Sambodhi Prem shares with our readers the title track of his recently released album.
The title track of my latest music project, ‘The Fall of Winter’, features the violin of Genevieve Walker (who also plays with Krishna Das). She weaves a magical spell into my string arrangement and guitar, and into David Jones‘s percussion (David is a master percussionist from Melbourne).
I created part of the orchestral melody to work with what Genevieve had played and, towards the end, I added a guitar vignette all of its own to settle the piece into a different tone. I like to constantly give value to the music I write. With that I mean that I like to have a rich tapestry of ideas at any time, where every tiny segment of music has been consciously considered so that the listener feels cared for and his intelligence respected.
For this track I had the idea of a drum solo in the middle. I prefer not to tell other musicians what to play – odd as it may sound – so I was surprised and delighted when David chose to play exclusively cymbals for his drum solo. It’s my favourite part of the song! I love the combination of David’s cymbals with Genevieve’s celebrative violin and my twelve-string guitar. Plus, I like the quick-silvery quality of the sounds that populate this tune. All these sounds are complemented by a string arrangement I had written for this piece, strangely enough, already at the very outset.
The Fall of Winter is an album that I have carried over some years. It has been a joy to work with a group of international musicians and to hear how each one of them has responded to the pieces, invariably adding interesting dimensions with their improvisations.
All musicians on the album play from a meditative perspective – we used to meditate together for an hour in the studio before playing – and create music because they understand the long-term dedication and immersion that the goddess of music expects from them: a life of practice, with often little or no pay.
Each single piece on this album was an extensive journey, for me to orchestrate and put together.
By the way, ‘The Fall of Winter’ is a roundabout way of saying ‘Spring has come’.
I hope you will enjoy this track!
Read Chinmaya Dunster’s review: The Fall of Winter
Listen and download from TheFallOfWinter – Liner notes: TheFallOfWinter
Sambodhi Prem is a devotional singer-songwriter, writing from his experiences on the path of meditation and of playing in Osho’s presence (we might remember his song, ‘As the stars in the sky…’). He has recorded many instrumental titles, released on European and American music labels and, in 2011, together with his life partner Sandipa, he released the album of songs ‘Circle of Light’. He lives in Central Victoria, Australia. sambodhiprem.com
Comments are closed.