Author: Robert Zucker

Guitarist Jack Gates enjoys incorporating into his sound subtle musical stylistic traits, motifs and rhythms from around the world, which explains the title of his new album, Bring The Flavors. “Music can be like cooking where you add a variety of spices to come up with something new,” he states.

Gates has spent his career studying many music genres especially from India, South and Central America, Cuba and the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. His music includes a raga form here, a samba beat there, an Afro-Cuban structure elsewhere, and much more. Those world-fusion elements are then blended with the sounds of new age, jazz and folk to create a delectable mix with broad appeal to many audiences.

“This album was written and recorded while I was living in a forest in the mountains above Santa Cruz, California, where I was studying Tibetan Buddhism,” says Gates. “The music has a peaceful quality and is certainly an outgrowth of meditation and being close to nature in a place where I could explore music without a lot if interruptions. I found a recording studio in those mountains down a winding dirt road and it had just the right ambience.”

Gates is joined on most of the tunes on the album by drummer and percussionist Steve Robertson and acoustic bassist Stan Poplin. Other guests include Damien Masterson on harmonica on two tracks, and Michal Palzewicz playing cello on one piece. “We all had the same sensibilities because all of these players have studied widely in both the world music and jazz arenas.” Robertson (Tassajara Trio, Deepak Ram, The White Album Ensemble) has studied North Indian classical music and sacred sounds from around the world. Poplin has played with Robben Ford, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dave Brubeck and Dub Nation. Masterson (San Francisco Harmonica Ensemble, Zerro Santos, Gerald Beckett) has spent extensive time in Brazil, Cuba and Africa. Palzewicz is a member of Duo Sapphire, Elsner String Quarter, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Orchestra and the world-fusion band Trine.

Gates’ previous recordings are New Geography (produced by Mark Lemaire, and featuring Michael Manring and Phil Thompson), Earth Messenger (with drummer Kevin Mummey and bassist David Motto), the solo guitar album Boulevard (including original material as well as compositions by Jobim, Egberto Gismonti, Baden Powell, Cole Porter, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Lennon/McCartney), and Voyage of the Troubadour (with Phil Thompson, Dean Muench and Sharyl Gates). Jack Gates also has recorded two duo albums with sitarist Tim White, Morning Song Evening Song and Impromptu.

More information on Jack Gates is available at his website (jackgatesmusic.com). His CDs and digital download tracks from those recordings are available at online sales sites such as CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and many others.

In addition, Gates is a longtime live performer, producer, arranger, session musician, composer and guitar teacher. He has produced albums and sessions for Larry Stefl, Bill Meyer, Marc Silber and Deborah Henson-Conant. Gates also arranged and played guitar on an album for singer Helene Attia that also featured musicians such as Norton Buffalo, Roger Glenn and Celso Alberti. Gates has performed on recordings by Silvia Nakkach and Kit Walker (with Paul McCandless), Joanne Shenandoah, Steve Deutsch (with Omar Sosa), Chris Saunders, Juanita Newland, Rafael Manriquez and Quique Cruz, Fernando Sanjines and Samba do Coracao, Faranak, Bob Giles and many others. Gates has performed live with Frank Biner (Tower of Power), Tyler Eng (Greg Kihn), Claudia Gomez, Jeff Narell, Klezmania, Chalo Eduardo, Monica Pasqual, Marcos Silva and others.

Jack grew up in Northern California in the Berkeley-Kensington-El Cerrito area. When he was young his parents introduced him to classical music and a little later on to folk-singers (Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs). Soon he was listening to the guitarists Andres Segovia and John Fahey. Gates took some folk guitar and flamenco lessons as a youngster, but it was jazz guitar lessons when he was 16 that opened new doors of understanding and he started appreciating George Benson, Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass. After becoming enthralled with the playing of Jimi Hendrix, Gates put together a rock’n’roll band, Underock, at age 18 to play at local dances and eventually nightclubs. While a music major at Cal State Hayward, Gates began playing classical guitar. He studied with the renowned David Tanenbaum and also audited a master class taught by Julian Bream at the San Francisco Conservatory. Gates had the opportunity to go to the John Cabot School in Italy for six months and study art history (while there he also played music with his friend Tim White). After returning home, the association with White led to Gates studying North Indian classical music under famed musician Ali Akbar Khan and learning to play the sarod.

