In the final few months of 2006 I was again back in Cape Town.\u00a0 During these years I was traveling back and forth fairly frequently in order to see and spend time with my mother, whose health was declining but whose spirit was certainly not.\u00a0 And it was a real pleasure to share with her the musical stories unfolding in my life, on which I kept her updated.\u00a0 She adored the experience with the giant tortoise and never tired of hearing me recount it.\u00a0 There was a baby grand piano in the\u00a0 lounge of the retirement village where she and my step-father lived in a garden cottage, and I played there on several occasions, feeling her smile and seeing her pleasure at the return of music so centrally into my life.\u00a0 These were special times.<\/p>\n
During this visit I also reviewed the materials which had been recorded n my piano in Thonon-les-bains over the past few months, and found that there was in fact sufficient to produce a second CD.\u00a0 So the time was productive with many fruitful musical encounters and sharing.<\/p>\n
On one of my visits to a bookshop, browsing the shelves, a particular book jumped out at me as they tend to do.\u00a0 It was placed horizontally on top of the others, and had not been filed away vertically.\u00a0 It\u2019s title clearly visible \u2018Music and the Soul\u2019 by Kurt Leland was enough for me to go home with it and get lost in its contents for days.\u00a0 It provided me with exactly what I was looking for at that moment.\u00a0 Answers to the question why some music touched people in different ways affecting some people and not others.\u00a0 I appreciated the analytical framework which this book provided, as the author, a composer himself, had classified certain music according to their potential impact on our different energy centres.\u00a0 It was not, however, a simplistic differentiation of musical works according to chakras.\u00a0 It was a sophisticated exploration based on subtle definitions, and with the extensive listing of diverse musical works provided a focus for intentional listening to the large and eclectic collection of music, which I had built up over the years.<\/p>\n
The material in \u2018Music and the Soul’ provoked a series of questions for me about the nature of my own music.\u00a0 I was fascinated and sure that Kurt Leland was someone I needed to meet. I went online, found his contact address and initiated a correspondence.\u00a0 He was based in Boston, an author of several interesting books and well versed in the metaphysical questions I myself had earlier come across.\u00a0 And he seemed interested enough in my \u2018case\u2019 to reply with a lengthy email.\u00a0 As this exchange took place I began to feel that I might now need to consider a visit to the States.\u00a0 My first visit. The timing was right!<\/p>\n
So it was that Ronald and I decided on a trip together for early March 2007.\u00a0 I would have a series of private sessions with Kurt Leland in Boston to explore music and \u2018my soul\u2019.\u00a0 And Ronald would have a series of meetings at the UN in New York to further the Geneva Declaration.\u00a0 Since his return from Angola, Ronald was coordinating this Global Initiative on the Reduction of Armed Violence for Development.<\/p>\n
After a weekend together in Hull, across the water by ferry from Boston, I then spent a week in Jamaica Plains staying at a guest house around the corner from Kurt Leland.\u00a0 We met four times for sessions lasting several hours.\u00a0 As I climbed the wooden stairs of a ramshackle clapboard house in a run-down neighborhood I knew this was to be an out of the ordinary encounter.<\/p>\n
What had been clear from his writings and the research I had done prior to this visit was the role of an energetic being called \u2018Charles\u2019 \u00a0and the role this Being plays in Kurt\u2019s life and work.\u00a0 And it was to Charles that most of my questions would be directed.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if there was a relationship between \u2018Charles\u2019 and the River Charles which runs through Boston.<\/p>\n
Finding myself in his shabby, book-lined and quite cluttered apartment, we sat across\u00a0 from each other in a very small study.\u00a0 There was a huge, ancient illuminated book open against the wall.\u00a0 I assumed it was of spiritual writings but did not ask.\u00a0 In one of the sessions I recall Kurt stressing the importance of spiritual discipline and practice and was acutely aware of the absence in my own life at that time of such practice and devotion.<\/p>\n
I left a copy of the CD \u2018Elements\u2019 at the conclusion of our introductory session and also another containing recent recorded material, as yet untitled.\u00a0 The range of burning questions around which I was seeking guidance included asking for an energetic \u2018reading\u2019 of my music.\u00a0 Which energy centres are touched by the music coming through me? Can I become more conscious in working with this?\u00a0 I had a sense that individuals may respond differently…\u00a0 I was wondering if my music could be used in specific settings, like psychiatric clinics, prisons…\u00a0 What are the influences coming through in my music?\u00a0 Am I an instrument and should I be preparing for these transmissions in any particular way?\u00a0 Many, many questions.<\/p>\n
At the start of the second session we sat in his music library, and Kurt had made notes on his listening of the CDs I\u2019d left with him the day before.\u00a0 \u2018Elements\u2019 began with my interpretation of Arvo Part\u2019s \u2018Fur Alina<\/em>\u2019, and it was clear Kurt really appreciated it. \u201cThis IS you\u201d? he insisted, and listening again to it I was aware of the extraordinary vibration and truly beautiful quality which was present in the recording of my playing.<\/p>\n And so, I was treated to an indepth reading of each of the tracks on both CDs. \u00a0In fact as some of the tracks on the second CD are long, there were subtle differences within them, where Kurt indicated the frequencies in the music moved up and down, touching different energy centres.\u00a0 It was amazing and detailed feedback and I was gratified.\u00a0 He said that in general he found that only violin strings emit the frequency that touches seventh and eighth chakras.\u00a0 But there were some moments where that was reached in my music, certainly in the playing of Arvo Part\u2019s beautiful piece and in some of my own intuitive spontaneous music which followed.\u00a0 What was particularly affirming was his reading of the music on the second untitled CD.\u00a0 Kurt found \u2018radiance\u2019 in quite a number of places and his suggestion for a title, \u201cCalling in the Light\u201d,\u00a0 was what it became.<\/p>\n I also wanted to know more about Antonio Centi, the composer and choirmaster in Rome and why I had been introduced to this particular past life in such detail.\u00a0 Was there something more I needed to pursue in relation to this experience?\u00a0 Was there a need for me to return to Rome, to study the manuscripts…?<\/p>\n Charles\u2019s response was clear, precise and left me in no doubt.<\/p>\n The purpose of being shown a past life in the the detail with which I had been introduced to Antonio Centi is not that one needs to return to that life and immerse oneself again in that experience.\u00a0 Rather, past life experiences are revealed to us in order to remind us of what we already know, what we have already lived and experienced.\u00a0 Our past lives can be thought of as a series of beads or pearls strung together.\u00a0 What is important is not the specific past life, but the thread that links them together.<\/p>\n In my case, I had been grappling since the music had returned to me with my lack of theoretical knowledge of music, my inability to \u2018read\u2019 music, how to classify my music when questioned by trained musicians.\u00a0 The question \u2018what genre of music do you play?\u2019 got me flustered.\u00a0 I had sought several teachers, a couple of sessions with a jazz piano teacher, a couple of sessions with a classical teacher… Wondered if I needed to work at my technique etc… seeking guidance from outside of myself.<\/p>\n The purpose of my meeting Antonio Centi, as that earlier life of mine in Rome, was to show me that as a choirmaster and composer I already have the musical knowledge.\u00a0 Having lived a life as composer I have the theoretical knowledge I need and can draw on this intuitively, when I am in a state of coherence and connection to myself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My first visit to the USA to follow up with an author\/composer who had written ‘Music and the Soul’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":373,"template":"","categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434","episode_posts","type-episode_posts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-part-2-music-and-my-soul"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode_posts"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}