Davis Shea is an American, Melbourne-based experimental composer who explores combinations of electronic and acoustic music, with elements of traditional music from both Eastern and Western cultures. Meditations is his eight-movement (each about eight minutes long), serene and contemplative suite, recorded live by an octet led by Shea, whose acoustic piano is at the centre.
This suite is based on the universal experience of meditation practice. The suite can be used for meditation or for reflecting on the realities of life at times characterised by chaos and growing violence, and how we can accept the world as it is, with all of the internal conflicts and release and rise of tension. But Meditations, first and foremost, is about the practice, past and present, of deep listening, both personal and in connection to all the things around us that are not us.
Shea commented that this suite is «closer to my personal experiences of meditation, with a collage of ideas passing through me, returning to the breath or vocal tones, distractions, physical pain, internal quiet, increased listening and sensory focus that moves from imagined, real and virtual connections with the technology».
This suite expands on Shea’s ideas first explored on his Rituals album (Room40, 2015), and employs traditional instruments that induce deep, harmonic thoughts like the Chinese ancient free-reed mouth organ with bamboo pipes, sheng (played by Dr. Zheng-Ting Wang), bowling bowls, and soft, resonant instruments, like vibraphones.
The suite incorporates texts from the popular Mahayana Buddhist Heart Sutra, produced long after Buddha’s death and meant to be chanted or sung as a ritual and personal meditation. But Shea emphasised the universal circulation and relevance of this ancient text. Accordingly, Shea stresses the communal spirit of the music, played in a shared space, with the musicians listening closely to each other, transforming the practice of meditation and realising the Buddhist concept of wisdom beyond wisdom into a thoughtful, deeply immersive listening experience.
Eyal Hareuveni
Zheng-Ting Wang (sheng), Holly Dunn (electric guitar), Hamish Larkman (sampling, spatialization), Gully Thompson (singing bowls, vibraphone), Steve Magnusson (midi guitar, Ebows), Pat Telfer (vibraphone), Dylan Foley (celtic text, spoken voice), David Shea (electromagnetic piano, piano, crystal singing bowls, voice, acoustic guitars, spoken text)
