Musician

tel/fax: 01730 895635 email: info@russell-stone.co.uk web: www.russell-stone.co.uk

After 30 years working in show business as a singer and writer, from 1995 I took time out to take stock and make some major changes. Subsequent to my MA in Integrative Counselling and Transpersonal Psychotherapy, I have experienced a slow development within myself that seems to seek expression with other musicians. To that end, I have been approaching those musicians whom I felt may be simpatico to working with Sounding. The first experience of working with Sounding as a performance medium was with the Australian guitarist Mark Johns in April 2003. Feedback from a small audience indicated that there was a strong connection with the improvisational music that was produced on that occasion. (Mark has sadly, for me, now returned to Australia to live. Mark was in much demand as a session and touring musician and has just finished a world tour with Ray Davies.) Since then I have sat and sounded with Mahendra Gunasinghe (tablas), and Gisomatilaka Silva (violinist) from the Ceylon Radio Orchestra in Sri-Lanka in September, 2004; with Rajesh David, an Indian classical musician and singer and Nada Yoga teacher, at the Manadala Asharm in South Wales in September 2004; and with Shiuli Subaya, a teacher of Kundalini and Nada Yoga teacher who is training in karnatic music herself at The Bhavan Centre, in December 2004. The startling results of these have led me to realise that anything is possible. I thus embarked on a series of Sounding events beginning in 2005 working at the Wishing Well in Petersfield with musicians and singers, such as Bajaly Suso, a kora player and singer from the Gambia. Bajaly has inherited the tradition of the kora from his father, his father's father, and so on from the first known kora player, his ancestor Moussa Suso. This is in the tradition of the Griots, the hereditary musicians, storytellers and artists of the West African Mandinko Empire. Bajaly's run of performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2000 showed his worth as a great musician and performer with a magnetic presence. Bajaly's sublime singing and kora playing is simultaneously uplifting and relaxing - true sustenance for the soul. Other performance Soundings were with Simon Ford playing crystal and Tibetan bowls and Rob Paddock, a South African, playing percussion. 2006 saw me entering into a new phase. After a long absence my muse returned, regenerated in part by the possibilities revealed in the above performances. While I was involved in developing musical forms and ideas that appeared in this process, I was also engaging in daily yoga practice and breathing techniques. I believe that in addition to aiding the compositional process, the combination of Yoga and Sounding brings a quality to the voice that while difficult to define (in that it can mean different things to different people - including myself), it is unmistakable. This has found expression through my work with Susan Nares, Sarah Verney Caird and Alexander Massey in the group Four, and in my collaboration with Craig Pruess in At-Ma and the CD 'Gathering of hte Tribes'.Performances, Soundings and recording are now regular features, and more information about these and downloadable tracks can be found on the At-Ma page, and the Schedule.