After switching his focus back to guitar, Gates broadened his musical studies even further. First he immersed himself in Sixties jazz (John Coltrane, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner), then R&B and finally Latin music. “Getting deep into Brazilian music was a revelation,” says Gates, who began exploring the music of Jobim, Baden Powell and Milton Nascimento. “This was important for my guitar playing because it showed me how to stretch and simultaneously incorporate many elements into my music. South and Central America have always been a fertile place for music where so many styles have come together including jazz, blues, indigenous music and elements from Portugal, Spain and Africa.”

For his Bring the Flavors album, Gates plays both nylon-string acoustic guitars as well as electric guitars, often overdubbing them onto the same piece to create interesting interplay and deep textures. The album opens with the Latin-tinged title tune featuring Gates on two acoustics “plus there is an electric guitar in the background playing shimmering chords.” The track “Time In,” featuring harmonica, “takes a cue from Brazilian traditional choro music.”

Gates calls “Wave Theory” a “psychedelic piece combining the Northeastern Brazilian rhythmic style called baiao with music from the Sixties like Quicksilver Messenger Service or the Grateful Dead, and I have been spending a lot of time at the beach watching the waves and surfers.” The piece “Waterfalls” features Gates’ friend Michal Palzewicz on cello (“we have often improvised together during summer music retreats”). “Seraphic Journey,” the longest composition on the album at more than eight-minutes, “starts as an acoustic guitar Renaissance classical piece and then becomes more of a Brazilian samba when the electric rock guitar part joins in.” There also is acoustic and electric guitar interplay on “Enigmatic Land” (“my sonic description of the huge trees in the Santa Cruz forest, an almost primeval environment”). Its companion piece is “Cloud Forest” featuring Gates playing both classical and flamenco guitars with Robertson on pandeiro, a Brazilian hand frame-drum.

“‘Marketplace’ is my interpretation of an African market where I play the rhythm on an electric Stratocaster and the melodic part on an acoustic flamenco guitar.” The one solo acoustic guitar tune on the recording is an Afro-Samba piece titled “The Magician,” influenced by Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell and “Candomble” (“a syncretic religious practice that combines West African indigenous ritual with Catholicism and White Voodoo”). The acoustic-guitar and harmonica duet “Dawn Walker” refers to early mankind, the hunter-gatherer, with the unusual chords inspired by Brazilian jazz guitarist Toninho Horta. “Beach Traffic” incorporates acoustic strumming with electric soloing over a Latin-Cuban groove with conga. On “Choco Latte” Gates tips his hat to Afro-Cuban jazz using two acoustic guitars, while the following “Electric Sonata” includes solos on both electric and acoustic guitars. The recording closes with a raga-influenced number, “Liquid Entropy,” utilizing two electric guitars.

“When you are in a restaurant you might say, ‘Bring the flavors!’ That is exactly what I said in the recording studio to myself and the other musicians. I wanted all of us to explore different sounds, tastes and textures by bringing in elements from all over.”

Multi-instrumentalist David Franklin hears music and rhythm patterns everywhere in his day-to-day life whether it is machines, telephones, a vacuum, vibrating objects, a door closing or a baby crying; he uses these “found sounds” as inspiration or even directly in his compositions. In addition, whether playing piano, guitar, synth or percussion, Franklin usually is not content to simply pick up an instument and make traditional notes and melodies, but instead enjoys manipulating the music by trying unusual tunings, using reverb or distortion, recording the sounds backwards, or playing the instrument in an unorthodox style. All of this and more comes into play on Franklin’s latest recording, Songs of Potential Embrace, an eclectic collection of 16 pieces that could be categorized as new age avant-garde.

