Sangeeta Michael Berardi

The Mr P Sessions

Reviews

 

WOODSTOCK TIMES

Michael Berardi’s musical journey

​

by KEN DREYFACK on Jun 4, 2012 • 5:00 pm

 

Two years ago, Burrill Crohn and a friend were in the midst of a conversation on Tinker Street when, as Crohn recalls, “this little guy, whose hands are shaking, who had been looking at us, came up and, stuttering, asked if we were talking about music. When we told him that yes, we were discussing the solo classical and jazz concert by pianist Warren Bernhardt that we had just attended, he asked to join the conversation. An hour later, after he had told me his story, it was as if a voice was speaking to me, telling me I’ve got to make a film about this guy. I had no money and no commercial intent. I started filming the next day.”

 

Woodstock resident Crohn, whose film credits include several award-winning documentaries about jazz made during the 1980s and 90s, discovered that ‘the little guy whose hands were shaking’ was Sangeeta Michael Berardi. A jazz guitarist who has played with many of the pioneers of ‘free jazz’ including Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Rashied Ali, Karl Berger, Eddie Gomez and Pharoah Sanders, Berardi has recorded under his own name and on the albums of many others. He has been described by trombonist Roswell Rudd as “the original cat with the cosmic fingers.” Now 73, Berardi has been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for the past dozen years — an incurable degenerative disease that impairs movement and coordination, affects nearly one million Americans. What’s unusual about Berardi is that, rather than resign himself to his physical inability to play the guitar as before, he is integrating the disease into his music, to, in his words, “translate the unique rhythms of my Parkinson’s tremors into musical statements.”

 

Crohn’s film, Playing with Parkinson’s, aims to document Berardi’s startling approach and determination. The film, now ready for editing and sound mixing, centers around a two-day recording session at NRS Studios in Catskill in June of last year. Produced by pianist/composer John Esposito on his Sunjump Records label, the session was Berardi’s first in 15 years. Not coincidentally, Esposito had produced Berardi’s previous session and performed on it as well, as he did during last year’s two-day session.

 

“There’s something magical being in the studio,” Berardi recounted during a two-hour phone interview from his California home. “It was something that I’ve always loved. I had for a number of years thought it was lost forever. I recall a few years back talking with [drummer] Peter O’Brian and John Esposito and saying, ‘Man, one of the saddest things about this situation — I don’t dwell on that, I’m realistic — is that I’ll never be able to make music with you guys again. I had more or less accepted it was time to move on.’"

 

Although Crohn and Berardi had never met prior to their chance Tinker Street encounter, Berardi is no stranger to the Woodstock area, which he visits regularly. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was Music Director at Group 212, a local multimedia arts cooperative that included a theater group, painters, a rock and roll trio and dancers in both the folk and modern traditions. Before Berardi moved to San Francisco in 1972, he launched a weekly concert/workshop series on the SUNY New Paltz campus that included musicians ranging from blues master Eddie Kirkland to local saxophonist Eddie Xiques.

 

Originally, Esposito had thought that Berardi would be unwilling, and unable, to play for the June 2011 session, which would feature Berardi’s compositions performed by others. No one, including Berardi himself, had imagined how the one-time virtuoso guitarist, rather than fighting the symptoms of Parkinson’s, would actually integrate them into his playing.

 

“I got a used acoustic guitar and discovered that I could, in a more limited way, still make some good-time music,” Berardi explained. “Also, I started using my voice, which in a way goes way back, because when I was kid, I used to sing along with my solos.”

 

The result was a session during which Berardi not only played guitar but also percussion — building upon the stuttering tremors and rhythms of his disease — and sang. Here are the lyrics to Mr. P, one of the tunes he composed and performed for the session:

 

Mr. P you took my hands from me, my silver hands

That sailed the six-string seas (C’s?)

