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Although I also enjoy the solstice music of George Winston/Windham Hill, I thought this CD was better b/c it was a lot less cliched.I also thought the poem "Time is a Little Girl" was amazing. I think it is beautiful.One thing I like about it is that it avoids the cliched "light wins over darkness" point of view that so many artists seem to get stuck in when they celebrate the solstice. I went looking for something better and found this CD. I found Amos's take on things to be fairly boring and lacking in much originality.
merrymousies has already provided some detail on this CD. Time is compared to a little girl who takes your hand and plays with you, taking you all over different geographical areas, until she gets bored and lets go of your hand. While Amos appears to have made her CD for commercial reasons, this really seems to be a labor of love on the part of the musicians. It includes both songs and spoken word pieces set to music.
Additionally her voice does not sound good. I thought that conveyed the capriciousness of life pretty well, as well as the reality that we are not in control of the passage of time.Ten stars. A variety of instruments are used. There is one song called One Small Candle which is from that point of view, but the song ends with a spoken-word piece about "beautiful darkness." As Paul Simon asked: "If the answer is infinite light, why do we sleep in the dark." (from 'how can you live in the northeast.')The harmonizing works really well on songs like the Wexford Carol, which was rewritten to provide solstice, rather than Christian, lyrics.I started looking for solstice music after hearing the vastly inferior (in my opinion) recent release by Tori Amos, Midwinter Graces.
They are very talented people, just not to my taste. Nice CD. Liked most of the music.
Beautiful flutes, bells ringing, guitars and the like. This cd was just what I needed to celebrate the darkness. The songs are simply lovely.
A few have a celtic sound to them but most do not. An amazing work. The voices, music are just so harmonious, melodic, wonderful.
This is one of my favorite CDs this season. The lyrics are beautiful - poetic blessings, celebrating our change of seasons, the winter, the wildlife. I wish I could find more like this one.
Sond of the songs have words that are spoken rather than sung as poems or stories being told. Its very gentle music that you just want to sit and absorb.
The artists on this CD have given music lovers a rare gift with this recording. It is mysterious, passionate, elegant, grand, heavenly, intoxicating and down to earth all at the same time. How does one begin to describe absolute musical and lyrical beauty. Beautiful Darkness is that description.
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