“I like sounds and I have been playing with sounds all my life,” explains Franklin. “I started out as a drummer, and I have always been a person who hits different objects just to see what it sounds like. Or I might spot a construction site, stop my car and go sing into an 80-foot pipe to find out what it does to my voice. It’s like there is a symphony of sounds going on around us all the time, and I often collect the sounds I hear by recording them on my phone. When I finally heard artists like John Cage and Steve Reich I realized I wasn’t crazy when I was hitting garbage-can lids and pipes. My guitar playing was hugely influenced by Michael Hedges because of the different tunings he used, and I found that open tunings, for example, push me to explore different places musically.”

Songs of Potential Embrace is David Franklin’s ninth album. He began as a folk-pop singer, did a Christmas solo piano album, released an experimental avant-garde recording geared to induce trance-state healing, and most recently released a successful instrumental melodic new age album (Playing With Shadows) which also featured renowned fretless bassist Michael Manring. That album spent two months in the Top 10 of the international Top 100 Zone Music Reporter Chart (the most important listing of successful new age recordings). Songs of Potential Embrace and other recordings by David Franklin are available as CDs and digital downloads through his website (DavidFranklin.com) as well as many online sales sites including iTunes and Amazon.

Franklin believes music is one of humanity’s most powerful tools for healing, and he hopes his music will help listeners connect to their inner feelings and ultimately create more of a sense of connection in their lives. Franklin, who also is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Northern California, says, “Music influences us on many levels, such as relaxing us, making us feel better, serving as a bridge that connects us to ourselves and others, helping individuals form a deeper understanding of life, and serving as a healing tool.”

On Songs of Potential Embrace Franklin brings together elements of “found sounds,” avant-garde, new age and ambient music. “I like to explore some of the many different possibilities of music, and I don’t like limiting myself in creating music. The idea behind the album title is really asking the world a question. Can all the people of this planet try to understand our connectedness, and accept each other as part of humanity rather than rejecting one another because of religion or politics or anything we don’t agree on?”

The music includes new compositions, several tracks created specifically to accompany performances by a San Francisco dance troupe, and a couple of tunes originally on Franklin’s avant-garde Shadowlands album that have been reworked and remixed.

Several pieces are only acoustic piano — “Mourning in America” (“I haven’t given up on America, but I am saddened by many things that have happened in our country”), “Inbal’s Theme” (a very slow, sparse, ambient tune created for a woman dying of cancer), “Shade and Shadow” (overdubbed piano about which Franklin says, “I like it when the music challenges me”), and the companion piece (also with two piano parts) “Shade and Darkness” (“I went to Italy last year and played this live while a dance troupe performed in this ancient square”). A couple of tunes are all synthesizer — “Whirling,” “Ambient Fog” and “Xas10Shl (existential)” — and one, “Allowing,” combines piano and synth.

Other music on the album features both piano and guitars. Regarding “The Failed Experiment of Consciousness,” Franklin says, “Global warming and climate changes are issues I am very concerned about, and I am cautiously hopeful the human race will wake up and rectify some of these uncomfortable truths.” On that tune he uses an acoustic baritone guitar with altered strings and an alternative tuning, and he adds some electric guitar toward the end. Another piano-guitar piece is the melodic “So Far Below” which uses the same altered baritone guitar and which was written in a cemetary.

The more experimental, avant-garde material on the recording includes “Calling” which uses a telephone ringing as a rhythm pattern behind an out-of-tune piano from the 1800s, a plucked violin and wordless vocalizing. “Piece for Vacuum and 3 Voices” uses a vacuum as a background drone sound with the voices capturing the feeling of music from India including a rhythmic tabla-like part. “RH Factor” features a backwards guitar and a baby crying (“The sound of a baby crying resonates deep within us biologically.”). “Swamps of New Jersey” includes an udu (an African hand percussion pot) recorded backwards, bass notes from a harp guitar (some bowed), water sounds from a drum with ballbearings inside, and stream of consciousness vocals. “Quotes” is comprised of snippets of conversations with troubled teenagers mixed with unusual guitar sounds — a guitar lightly bumping against a shelf, a clicking sound from an electric guitar and purposely “cranked distortion.” “The Wildness” is a 57-second tune containing singing bowls and Franklin reciting a poem.