Most days you take my voice, but you left it today — ay-ay

So thank you, I’ll make music that way

Mr. P you stole my melodies and left rhythm behind-ind-ind

In every cruel game you play I’ll look for something kind

I spent nights and days asking why, why me

I can’t live like this, no please, I pray on bended knee

One night as I fell deep into my dark lament

I let it all go and felt a surge of strength

Why not me I heard through wide open ears

Why should it be someone else drowning in tears

A light came on inside my head, driving darkness away-ay-ay

A new me emerged inventing new ways to play

Next morning my shaking hands rang bells from a cereal bowl

Mr. P, not bad, I said, as bells continued to toll

Without struggle strange rhythms rang and rolled from the bowl

Without struggle strange rhythms rang and rolled from the bowl

 

Berardi’s performance of Mr. P is among the highlights of the poignant 17-minute trailer for Crohn’s documentary (www.playingwithparkinsons.com), which captures the joy and spontaneity of the recording session. “This still moves me,” Crohn said, his eyes starting to water, after showing the Mr. P clip to a visitor. “You have to let things happen and let your playing happen,” explained Esposito, who teaches music at Bard College. “The operative word there is play. For people who are not artists, they may think of play as meaning something not serious and not respectable. Artists know that the capacity for play is about as serious as we get as humans, about as deep as we can really get.”

 

The trailer is one of the tools Crohn is using to complete funding for the documentary, in conjunction with an online funding effort via kickstarter.com. He is hopeful the film can be completed and sold for distribution sometime this fall, the same time frame for several other Berardi-related projects. John Esposito, who released Earthship, the first of Berardi’s two CDs from the 1996 session in 2008, plans the U.S. release of the second album, Calling Coltrane in the coming months. Esposito hopes to release one or two CDs from last year’s session as well. Also on the drawing board is publication of a collection of Berardi’s autobiographical writing. In the meantime, samples of Sangeeta Michael Berardi’s artwork and poetry are available on the Sunjump Records website, http://www.sunjumprecords.com. ++

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Sangeeta Michael Berardi: The Mr. P Session 

By DAN MCCLENAGHAN, Published: February 9, 2014

 

 In October of 1996, guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi went into Nevessa Studio in Woodstock, New York, and laid down the tracks for what would become two monumental recordings, Earthship (Sunjump Records, 2008) and Calling Coltrane (Sunjump Records, 2011). This is stunning music from a man who played with Alice Coltrane, Roswell Rudd, Rashied Ali, Archie Shepp—a resume that correctly suggests a free approach to music. Call the seventeen tunes from that session the new Testament of John Coltrane, circa 1965 to 1967, the last chapter of the tenor titan's life, when the spiritual search flew free.

  The influence on Sangeeta Michael Berardi is strong, especially on the longer tracks: "Earthship," ""My Favorite Things," (the tune that Coltrane reconfigured, with the soprano sax) "Wise One"(that Coltrane wrote), "Calling Coltrane"; "Six for Rashied." Saxophonist James Finn is here, reaching for the stars. Pianist John Esposito pulls percussive chords out of the ether; and bassist Hilliard Greene and drummer Peter O'Brien round out a rhythm section that lays the foundation for stratospheric sounds.

  And then there's Sangeeta, ("The Divine Song") soaring in from the far reaches of the solar system, making six electric strings sing like no one has before, or since, with a sound that is cosmic in scope, orchestral, deeply spiritual and mysterious and singularly, ass-kickingly virtuosic, something like Jimi Hendrix might have sounded had he gone deep into jazz and joined Coltrane's band in 1966.

  Times, for the guitarist, have changed. Parkinson's disease, the degenerative disorder of the central nervous system has taken his ability to play guitar at the "cosmic fingers" level he once employed. It is a stroke of cosmic cruelty, but Sangeeta is undeterred in his musical/spiritual quest. He offers up now The Mr. P Sessions, an attempt to incorporate the tremor/shakes/vibrations of Parkinson's Disease into his artistry.

  This is a gloriously sprawling, 2 CD hodgepodge of sound that opens with Sangeeta, his voice rendered raspy from the disease, singing unaccompanied, "I'll Sing My Way," a thumb of the nose at Parkinson's that leads into the anthem, "Mr. P." Sangeeta's voice opens it, Kendra Shank and vocalist/violinist Rosi Hertlein sing background, and about two minutes in the band rises like a Phoenix. Hertlein's violin wails; Shank's vocalese surges up out of the ashes; Mitch Kessler sings deep truths on bass clarinet; pianist John Esposito pounds out out holy chords, and drummer Peter O'Brien and bassist Hilliard Greene lay down a wall of rhythmic apocalypse. All this a prelude to Sangeeta Michael Berardi, sounding like a mad Prophet, moaning in on a wordless, wavering, Parkinsonian sermon.

