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About Shape Of Light
Product Description Award winning flute player Jeff Ball continues to explore the boundaries of the Native American Flute on his new album, The Shape of Light, along with guest artists Arvel Bird & Peter Phippen. Jeff plays the flute in a traditional style amid a tapestry of other instruments including cello, violin, piano & acoustic guitar; all of which are joined by an instrument new to the percussive family called a Hang. This is Jeff's seventh album & is not to be missed. Review According to Ted Natale, the idea behind the tune "The Shape of Light" is that everything we see is because of light reflected off it, but we seldom realize that our perception of what we are looking at is strongly shaped by our moods and emotions. --Ted Natale Jeff was born and raised in Rockville, Maryland, and is still a resident of that state. He comes primarily from a Scotch-Irish heritage with "according to family legend, a few drops of Indian blood, just enough to help me play wood-flute." Jeff grew up listening to both pop music and smooth jazz, but after he went to a powwow and heard a Native American flute player, I couldn't get enough of it. Ball got his first flute in 1992. I knew some Indian groups in Virginia and they introduced me to a Choctaw flute player named Windtamer who gave me some valuable tips early on. I read everything I could get my hands on about the Native American culture and history. At Indian gatherings I listened to the stories; I joined them in sweat lodges; and I got some sage advice from a Chipewa medicine man." "We don't play traditional American Indian songs," Jeff says. "When the Indians first started making flutes hundreds of years ago, they were only used by young men for courting. They would go out into the woods and listen to the wind in the trees or the birds singing; and each flute-player came up with his own music to play for the woman of his choice. That individuality is the tradition I am following. There is no point in copying what others are doing. We want to create a new path in our genre. This isn't our ancestor's flute music. This is American wood-flute music for the modern age." Other American Indian images are part of the music on the new album. Drawing in Embers conjures up a native road-man conducting a ceremony that includes using the fire s charcoal to draw enlightening images for the participants. In Buffalo Skin paints a portrait of Native Americans covering themselves and their homes in buffalo skin years ago, but now listeners of native music experience that same feeling of warmth and protectiveness when wrapped in these sounds. People in the Old West were captured in pictures taken by early photographers right at a time when the natural l --Jeff Ball "Join a soul-stirring journey with Jeff Ball and his gathering of talented friends and family creating introspective melodies with new and ancient musical instruments. Meditate, surrounded by a natural display of pure organic sound using no synthesizers. The artists play the Native American flute in the traditional manner, yet what makes these songs exceptional is the contemporary arrangement. The traditional flute is highlighted against an international palette of instruments creating innovative music for your journey into contemplation. " --Lisa Marie Swayne