Franklin was born and raised in New Jersey. In the fifth grade he discovered drums, in sixth grade he picked up guitar and started writing songs, and in high school he was also playing piano and singing. He played drums in rock bands through high school and college, while earning a Bachelors degree in Environmental Science at Pennsylvania State University. While at college he also performed as a singer-songwriter. After college he worked in New York City for three years using his environmental degree and taking air samples inside office buildings while also playing keyboards in a rock band.

Wanting to make more of a difference by calling attention to environmental problems and solutions, Franklin took a year off to join 90 other environmentalists in The Global Walk for a Livable World, a year-long hike across the country. Along the way they spoke at schools, to the media and to politicians. Franklin wrote and recorded songs throughout the trek, and that music was released as an album, Our Children’s Only Home. The albums that followed also were primarily vocal folk-pop projects — such as Patterns Yet Unknown and Strangers and Angels. Franklin also did a solo piano album called Traditional Christmas Melodies. Additionally he embraced avant-garde, experimental music with Shadowlands, his first venture to explore “found sounds” (such as the rhythmic sound of computer printers).

Franklin later returned to college and earned his Masters in Counseling and went on to become licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist, specializing in working with teenagers, and often incorporating music into his work.

“Music can be a powerful healer and an important soundtrack as we access and understand the deeper parts of ourselves,” Franklin says. “Ultimately I hope this music helps some listeners experience a sense of connection to themselves and to others.”

“I try not to limit myself to just one way of looking at things or doing something,” explains musician Nathan Speir. That philosophy has led to an eclectic and varied musical career with his recordings having been described as ambient chamber music, acoustic-ambient, piano-oriented new age, and avant-garde. His ninth album, Part of a Kindly Plan, continues his fascinating experimentation.

The new album mostly contains acoustic instruments — acoustic piano, steel and nylon-string acoustic guitars, wooden flute, cello, harmonica, rain-stick and singing bowls — but a couple of tunes also include a little synthesizer (primarily replicating a string-section). “In addition,” states Speir, “silence has a big place in my music and I pay a lot of attention to the spaces between the notes.”

Part of a Kindly Plan (on the Neptic Music label) and Nathan Speir’s previous albums — Between Earth & Sky, Nathan’s Piano, Brighter Days, A Day of Poetry, Ambient Piano Christmas Volume 1, The Emotive Leaf, Ambient Piano Christmas Volume 2 (and the associated 3-song CD Warmth in Winter with additional instrumentation), and Improv 16 — are available at his website (NathanSpeir.com) and as CDs and digital downloads at a variety of online sales sites including CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic and many others.

Some of the inspiration for Part of a Kindly Plan came from a poem by Thomas Hardy, “On A Fine Morning,” written in the early 1900s and printed on the back of Speir’s CD. Speir explains, “At the beginning the poem asks a question: What is solace? Hardy says it is not this or exactly that, but at the end he is happy and content because he says everything is part of a benign or kindly plan that is proof that earth was made for man. I liked the sentiments expressed so I paraphrased various lines for the name of the album and several tune titles.”

The first piece on the album, “Hued Embowment,” could be described as “vibrant ambient.” It features piano, cello and singing bowls. “I was feeling motion like tides going in and out, perhaps at sunrise.” The composition “As We Turn” blends an acoustic-steel string guitar with piano, rainstick shaker, some sampled tympani and synth strings. “There are lots of turns in life, and as we grow older our perspective of life changes.” On “Good Seasons” Speir primarily plays guitar (with a string section and a bit of cello) and says, “This was influenced by some of the early acoustic guitar bands I listened to such as Acoustic Alchemy and Wind Machine.”

