Teslim (Tes-LEEM) is a Turkish word that means both "commit" and "surrender," It is also a musical term for a "recurring musical theme" in Turkish music. Like a character who appears in a sequel or a repeating line in a poem, the teslim invokes a feeling of returning home. For Flexer and Hegedus, creating this music has given them a deep sense of coming home both personally and musically.

These two composers have been profoundly moved and inspired by the power of traditional Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Jewish and Balkan musics. Flexer and Hegedus listen to, study and perform repertoire from these traditions with reverence and respect. In their work as composers, they are searching for their own voice - one that takes inspiration from tradition and follows where it leads.

They feel fortunate to have found in one another a kindred spirit who shares a common artistic vision. For them, the recurring theme, the teslim, is that the trust they have in one another musically has allowed them to both commit and surrender to their own individual voices, hopefully creating something larger than either one of them. It is their wish that this voice reaches into you and that you are inspired to continue the cycle of beauty and hope.

Musicians featured on Teslim:
Kaila Flexer - violin, viola
Gari Hegedus - lauoto, baglama, bulgari, divan, cura, lavta, oud, tarhu, frame drum, penny whistle
Shira Kammen and Julian Smedley - fiddles
Olov Johansson - nyckelharpa
Liza Wallace - harp

Stylishly contemplative with a twist of red hot active lava on top! That's the sound of this album. I wanted to reflect on the two constant movements within oneself, one inwards and the other outwards. I have attempted to capture the spirit of those subtle movements in this album.

With Coral Symphony, Sunbrella, Blue Petal Lake and Turquoise Beat, it's the introspective, looking within movement, then on towards an outward swing with Star Filter, French Lounge, Purplesse Oblige, Lava Lounge, Riviera Magenta and ending with a very socially interactive Cocktail Disco. Musical portrait of the self!

Et cetera is an album focusing on distance, solitude and death. It's inspired by surrealism and by the aim to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and realty".

L'Enigma Dell'Ora takes its title from a metaphysical painting by Giorgio De Chirico, and it's filled with an obsessive sense of ineluctability.

Vostok (East) is a Russian geophysical base in the Antarctic Australian territory. 89606 is the code number of the base. It represents icy loneliness and distance.

She Walks In Beauty brings the title of Byron's poem, and it's a tribute to the sweetness and melancholy of love.

Quieter moments, reflection, natural environments, a good book, a pulling listen. A continuing project to uncover the eddies of subtlety and unhurried expression, Cosh's new album, "PONDER", slowly meanders down the old trail in the woods - no rush, no agenda. Stopping here and there to take it all in, to pendulum between the whole and parts, letting pieces that fit together do so, and then taking them apart again to see if others might do so better.

PONDER is two albums in one... evocative and down-tempo describe the first half... Edgeless enough to not grab your attention too strongly from the book you are engrossed in while sipping tea. The second half is decidedly ambient, and almost entirely beatless, setting the imagination adrift, anticipating its return after letting it become witness - to itself, it's environment, its presence.

These two sides of Cosh's peaceful creative output are executed with skill and achieve a sense of space and curiosity which does not fail in drawing the listener deeply inside. Whether its staring out the window, on a couch in a dimly lit room, greeting the morning with coffee and sunlight, or even delighting in the details with headphones on, in the dark.... Take a couple of hours and just drift.

Mojo Radio went in to the studio to try to create an album the same way their musical influences did. That is, LIVE and full of passion. They weren't worried about polishing every note as long as they captured the emotion and energy of the song. This album does that by being a product of what can happen when you record a band "live" in the studio. Tracks weren't recorded one at a time, but together with all the members playing at the same time. Just like the great bands of yesterday did it. Mojo Radio feels this produces a more organic and original result.

The songs on the self titled album are varied. The album kicks off with a blues based harmonica instrumental (WELCOME), but soon leads to catchy up beat rocker (HIGH HORSE). There are heavy tracks like THROW YOUR HAT IN THE RING, and also slower songs like DREAMING. All of these center around the blues influences and rock legends of the 1970s. Mojo Radio's goal was to make an album influenced by the past but right up to date.

Easy Sixes represents an evolutionary step forward for Industrial Sound Bank. Taking roughly a year to assemble, this album started as a few melodies strung together in a few free minutes during a bachelor party weekend in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Initially slated to be one long song, the melodies and hooks each began to take on a life of their own; when all the composition and mixing was completed, that one song had grown into nine individual tracks.

Filled with cinematic moments and a fury of blended genres, Easy Sixes is an album that's meant to be listened to over and over again.

Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer in his day. All of the three-part works on this album were originally written for organ and have been transposed to keys that better fit the range of the guitar.

Many thanks to Graham Ranft (Australia) for his transcriptions of BWV 527, 530, and 646, and to Anton Hoeger (Germany) for the arrangements of BWV 586 and 525.

Reminiscence is an album with solo acoustic guitar pieces. When I was a teenager, taking classical guitar lessons and discovering acoustic steel-string guitar, guitarist Michael Hedges was my absolute hero. The sounds that Michael Hedges managed to produce from just one acoustic guitar during the 1980's were both unprecedented and awe-inspiring. Many people couldn't believe his solo albums Breakfast in the Field and Aerial Boundaries were recorded without overdubs.

The music on this album Reminiscence is like a suite with five movements on solo acoustic guitar. The pieces were written between 1994 and 2003 and I tried to create my own magic from what I'd heard on the albums of Michael Hedges and other so-called finger style guitarists like Alex de Grassi.

This album kicks off with a rather virtuoso prelude and then continues with Reminiscence: a work inspired by memories of my childhood. (While composing this piece, I could almost hear the children's voices on the schoolyard in my mind.) The Peasant Wedding is a lively jig (an Irish dance) and depicts festivities and people dancing from the past. Avond in Schaddeberge is a Dutch title meaning Evening in (the village of) Schaddeberge. A friend of mine unsuccessfully tried to find Schaddeberge on Google Maps, until I told him the village name was made-up. I had used the name in a children's story I was writing. The suite closes with Finale, a rhythmic piece with strumming and percussive effects.

If you're a guitar enthusiast you can download and play the guitar TABs of this album from MusicaNeo: http://emielstopler.musicaneo.com/sheetmusic/?cat=4599

Breath of Life is a compilation of melodic, sometimes haunting, meditative and relaxing, solo piano compositions. Minimalist in nature, with melancholic overtones, Breath of Life summons the mind to slow down, relax, and contemplate. A blending of new age and classical, each track has structure, yet within that structure lies subtle improvisation.

"Song for Linda" was written for a much beloved niece whose flame burned out much before its time. The inspiration to create this CD came from her.

In keeping with the theme of a hybrid image of music and food, this Musical Banquet is more a buffet than a meal of 'courses' with courtly Elizabethan dances next to Spanish romantic scenes and an operatic classical period overture offering musical tastes from spicy and sprightly to subtle and complex.

This special Magnatune-exclusive version of Musical Banquet is a combination of public domain recordings from two of my CDs, Musical Banquet and Renaissance Masters and Latin Romantics.

Full liner notes can be obtained by downloading the artwork.