Four Shakuhachi Meditations

Andrew MacGregor is an Australian shakuhachi player who studied with shakuhachi masters Riley Lee in Australia and Tadashi Tajima in Japan. He offers on this exquisite CD his own compositions based on classical Honkyoku shakuhachi pieces and Japanese folk songs and lullabies. For example, he starts his first piece, "Imayô," with "Shika no Tône," one of the most important and known pieces of the shakuhachi repertoire, and continues with a Japanese samurai folk song, "Kuroda Bushi." He is accompanied by vocals, harmonic singing, keyboards, texture sounds (including the sound of didgeridoo), cello, and clarinets. MacGregor shows a great mastery of the shakuhachi, as well as a meditative character that deeply transpires in his music. Highly recommended. ~ Bruno Deschênes, Rovi