For “A Taste of Solace,” Speir plays both piano and steel-string guitar to give the music some counterpoint. “We all need a time for stillness, quiet, healing, meditation and contemplation. It helps us physically, mentally and spiritually.” He notes that “Open Ranges” was influenced by trips he has taken to the American Southwest, so he added harmonica to this piano piece. On the rapid, melodic, piano-cello “Passing Charcoal Clouds,” Speir says he went for a neo-classical feeling (“This was inspired by Patrick O’Hearn and his versatility.”). To capture the right atmosphere on “Serenity In This House,” Speir started with piano and nylon-string guitar, and then added wind chimes, some noises from his home, and an oldtime squeaky round spinning piano stool.

The tune “Praxis” mixes nylon-string guitar and Native American wood flute with a rhythmic drum-sound created by Speir hitting the cello fretboard with his open hand. “The idea behind this piece is that everyone should chose a discipline of some sort, seriously practice it, persevere, improve, and also enjoy the journey.” Regarding “Familiar Orbits” (piano, synth string drone, cello and singing bowls), Speir says, “The title refers to many things — astronomical bodies going around a star, the molecular energy within us and around us, and the regular pathways we follow in life.” The album ends with the very slow, nearly-nine-minute “Breathing On This Shore” (piano, strings and singing bowls) created by Speir at 62-beats per minute “like slow, regular breathing, perhaps during meditation on a beach.”

Speir was born in Southern California, but his father worked in the aerospace industry (including the Kennedy Space Center), so the family moved around and Nathan also grew up in Florida and Connecticut. “My appreciation for music started at an early age because my grandfather built an extensive high-end stereo system with more than a hundred speakers and he had a collection of more than a thousand classical albums. For several years we had the system in our house and listening to music on it was an awesome experience.” Nathan started playing piano at age eight and composing when he was twelve (“I remember one of my first songs was called ‘Suspenseful Dream’.”). “One of the things that influenced me the most as a child was seeing George Winston and Yanni perform on PBS television. In addition, my father turned me on to music by Cusco, Patrick O’Hearn and Tangerine Dream. I also took a course on MIDI music in high school.”

Speir attended Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida and earned his Bachelors degree in Music Theory and Composition. “I took a computer with me to college and it allowed me to create music on the spot. I could work out ideas wearing headphones. I also helped make recordings of recitals and learned about recording gear. Part of my music scholarship required me to be part of a concert choir, and the college choir traveled to Europe and we sang some sacred works in cathedrals around Krakow, Poland.” In addition to music, Speir during his university days also was involved with visual art (drawing, illustrating and painting), and in recent years has designed most of his album covers.

After college, Speir, who now lives in North Carolina, began to actively record his own original music and release an impressive series of albums and singles that include recordings ranging from solo piano to all-synthesized as well as a combination of the two keyboard sounds sometimes supplemented with other instrumentation such as Native American flute, guitars and cello. He has sometimes recorded alternate arrangements of some of his compositions.

Speir draws musical inspiration from a wide variety of sources including modern classical, jazz, new age, minimalist composers and Sacred Byzantine music. “I got my Byzantine bug from my college choir director who turned me on to the modern religious-music composer John Tavener. In recent years I have produced three vocal albums by the group Byzantine Ark. I have spent a lot of time studying this type of music which precedes and has a different approach than Gregorian chants.” Other musicians who have influenced his music include George Winston, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, Steve Roach (“who reminded me to not forget about ambient”), Harold Budd, R. Carlos Nakai, Chopin and Erik Satie. Speir also gets inspiration from his family, poetry, fine art, space and astronomy, the study of religions, and nature.

“I have a perpetual need to create,” explains Speir, “and making music teaches me many lessons in life. I hope that my creations enhance the ambience in the listener’s life, and in doing so, the listener holistically benefits. This kind of music lends itself to solace, relaxing, thinking and reflecting on life. Studying your inner life and identifying your personal beliefs is serious business, but I believe that serious things can bring great joy. I want the music to feel like taking a pastoral retreat, or going to space and then returning to earth, but afterwards feeling more at one with things. I feel strongly that each person needs to contribute in some way to our world. With my music I try to do my small part.”