STARBORN SUITE

Featuring solo piano recorded LIVE on 5/5/77 at legendary Findhorn Community, Northern Scotland.

Soundscape III ©1978

MP3 download $8.88

STARBORN SUITE (Soundscape III) began as the commissioned soundtrack for Rose Gladden, England’s premier psychic healer. I met her in London in 1977 at the first Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit. The music deserved its own album, to which I added tracks recorded at the world-famous Findhorn Sanctuary in northern Scotland. Peter Caddy, its co-founder, and I had met after my presentation, and he invited me to visit, since I was already in the UK.

Some of the first magical and mystical moments of my recording career occurred while recording this album.

At the first Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit in London in April 1977, I met Rose Gladden, the leading psychic healer in the UK. She loved my music, and requested that I compose music as the soundtrack to her guided meditation.

When I got home, I purchased one of the first polyphonic synthesizers, which expanded my palette of tones and colors with choir and string programs. Without any rehearsal, I recorded my electric piano listening to Rose’s words. I then proceeded to overdub the choir/string program. As her guided meditation was ending, the chord I was holding started to fade out. I hoped that it would not end before she did and create a break in the music.

Remarkably, the overdub faded out absolutely perfectly with her voice and my piano. It couldn’t have been better if I had planned it! Recording engineer David Porter, a metaphysical doubting Thomas, was blown away as well.

This was to be the first of many magical, mystical moments that I would experience in the studio as I recorded music throughout my career. It’s why I have always acknowledged the unseen co-composers and Band of Angels who work with me to manifest the music that defines my career.

The next tracks on Side One completed the soundtrack to her entire spoken meditation. When the recording was done, the voice and music have to be mixed together and became one of Rose Gladdens best-selling meditations.

But during the mix down, it was clear that the music had a life of its own. Thus began the first half of my third major album.

Recording LIVE in Findhorn Community May 7th, 1977

On that same first international Festival in London, I met Peter Caddy, one of the founders of Findhorn, along with Dorothy MacLean, Eileen Caddy and David Spangler. Findhorn had become world famous for growing roses in the snow in northern Scotland with the help of Nature devas whose communications and directions accounted their success in growing flowers and vegetables on sandy soil.
Peter invited me to visit, and I gladly accepted. I had some powerful meditations in their sanctuary, which is where I presented my standard slide show that features the music accompanied with a slide projector and slides of the seven pure colors of the chakras.

Everything was proceeding as usual (you can view this chakra meditation on my YouTube channel). As usual, the slides ascended from red, orange, yellow…but when we got to green, suddenly a face appeared on the screen! The audience, and I, gasped. Were the nature spirits saying hello? Was it excess water vapor in misty Scotland? I continued up the colors..blue, indigo, violet. None of these other slides had a face appear. It blew everyone’s mind. I had hoped to record while I was there, to capture some of that remarkable energy of their community, but their recording engineer had not yet returned from the Festival in London. I had a train to catch back to London as well.

I packed my suitcase and was headed out the door when the engineer arrived two hours early. He quickly unpacked his gear, set up two mics, and with barely a sound check, I recorded 30 minutes of music.

The magic of Findhorn is encoded in the music. At times, you can hear the bird that landed on a branch just outside the window, in the pouring rain. It continued singing, on that branch, as long as I kept playing…When I ended, it flew away! What a wonderful Interspecies jam session: nature spirits I could not see, but could feel, and nature spirits (bird) that I could see and hear. Truly remarkable!

The full recording was made available on my cassette LIVE IN FINDHORN 5 May 1977. Coming soon, exclusively on my website as an MP3.