Jazz News Barbara Markay releases new CD Shambhala Dance

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Barbara Markay releases new CD Shambhala Dance On her third album, SHAMBHALA

DANCE, Barbara Markay offers music to enhance the journey towards spiritual

enlightenment – sounds for the body, mind and spirit. SHAMBHALA DANCE blends

world-beat grooves, sultry flamenco guitar, violin tinged with Middle Eastern

influences, occasional new age vocals, and a wide variety of other sounds

including pop-oriented electric guitar and ethnic percussion from around the

world."I try to create music that will help awaken all of us to the calling of

the universal rhythmic pulse," explains Barbara. "Shambhala represents the

guidance for humanity. There is this wonderful, flowing, positive,

totally-organized energy from shambhala that nurtures our whole progression and

evolution. That rhythm of life is like a dance to me, and it inspired this

music."SHAMBHALA DANCE went to #3 on the national NEW AGE REPORTER charts. The

seven songs – ranging in length from seven to nine-and-a-half-minutes – were

written, arranged and produced by Markay, who also plays keyboards and sings on

the three vocal tracks. She is joined by Alberto de Almar (Alicia Keys, Keiko

Matsui, Doug Cameron) on flamenco and electric guitars, Eric Gorfain (Grant Lee

Phillips, Lisa Lynne, Lowen & Navarro) on violin, Tim May (Stan Getz, Les

McCann, Michael Feinstein, Lionel Ritchie, Sarah Brightman) on electric guitar,

Joseph Lecuona (Jon Anderson, Judy Collins) on vocals, among others.Markay

brings a wealth of musical experience to the project. She graduated from

prestigious Juilliard College, had salsa dance hits in Europe, wrote and

performed a musical comedy revue in Miami Beach and New York City, sang backup

with Bruce Willis and his blues band, wrote arrangements for the Saturday Night

Live Band, did synthesizer programming on a Carly Simon album and the Michael

Jackson "Bad" video, co-wrote-and-produced an album for Joseph Lecuona, and

composed music for India’s revered spiritual teacher Sathya Sai Baba."I wanted

the music on this album to be entertaining, but I did create it with a higher

purpose," explains Markay. "If you simply sway to the rhythms, that can be

enough. But I think of this music as meditation with movement. I tried to

create a musical atmosphere of intense, vital emotions that are sensual and

pulsing, but also meditative at the same time. In addition, I wanted the music

to exude a healing energy."Barbara created the bulk of the music on the album

on keyboards. "I left improvisational sections open for the other instruments –

the violin, flamenco guitar and electric guitars. I wanted to use the violin to

communicate to the listener in ways that were different than what they might

hear in classical music. I fell in love with the flamenco guitar sound three

years ago when I visited Spain and heard flamenco guitarists in a club in

Seville."The CD closes with a seven-minute version of the traditional Sanskrit

chant "The Gayatri." It begins and ends with Sathya Sai Baba chanting. In

between, the four lines of the chant are explored in different ways musically.

"Each line is meaningful to me so I wanted to spotlight each phrase." Markay

first heard the chant in India at Sai Baba's ashram where she was asked to be

the musical director for their annual Christmas play which included composing

music for the event.Barbara was born and raised on Long Island, New York, in

Rockville Center. She began taking piano lessons when she was four. When she

was ten, she auditioned and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Juilliard

School of Music's Preparatory Division. The following year she also began

attending the Manhattan School of Music to study violin. For three summers as a

teenager she won scholarships to the Chatauqua Institute for the Arts in upstate

New York. At 17, Barbara spent the summer touring southern Italy as a violinist

with the American Festival Orchestra and playing piano with their chamber music

group.Markay went on to attend the College Division of Juilliard where she

graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in composition. She entered college

as a piano major, but realized she was more enamored with writing music. As

part of her college studies, she was writing dissonant, atonal music.

Eventually, after so many years of concentrating on classical repertoire, she

began listening to pop music (The Eagles, Sting, Prince, Annie Lennox, Phil

Collins) and started composing in the pop genre.After graduation Barbara formed

The Girl Scouts, a group of women singers featuring five-part harmony and

singing Markay's songs. At a performance at Rykers Island Women’s Prison, tunes

like "Vibrator Blues" and "Women in Jail" incited inmates to rush the stage and

guards to draw weapons, although a fullscale riot was narrowly avoided. Markay

continued to write humorously-risqu? material for her next group, Little Lulu

and The Humpers. Their show, a rock musical revue, was sold out for two shows

each night for two months in Miami Beach, Florida. The revue relocated to New

York City and played at the famous Half Note Club.Markay began recording

original pop music with salsa-dance influences. Performing under her own name

with her own band, she toured Europe extensively which led to a record deal

with WEA International. The label released the single "It's Alright" which went

to #17 on Billboard magazine's European pop charts (the song also was released

in Asia and South America). The next year she had another hit in France on the

Musicdisc label with "I Don’t Want To Be A Zombie" which went to #2 on the

dance charts in that country."After I returned to New York City, I met my first

meditation teacher in 1985 and it completely changed the personal and musical

path I was on." Barbara recorded her first album, CHANGE TO COME. The music was

pop-oriented, but the lyrics, on songs such as "Woman of Light" and "Wake Up and

Live," were beginning to show the spiritual evolution she was going through. She

also started listening to Ravi Shankar and gospel groups such as Reverend Milt

Brunson and the Mississippi Mass Choir. In addition, Barbara worked as an

assistant to Leon Pendarvis (a well-known arranger for acts such as Eric

Clapton, Whitney Houston and George Duke) which included programming

synthesizers and other studio work. Pendarvis wrote additional music at the

beginning and end of the Michael Jackson video for "Bad," produced by Quincy

Jones and directed by Martin Scorcese, and Markay did synth programming on the

project as well as on Carly Simon's COMING AROUND AGAIN album.Markay moved to

Los Angeles where she performed with Bruce Willis, singing backup with his

blues group The Accelerators. She also wrote, recorded and released her second

album, the world-pop-Latin-jazz HEART LIKE A SONG. "I was listening to a lot of

Buena Vista Social Club, Los Van Van and Sidestepper at the time." The album

continued to explore spiritual themes with songs such as "All Is One." In

addition, Barbara co-wrote, co-produced and performed on the recording

CANCIONES ROMANTICAS by Joseph Lecuona, part of a legendary Cuban musical

family (his mother Margarita Lecuona, whom Joseph performed with, was a famous

singer-songwriter who wrote the Desi Arnaz tune "Babalu;" and his great uncle

Ernesto Lecuona composed the classic "Malaguena"). For two years Markay was

invited to sing "The Great Invocation" at a gathering at Mount Shasta

celebrating the Tibetan Wesak Festival after she put this new age prayer to

music (and may have been the first person to ever do so) and recorded it as a

single. In the past few years Barbara has been influenced more and more by

world music artists including Jai Uttal, Sheila Chandra, Chebi Sabbah, Buena

Vista Social Club, Coyote Oldman, Caetano Veloso, Natacha Atlas, Angelique

Kidjo, and Irakere.Regarding her SHAMBHALA DANCE album, Markay says, "My intent

was to create music that would give the listener a boost in the direction of

higher consciousness, whether they know it or not."source :: jazz press service

- http://home.nestor.minsk.by/jazz/news/2005/06/0103.html

 

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