Synthesizing Classical Raga with European and American Jazz

To our dear NativeDSD family members,

Best wishes to you and may this be as safe and peaceful a summer as possible.  I am blessed to spend my working days in music.  Spending time with talented musicians and listening to the magical results they create for us serves as a helpful antidote to the many struggles we face in the world today.  I am always grateful for their gifts and solace.  This new album is no exception.  Paul Livingstone and Pete Jacobson mined the Hindustani musical tradition deeply for Sangam, synthesizing the classical raga tradition as Paul learned from his friend and teacher Ravi Shankar, with inventive incorporation of ideas more recently expressed in the world of European and American jazz.  Pete Jacobson joins Paul on cello instead of veena or violin.  I like the results! 

We recorded this album for you in Taos, New Mexico, at the foothills of the famous Taos Mountain, from which Paul and Pete drew additional inspiration.  We recorded in the Imhof Studio, a large and airy adobe space, where we also recorded Sacred Trance Music from Taos Mountain.  

We used the natural acoustics of the recording hall to give you natural reverb and decay, “filtered” as it is by the beautiful affect soft adobe has on sound reflections.  And using SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology, we present the album in an enveloping soundstage, where the sitar surrounds you in a warm embrace.  I am so thankful to Arian Jansen for developing this technology, which works entirely in the analog domain before the music reaches our Merging Technologies Hapi.  This works best if your system is perfectly phase coherent.  If you would like help with fine-tuning your speaker placement to ensure phase coherency, you can use Yarlung’s speaker setup test files, which are introduced here.  Please download the actual circling tones files here.

Paul took special pleasure in knowing that Ted Ancona’s AKG C24 microphone which he graciously allowed us to use for the album used to belong to Frank Sinatra.  We hope to make “ol’ blue eyes” proud.

We hope you enjoy! 

Sincerely,

Bob Attiyeh