Inner Peace – The Heart Sutra

We tend to view peace as creating peace in the world around us , The end of war and external conflicts, but our inner war , our inner sense of peace is a source of this outer chaos and often given less attention. This concert will focus on the practice of listening , listening to ourselves, to sound and to our inner life. Our sense of harmony and disharmony. To be aware of the sounds around us and the ones that need our attention , the sounds of our desires , connections to others, and making peace with our past, as a source of cultivating peace in the world around us.

The Heart Sutra is a poem of the Buddha , written 1500 years ago , a song that is used as a meditation to quiet the mind and make it receptive to something beyond thought, a song that can be sung everyday to reflect the internal world and to transform our external world.

This concert will be a combination of new and traditional music , acoustic and electronic music , and explore the reality of trying to find peace in a violent chaotic world and the struggle to find balance within it. The Heart Sutra will be the focus of the music , in spoken word and sung verse and musical traditions , harmonic and dissonant forces colliding as the sounds of the natural world , urban world and internal world. They are brought together in a composed work, and live performance, that travels through the classical traditions and the practice of listening as musical experience. Piano , Chinese Sheng, Singing Bowls , Electronics, live ensemble and natural field recordings will be used to create a musical experience and a type of spoken guided meditation where you may participate at home as you listen.

Join us for this hour of music , and let’s take this hour together to turn our attention to our inner lives and create balance for ourselves so we may share it and create both inner peace in ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.