  Then there's the bowls. "Solar Wind" features Berardi on an array of Japanese and Tibetan Singing Bowls. Teamed with the inspired drum work of O'Brien, Berardi explores a world of ringing vibrations on these instrument where his Parkinson's tremors are incorporated into the artistry, beautifully.

  The eighteen-plus minute "Prayer for Peace" opens with what sounds like a Gregorian Chant, the sound waves slightly warped from a trip through a semipermeable membrane. Seven minutes in, the band opens up with an insistent rhythm behind Kessler on soprano, Hertlein's violin, and Shank and Berardi duet near the closing with wordless ululations.

  CD 2 is more of a bits and pieces affair, mostly short tunes with the Singing Bowls again, and Berardi's wavering moans, Shank's angelic vocalizations, Sangeeta Michael Berardi poems read by Mikhail Horowitz—including the hilarious and irreverent "Farts Are Holy"—maracas (probably Berardi's multiple medicine bottles used as amber plastic shakers),    Interstellar Frequencies I and II, pulled in, it seems, from deep space, and a wrap-up of the nine minute-plus "Remembering Coltrane II," featuring Berardi's still-eloquent work on acoustic guitar beside John Esposito's searching piano, joined by violin, flute and subtle electronics in a gorgeous, meandering prayer to to the iconic saxophonist.

  The Mr. P Sessions is a triumphant offering from Sangeeta Michael Berardi.

 

Track Listing: CD 1:I'll Sing My Way; Mr. P; Solar Wind; Prayer for Peace; Feelin' Down and Lonely; Mr. P. Meets Mr. POB; Remembering John Coltrane II. CD 2: We Give Thanks; Imagine; In the Light of the Inner Sun; Witnessing Another Day; Talking in Saxophone Tongues; Farts Are Holy; Interstellar Frequencies I; Inside My Head; Interstellar Frequencies II; Bought Him Like a Pet; Call of the Cosmos; Chicago Nights I; Mr. P and Baby James at Play; Chicago Nights II; Remembering John Coltrane II.

 

Personnel: Sangeeta Michael Berardi: voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Japanese and Tibetan Singing Bowls; Mikhail Horowitz: Performing Sangeeta's poems; Rosi Hertlein: violin, voice; Kendra Shank: voice, electronic loops; Mitch Kessler: flute, soprano saxophone, alto and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet; John Esposito: piano, prepared piano, harmonica; Hilliard Greene: acoustic bass; James Greene: Japanese and tibetan Singing Bowls; Peter O'Brien: drums.

 

Record Label: Sunjump Records

 

Style: Fringes of Jazz

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sangeeta Michael Berardi: The Mr P Sessions (Sunjump 0001; USA)

Featuring Sangeeta Michael Berardi on voice, guitar & singing bowls, Mitch Kessler on flute, saxes & bass clarinet, Rosi Hertlein on violin & voice, John Esposito on unprepared & prepared piano, Hilliard Greene on acoustic bass, James Greene on singing bowls & voice and Peter O’Brien on drums plus guest vocals: Kendra Shank & Mikhail Horowitz.

 

Spiritual jazz guitarist, Sangeeta Michael Berardi, has only six discs out since his first leader date in 1980 (just reissued on CD). This ambitious 2 CD set features some Downtowners we know like Rosi Hertlein, Hill Greene & Kendra Shank as well as Sunjump regulars: John Esposito, Mitch Kessler & Peter O’Brien. Aside from the music, Sangeeta also brought his poetry which was spoken by Mikhail Horowitz and sung by Kendra Shank & Rosi Hertlein.

 

“Mr. P” consists of Sangeeta singing in a sad, ancient, world-weary voice with the two women answering like a small gospel chorus. Both Ms. Hertlein on violin and Ms. Shank take strong spirited solos on their respective instruments, which followed by a great bass clarinet solo (Mitch Kessler), a powerful, McCoy-like solo from Mr. Esposito and a

tale-spinning, three-voice outro which helps us soar out higher and higher and… Even a percussion solo/duo called “Solar Wind” has a deeply spiritual sound.

 

“Prayer for Peace” is an aptly named piece which emanates good vibes, strong spiritual winds flowing, the two women singing like distant ghosts. There is actually an older style blues detour with highlights from Ms. Hertlein on a tight but out-there violin & voice together passage.

