Jordan De La Sierra – Gymnosphere: Song Of The Rose
Jordan De La Sierra
Gymnosphere: Song Of The Rose
x2 LP
Unity Records – 1977
01. Music For Gymnastics (24:23)
02. Temple Of Aesthetic Action (24:56)
03. Music For Devotional Pastimes (26:52)
04. Sphere Of Sublime Dances (29:39)
Thanks to RS alumni John Davis for passing this rip along. New Age solo piano droppings. Be sure to drop by is fantastic Tonal Bride blog. It’s packed full of random LP goodies..everything from Hans – Joachim Roedelius to folk music from around the world.
thanks! been looking for this one.
those who dont know, check out my crystal vibrations blog.
more new age stuff, other unity records titles as well.
http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com
made something like a rough remix of the first track from this last night for the hell of it:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m3s2k9
ha!
I love the book that comes in the box with this album. “Man’s Secret Quality: Space”. The liner notes never land, no technical talk of tunings, just ‘sublime blending & illumination’. Young & Zazeela only mentioned in the ‘thank you’ list, along with several hundred other people.
Recorded by Stephen Hill at 1750 Arch & mixed at Studio Orban, like Geoffrey Chandler’s ‘Starscapes’.
mp3’s lack tags for 3 of the 4 tracks, here’s the titles if anyone wants them
I. Music for gymnastics.
II. Temple of aesthetic action.
III. Music for devotional pastimes.
IV. Sphere of sublime dances.
forgot, the back cover actually says ‘Music From The Hearts of Space’ directly beneath the album title… I hope someone out there with a stash of cassettes of the pre-syndicated 70’s episodes on KPFA can find the time to digitize those. fond memories of listening to that show in junior high in the 80’s has made me awfully curious about what they were playing in the 70’s
in fact, when listening to this album, i really heard no evidence of just tuned piano at all!
i have some allaudin william mathieu albums kinda in this vein that are quite good.
(more world music influenced and the compositions are less static)
im gonna get around to posting them soon on my CV blog.
yeah I think for him ‘well-tuned’ just means putting everything through a really flanged out chorus pedal before it hits the reverb, but if the piano itself is tuned in anything but equal, you can’t hear it
in the booklet inside it says ‘music for the spatially expanded piano’ which is actually closer to the point, but it’s as if he couldn’t precisely make up his mind
side 4 of this makes for ok background music
Absolutely breathtaking. Thank you.
I also don’t get the “tuning” bit – it just sounds chorused, echoed, and reverbed to me. But frankly, I don’t care, because it’s an AWESOME piece of playing. Really remarkable work. As with Kieth Jarrett, you can “hear him think” in the music itself, and he’s “thinking” some great thoughts. It’s extremely sensitive playing – he’s doing a lot of listening as he plays – it’s not just coming out of his hands.
If you play piano, this is very much a required listen.
I still have my copy of the original Unity LP, which I bought way back in 1982. The sound quality has deteriorated a lot so I’m very pleased to have this incredibly spacious music in digital format.
Thanks.
Have this wonderful LP in collection and I like to advice people interested in similar music to visit my blog: “Journey to the source ov everythinG” enjoy!!!
The original recordings were played back and rerecorded at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. They did a ton of test runs to get this right. Nothing else out there sounds like this record, but some of the early Harold Budd records and the Eugene Bowen record with Budd on have the same sense of space.
Nice to see so much discussion about this great rare album (Gymnosphere:Song of the Rose). But in its description I see “x2 LP” and 4 tracks (and their titles) with track times that’d only fit on 2 records.
My album is one record, just 2 tracks, one track per side, and with no titles, and no insert.
Was there a double album of this? Strange, either I have a different version (the first half?) or I’m confused. If there’s a 2nd album, is it as good as the 1st one? I bet it is.
Another quite good record (not a cd, maybe someday) is Big Sur Tapestry, by Charles Lloyd and Georgia Kelly. Flute and harp. Very relaxing and at times pleasantly mild surreal/trippy due to nice sonic effects. The second side is one track, just flute, a bit wandering, almost as nice.
Charles Lloyd also has an earlier album Morning Sunrise, one entire side is the title track,
sort of new jazz/new age, very good, but quite trippy/intense, able to evoke memories of ‘that realm’.
I have one of the original double albums; got it from Rose – the actual person he created this masterpiece for (Rose was the sister of my ex-husband). Loved the album back in the 70’s and still do. Found it very transcending.
nice and pure music
[…] références personnelles que je suggère de découvrir au travers quatre albums classiques ici, là, encore ici et là, comme autant d’avant-goûts au concert du 1er […]
I love this music! it kind of has that mystic, haunting, and dire vibe that Luciano Cilio created but not as memorable. does anyone have a picture of this guy?
I have been searching for this music “The Song of the Rose” by Jorsan de la Sierra for the past 29 years! I used this music for massage in the 80s it never left my musical memory. I searched and rediscovered it sounds like a scratchy old LP but I will continue to listen to this marvelous piano scape
akin to… like Erik Satie who I also love
Available for download at:
http://archive.org/details/JordanDeLaSierraGymnosphere-SongOfTheRose
Would you consider re-uploading this? Also, what’s the difference between the Archive.org release, which has two untitled tracks, and this, which has four titled tracks?