FLOW was created out of friendship, a love of music and a bit of fun, when four musicians, Fiona Joy Hawkins, Jeff Oster, Lawrence Blatt and Will Ackerman decided several years ago to meet up, each with their own compositions and then sit down and see what happened
What happened is now a matter for history; after playing to a packed audience with standing ovations at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in 2017, a new sound was born, that of a sophisticated, contemporary soul style new age music, created in an almost improv manner.
This second album Promise takes the sound they created with their first release FLOW in 2018 to another level, with a richer depth of feeling adding a maturity to the sound, which offers a very different listening experience to their first recording.
They are joined by Tom Eaton and Jeff Haynes on several of the tracks, also adding a lovely rich depth to the pieces.
Guitar followed with flugelhorn, piano and a delicate balance of percussion creates a lovely, hopeful, freshness to Promise, the title track of the work and a perfect piece to begin what is a very interesting and enjoyable forty minutes of pleasure.
Adrift at Sea is a catchy combination of music bringing with the tang of the salt laden sea air, the idle relaxation of a day floating in a small boat on the sea, the haunting notes of the gulls as they drift, delicately balanced on a current of air. Dreamy, delightful and most relaxing.
Capturing that moment of the day when the light is fading fast, the shadows of the night drawing ever closer, perhaps a moment to reflect, Last Light, is a soft, very subtle coming together of emotion, before moving into a very up-tempo beat which certainly shakes off the reflective element. Terrific and most unexpected.
Just to mix things up a little bit more, Blue Umbrella brings in a deliciously sensuous feeling, as guitar and piano mesh together in seamless melody before the flugelhorn softly joins in, adding richness to the emotion. An intriguing pause presents a change of emotion and tempo which explodes into a full-bodied soundwave, courtesy of Jeff Oster’s’ skills.
Memoire du Dome concludes an immensely enjoyable experience with a dainty and yet robust piece, which captures the attention as any finale piece should, as it has a little bit of everything wrapped within the composition.
Once again, this immensely talented groups of musicians, have demonstrated a wonderful intermeshing of instruments, emotions and styles to create music of a very high standing and in doing so, raising the increasingly high bar of the genre known as New Age Music.