 

-  Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

 

 

 

 

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WOODSTOCK TIMES

Michael Berardi’s musical journey

​

by KEN DREYFACK on Jun 4, 2012 • 5:00 pm

 

Two years ago, Burrill Crohn and a friend were in the midst of a conversation on Tinker Street when, as Crohn recalls, “this little guy, whose hands are shaking, who had been looking at us, came up and, stuttering, asked if we were talking about music. When we told him that yes, we were discussing the solo classical and jazz concert by pianist Warren Bernhardt that we had just attended, he asked to join the conversation. An hour later, after he had told me his story, it was as if a voice was speaking to me, telling me I’ve got to make a film about this guy. I had no money and no commercial intent. I started filming the next day.”

 

Woodstock resident Crohn, whose film credits include several award-winning documentaries about jazz made during the 1980s and 90s, discovered that ‘the little guy whose hands were shaking’ was Sangeeta Michael Berardi. A jazz guitarist who has played with many of the pioneers of ‘free jazz’ including Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Rashied Ali, Karl Berger, Eddie Gomez and Pharoah Sanders, Berardi has recorded under his own name and on the albums of many others. He has been described by trombonist Roswell Rudd as “the original cat with the cosmic fingers.” Now 73, Berardi has been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for the past dozen years — an incurable degenerative disease that impairs movement and coordination, affects nearly one million Americans. What’s unusual about Berardi is that, rather than resign himself to his physical inability to play the guitar as before, he is integrating the disease into his music, to, in his words, “translate the unique rhythms of my Parkinson’s tremors into musical statements.”

 

Crohn’s film, Playing with Parkinson’s, aims to document Berardi’s startling approach and determination. The film, now ready for editing and sound mixing, centers around a two-day recording session at NRS Studios in Catskill in June of last year. Produced by pianist/composer John Esposito on his Sunjump Records label, the session was Berardi’s first in 15 years. Not coincidentally, Esposito had produced Berardi’s previous session and performed on it as well, as he did during last year’s two-day session.

 

“There’s something magical being in the studio,” Berardi recounted during a two-hour phone interview from his California home. “It was something that I’ve always loved. I had for a number of years thought it was lost forever. I recall a few years back talking with [drummer] Peter O’Brian and John Esposito and saying, ‘Man, one of the saddest things about this situation — I don’t dwell on that, I’m realistic — is that I’ll never be able to make music with you guys again. I had more or less accepted it was time to move on.’"

 

Although Crohn and Berardi had never met prior to their chance Tinker Street encounter, Berardi is no stranger to the Woodstock area, which he visits regularly. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was Music Director at Group 212, a local multimedia arts cooperative that included a theater group, painters, a rock and roll trio and dancers in both the folk and modern traditions. Before Berardi moved to San Francisco in 1972, he launched a weekly concert/workshop series on the SUNY New Paltz campus that included musicians ranging from blues master Eddie Kirkland to local saxophonist Eddie Xiques.

 

Originally, Esposito had thought that Berardi would be unwilling, and unable, to play for the June 2011 session, which would feature Berardi’s compositions performed by others. No one, including Berardi himself, had imagined how the one-time virtuoso guitarist, rather than fighting the symptoms of Parkinson’s, would actually integrate them into his playing.

 

“I got a used acoustic guitar and discovered that I could, in a more limited way, still make some good-time music,” Berardi explained. “Also, I started using my voice, which in a way goes way back, because when I was kid, I used to sing along with my solos.”

 

The result was a session during which Berardi not only played guitar but also percussion — building upon the stuttering tremors and rhythms of his disease — and sang. Here are the lyrics to Mr. P, one of the tunes he composed and performed for the session:

 

Mr. P you took my hands from me, my silver hands

That sailed the six-string seas (C’s?)

