many artists in that list I’ve respected over the years, like 2002, Secret Garden and Christian artist Michael W. Smith. “Migration” by Peter Kater and Carlos Nakai is one of my all time favorite New Age Albums, so just to be in the same category with all of these musicians was a huge surprise!”
See the whole presentation here.
Soothing New Age music plays in the background
It is always interesting to see how new age music is being presented in main stream media. One thing is certain; it always means something, at least more that “rock” or “pop”. See the below quote from NYdailynews.com’s interview with Gov. David Paterson’s wife, Michelle.
First Lady Michelle Paterson says it won’t be the end of the world if voters toss her husband out of office this fall.
“Not at all,” said Paterson in an interview with the Daily News, as soothing New Age music played in the background of her midtown office. “We never thought we would be in this spot. Not too many people get to be here.
New age music here illustrates the calm, relaxing atmosphere. Where there’s this kind of music, there is no rush, no worries. Even in the world of politics.
Read the interview here.
20,000,000 Unplayed Pianos
New age piano instructor Edward Weiss asks: Why are there so many unplayed pianos in the United States? On AllAboutJazz.com he gives this answer:
The way I see it is that adults purchase pianos thinking they’ll go the classical route, and then give up because it’s just not satisfying. With electronic keyboards, they’re either given as gifts or aspiring young musicians soon lose interest.
And more:
The New Age style is perfect for anyone just wanting to have fun and make beautiful music. In fact, I can whole-heartedly promise this: With my methods, I can have anyone both playing and composing their own piano music in less than 30 days.
The program is called Quiescencemusic.com
Ambient Visions interview
Ambient Visions has posted a very nice interview with Fiona Joy Hawkins.
And while you are at it, why not check out John P. Olsen’s reviews of Fiona Joy Hawkins’ two most recent albums on NewAgeMusicWorld.com?
New Age Music for driving
It is always interesting to see how new age music is being reviewed in main stream media. Since many so called “serious” music critics don’t think highly of our genre, it is not a very good way to measure what people generally think – but it is of course an indication.
Steven Halpern recently released an album called Drive Time Rx which contains especially composed music to help drivers get through the motoring mayhem and thereby reduce road rage. And where in the world right now would be a better place to find heavy traffic than in the Olympic town of Vancouver?
Music reviewer Keith Morgan in the Vancouver Sun writes:
Not looking forward to facing the Olympic traffic? Maybe this album can help you make it through the trip. According to a press release from musician’s publicist “Halpern’s Auto(matic) Audio Additive is series of suggestions that are encoded so softly in the music that the listener can’t hear them, but their subconscious mind does, and responds automatically.” Examples of the embedded messages include “I am relaxed and alert at all times … I check my rear view mirror frequently … I am in control of my emotional response to considerate actions of other drivers.”
And more:
Surely, the drive would be plain sailing and I would have no need of Halpern’s calming chords. Wrong. By 41st. I had been given the finger twice for sticking to the speed limit, in a Porsche no less. The nerve. Maybe the embedded messages were truly having an impression on my subconscious as I mentally brushed off the abuse.
Read the whole review here - and sample the album on Steven Halpern’s homepage.
Constance Demby’s Heavy Metal Thunder
Famous music writer Robert Phoenix wrote in 2007 a very good article about Constance Demby’s music. The article opens with these words:
Constance Demby isn’t just a musician or a composer, though she has expressed herself quite competently through music for over five decades. Demby is something different altogether: a portal, a walking catalyst, an event.
Read the complete article on eMusic. It is a part of the music services’ nice editorial magazine.
2010 on MG Music
It looks like 2010 is going to be yet another exciting year for fans of MG Music. On the label’s homepage interviews with the most prominent MG Music artists have just been posted. Do check it out – their answers are quite funny and creative. Clifford White is asked “What would you like to say to your fans?” The reply:
Hello. What’s it like to be alone?
Read the interviews here.
New Age Aesthetics for a New Word
When it comes to in depth analysis of new age music, there no other person I trust more than mr. Serge Kozlovsky. Be sure to read part 2 of his essay New Age Aesthetics for a New Word – the first part was written 10 years ago.
To quote mr. Kozlovsky:
It is the right time to look through what happened to new age music for the time gone, how it changed and what is the most important where it is developing to.
Read it here. Enjoy!
Visit New Age Music World
- New Music – Family Values by Craig Karolus
- Marc Enfroy – Dreams of the Forest
- Cinematic Piano Music by Marc Enfroy
- Sounds from the Circle – New for 2012
- What is New Age Music ?
- Mysterium Tremendum by Mickey Hart Band
- Gandalf & Steve Hackett Live Album – Gallery of Dreams
- Gandalf & Steve Hackett – Live Concert
- Mickey Hart Band – Concert Tour 2012
- Yanni Concert Review – Live at El Morro