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Executive Producer: Lucile Grieder

Taos Mountain Meditations

Taos holds a special place in my heart and Taos is particularly beautiful in June, the month of this album’s original release.  Yes, one can still anticipate the occasional out-of-season snow flurry, but the trees and flowers are in full bloom, the 350-year-old irrigation ditches are flowing with snowmelt from Taos Mountain and the blue skies and desert views stretch into infinity.

Paul Livingstone (sitar), Pete Jacobson (cello) and I originally planned to make this recording in the Lou Harrison House in Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.  Pete and Paul had given several intimate concerts in the space and they felt the adobe walls did a superb job handling the exotic acoustics of their instruments.  I knew Mr. Harrison late in his life, and I am a fan of his music as you know from Canticle 3 (Smoke & Mirrors percussion ensemble).  In fact, I played that recording just this morning before I wrote you this note.   Scheduling (and summer Joshua Tree temperatures when Paul and Pete and I were available to make this recording together) conspired to send us to Taos, where we recorded during Pete’s and Paul’s Southwest tour for several Navajo communities in Arizona and New Mexico.  Our repertoire changed in response to our recording location and much of this album speaks directly to the love Paul and Pete have for the people, the mountains, air, sagebrush, cottonwood trees and music scene in Northern New Mexico.

Paul and Pete offer soulful musical meditations on beauty and tranquility; helping the listener or yoga practitioner balance his or her inner world.  Pete and Paul take inspiration from the Hindustani musical tradition and from Paul’s teacher and mentor Ravi Shankar who collaborated so eloquently with Yehudi Menuhin on violin and helped to popularize Hindustani music in the West.  Pete and Paul also draw inspiration from American jazz improvisation.  You may have heard Paul before on his several classical Hindustani or “ragajazz” crossover recordings, and Yarlung’s Sangam release in 2022. Pete is a cello rock star, whom you may know from his tours and recordings with Rhye, Dr. Dre, Kamasi Washington and the West Coast Get Down, The Talking Strings, Quartetto Fantastico and Aux Cerna.  You may also know him from film and television, including in The Walking Dead, Motherland and The Twighlight Zone. Paul and Pete have performed on GRAMMY® winning records by Ricky Kej, Ozomatli and Quetzal.

As people who have traveled there or heard Sangam already,Taos evokes magic, mystery, art, multiculturalism and majesty.  Home to the Tiwa-speaking Red Willow people of Taos Pueblo for more than a thousand years, Taos is also home to Spanish settlers from 1600, who founded the Spanish village of Taos in 1795. The area inspired some of the 20th Century’s most creative artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Ansel Adams and D.H. Lawrence.

The native Red Willow people, the Tiwa Indians in Taos, practice a hybrid religion today, incorporating the conflicting tenants of their native religion with Roman Catholicism superimposed by the Spanish padres over hundreds of years.  If one asks a devout Tiwa friend about the conflicts, he or she may shrug and may comment that one can follow both truths.  This ability for people in Taos to incorporate disparate theologies and world views will help us understand the multiple spiritual inspirations for the music on this recording.  Just one example: Sunhawk Sandoval, the man honored in the title for track 13, was a close personal friend of Joseph Imhof’s, the man who built the lofty adobe-walled studio where we made this recording.  Sunhawk was fierce and frightening to people who didn’t know him well.  Even though he was Imhof’s friend and regular subject in Imhof’s paintings and lithographs, Sunhawk was known to be a sorcerer, a deeply spiritual practitioner who blended Tiwa religion with black magic and could (and did) use it regularly.  I never met him in person, but friends said he lost nothing of his piercing fierceness in old age.  Sunhawk built the fireplace and created the sand painting in the building where we recorded, and he often slept there as the Imhofs’ guest.  Paul and Pete channeled the feeling of Sunhawk’s energy during this recording.  Each of these tracks has a similar deeply connected and personal story.

A thousand thanks to executive producer Lucile Grieder, with whom it is such a pleasure to imagine new albums and make them reality.  Our friend Geraint Smith contributed the photography in our album and liner notes.  Please take a look!

Repertoire:

1 Dance of the Triangle
2 The Shape of Imagination
3 Sweater Patterns
4 Boxes of Crayons
5 Snow Flurries in June
6 Ripples on a Pond
7 Why Trees make Music
8 Pot Creek
9 Sunrise
10 Nacimiento
11 Ascent
12 Astral Projection
13 Sunhawk
14 The Smell of Rocky Mountain Rain
15 Cottonwood Seeds Blowing in the Wind
16 Blue Lake
17 Evening Light Dancing
18 Corn Pollen
19 Mantra
20 Rio Pueblo
21 Rio Lucero
22 Red Willow

I look forward to hearing what you think about this music.  Listening tracks are available here.

–Bob Attiyeh, producer

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