Most days you take my voice, but you left it today — ay-ay

So thank you, I’ll make music that way

Mr. P you stole my melodies and left rhythm behind-ind-ind

In every cruel game you play I’ll look for something kind

I spent nights and days asking why, why me

I can’t live like this, no please, I pray on bended knee

One night as I fell deep into my dark lament

I let it all go and felt a surge of strength

Why not me I heard through wide open ears

Why should it be someone else drowning in tears

A light came on inside my head, driving darkness away-ay-ay

A new me emerged inventing new ways to play

Next morning my shaking hands rang bells from a cereal bowl

Mr. P, not bad, I said, as bells continued to toll

Without struggle strange rhythms rang and rolled from the bowl

Without struggle strange rhythms rang and rolled from the bowl

 

Berardi’s performance of Mr. P is among the highlights of the poignant 17-minute trailer for Crohn’s documentary (www.playingwithparkinsons.com), which captures the joy and spontaneity of the recording session. “This still moves me,” Crohn said, his eyes starting to water, after showing the Mr. P clip to a visitor. “You have to let things happen and let your playing happen,” explained Esposito, who teaches music at Bard College. “The operative word there is play. For people who are not artists, they may think of play as meaning something not serious and not respectable. Artists know that the capacity for play is about as serious as we get as humans, about as deep as we can really get.”

 

The trailer is one of the tools Crohn is using to complete funding for the documentary, in conjunction with an online funding effort via kickstarter.com. He is hopeful the film can be completed and sold for distribution sometime this fall, the same time frame for several other Berardi-related projects. John Esposito, who released Earthship, the first of Berardi’s two CDs from the 1996 session in 2008, plans the U.S. release of the second album, Calling Coltrane in the coming months. Esposito hopes to release one or two CDs from last year’s session as well. Also on the drawing board is publication of a collection of Berardi’s autobiographical writing. In the meantime, samples of Sangeeta Michael Berardi’s artwork and poetry are available on the Sunjump Records website, http://www.sunjumprecords.com. ++

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Sangeeta Michael Berardi: The Mr. P Session 

By DAN MCCLENAGHAN, Published: February 9, 2014

 

 In October of 1996, guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi went into Nevessa Studio in Woodstock, New York, and laid down the tracks for what would become two monumental recordings, Earthship (Sunjump Records, 2008) and Calling Coltrane (Sunjump Records, 2011). This is stunning music from a man who played with Alice Coltrane, Roswell Rudd, Rashied Ali, Archie Shepp—a resume that correctly suggests a free approach to music. Call the seventeen tunes from that session the new Testament of John Coltrane, circa 1965 to 1967, the last chapter of the tenor titan's life, when the spiritual search flew free.

  The influence on Sangeeta Michael Berardi is strong, especially on the longer tracks: "Earthship," ""My Favorite Things," (the tune that Coltrane reconfigured, with the soprano sax) "Wise One"(that Coltrane wrote), "Calling Coltrane"; "Six for Rashied." Saxophonist James Finn is here, reaching for the stars. Pianist John Esposito pulls percussive chords out of the ether; and bassist Hilliard Greene and drummer Peter O'Brien round out a rhythm section that lays the foundation for stratospheric sounds.

  And then there's Sangeeta, ("The Divine Song") soaring in from the far reaches of the solar system, making six electric strings sing like no one has before, or since, with a sound that is cosmic in scope, orchestral, deeply spiritual and mysterious and singularly, ass-kickingly virtuosic, something like Jimi Hendrix might have sounded had he gone deep into jazz and joined Coltrane's band in 1966.

  Times, for the guitarist, have changed. Parkinson's disease, the degenerative disorder of the central nervous system has taken his ability to play guitar at the "cosmic fingers" level he once employed. It is a stroke of cosmic cruelty, but Sangeeta is undeterred in his musical/spiritual quest. He offers up now The Mr. P Sessions, an attempt to incorporate the tremor/shakes/vibrations of Parkinson's Disease into his artistry.

  This is a gloriously sprawling, 2 CD hodgepodge of sound that opens with Sangeeta, his voice rendered raspy from the disease, singing unaccompanied, "I'll Sing My Way," a thumb of the nose at Parkinson's that leads into the anthem, "Mr. P." Sangeeta's voice opens it, Kendra Shank and vocalist/violinist Rosi Hertlein sing background, and about two minutes in the band rises like a Phoenix. Hertlein's violin wails; Shank's vocalese surges up out of the ashes; Mitch Kessler sings deep truths on bass clarinet; pianist John Esposito pounds out out holy chords, and drummer Peter O'Brien and bassist Hilliard Greene lay down a wall of rhythmic apocalypse. All this a prelude to Sangeeta Michael Berardi, sounding like a mad Prophet, moaning in on a wordless, wavering, Parkinsonian sermon.

  Then there's the bowls. "Solar Wind" features Berardi on an array of Japanese and Tibetan Singing Bowls. Teamed with the inspired drum work of O'Brien, Berardi explores a world of ringing vibrations on these instrument where his Parkinson's tremors are incorporated into the artistry, beautifully.

  The eighteen-plus minute "Prayer for Peace" opens with what sounds like a Gregorian Chant, the sound waves slightly warped from a trip through a semipermeable membrane. Seven minutes in, the band opens up with an insistent rhythm behind Kessler on soprano, Hertlein's violin, and Shank and Berardi duet near the closing with wordless ululations.

  CD 2 is more of a bits and pieces affair, mostly short tunes with the Singing Bowls again, and Berardi's wavering moans, Shank's angelic vocalizations, Sangeeta Michael Berardi poems read by Mikhail Horowitz—including the hilarious and irreverent "Farts Are Holy"—maracas (probably Berardi's multiple medicine bottles used as amber plastic shakers),    Interstellar Frequencies I and II, pulled in, it seems, from deep space, and a wrap-up of the nine minute-plus "Remembering Coltrane II," featuring Berardi's still-eloquent work on acoustic guitar beside John Esposito's searching piano, joined by violin, flute and subtle electronics in a gorgeous, meandering prayer to to the iconic saxophonist.

  The Mr. P Sessions is a triumphant offering from Sangeeta Michael Berardi.

 

Track Listing: CD 1:I'll Sing My Way; Mr. P; Solar Wind; Prayer for Peace; Feelin' Down and Lonely; Mr. P. Meets Mr. POB; Remembering John Coltrane II. CD 2: We Give Thanks; Imagine; In the Light of the Inner Sun; Witnessing Another Day; Talking in Saxophone Tongues; Farts Are Holy; Interstellar Frequencies I; Inside My Head; Interstellar Frequencies II; Bought Him Like a Pet; Call of the Cosmos; Chicago Nights I; Mr. P and Baby James at Play; Chicago Nights II; Remembering John Coltrane II.

 

Personnel: Sangeeta Michael Berardi: voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Japanese and Tibetan Singing Bowls; Mikhail Horowitz: Performing Sangeeta's poems; Rosi Hertlein: violin, voice; Kendra Shank: voice, electronic loops; Mitch Kessler: flute, soprano saxophone, alto and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet; John Esposito: piano, prepared piano, harmonica; Hilliard Greene: acoustic bass; James Greene: Japanese and tibetan Singing Bowls; Peter O'Brien: drums.

 

Record Label: Sunjump Records

 

Style: Fringes of Jazz

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sangeeta Michael Berardi: The Mr P Sessions (Sunjump 0001; USA)

Featuring Sangeeta Michael Berardi on voice, guitar & singing bowls, Mitch Kessler on flute, saxes & bass clarinet, Rosi Hertlein on violin & voice, John Esposito on unprepared & prepared piano, Hilliard Greene on acoustic bass, James Greene on singing bowls & voice and Peter O’Brien on drums plus guest vocals: Kendra Shank & Mikhail Horowitz.

 

Spiritual jazz guitarist, Sangeeta Michael Berardi, has only six discs out since his first leader date in 1980 (just reissued on CD). This ambitious 2 CD set features some Downtowners we know like Rosi Hertlein, Hill Greene & Kendra Shank as well as Sunjump regulars: John Esposito, Mitch Kessler & Peter O’Brien. Aside from the music, Sangeeta also brought his poetry which was spoken by Mikhail Horowitz and sung by Kendra Shank & Rosi Hertlein.

 

“Mr. P” consists of Sangeeta singing in a sad, ancient, world-weary voice with the two women answering like a small gospel chorus. Both Ms. Hertlein on violin and Ms. Shank take strong spirited solos on their respective instruments, which followed by a great bass clarinet solo (Mitch Kessler), a powerful, McCoy-like solo from Mr. Esposito and a

tale-spinning, three-voice outro which helps us soar out higher and higher and… Even a percussion solo/duo called “Solar Wind” has a deeply spiritual sound.

 

“Prayer for Peace” is an aptly named piece which emanates good vibes, strong spiritual winds flowing, the two women singing like distant ghosts. There is actually an older style blues detour with highlights from Ms. Hertlein on a tight but out-there violin & voice together passage.

 

-  Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

 

 

 

 

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