In 1883 there was a man, named Claude, who lived in France in a house very near a barn that was once an old cider mill, with beautiful gardens where he grew flowers gathered according to their colors, and he left them to grow rather freely. Claude had many projects and many friends with interests ranging from literature, affairs of the world, color theories and collecting Japanese woodcut prints to botany, horticulture and nature. And he liked to paint.
In the present day there are two people, named Dudley and Dean, who once visited that same house and old cider mill with the beautiful ponds and gardens. They have a garden of their own at their home, also with rhododendrons, azaleas, irises, lilies and a willow tree, plus a pond nearby. They have many projects and many friends with interests ranging from healing music, chakras, affirmations and relationships to environmental issues. And they like to make music.
Dean and Dudley Evenson share many parallels with Claude Monet, they break barriers of their respective times, they explore new ways of thinking, they love the outdoors and nature, which inspires their art. Dean was motivated to explore new ways of thinking because of what he learned studying Monet in his early years, leading to new forms of art and music. Monet explored quick studies in color and working outdoors, and he inspired others to do so too, resulting in something new, the “Impressionist” movement. The Evensons’ exploration of inspirational, relaxing, and positive instrumental music also evolved into something new, the “New Age” movement.
At this house by the old cider mill, long ago, Claude would meet with artists, writers, intellectuals and politicians from France, England, Japan and the United States. There he was free to paint, and there he weathered the storm of The Great War, which has since become known as World War I. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny. White water lilies local to France were planted along with imported cultivars from South America and Egypt, resulting in a range of colors including yellow, blue and white lilies that turned pink with age. The old cider mill served as his painting studio and salon, there were orchards and the surrounding landscape which offered many suitable motifs for Claude's work. Fascinated with the effects of light and the juxtaposition of colors with each other, Claude would find his inspiration in these places for many years.
His father had wanted him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business, but Claude wanted to become an artist. Claude's ambition of studying the French countryside had led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. He favored working alone—and felt that he was always better when he did. He would focus on the elementral aspect of nature, he took an interest in the color theories. And he repurposed the term "Impressionism" after an early critic tried to turn the name of one of his paintings into a pejorative in a review of the first show of these new paintings.
Claude would think in terms of colors and shapes rather than scenes and objects, he used bright colors in dabs and dashes and squiggles of paint, documenting the unified effects of outdoor light in his works. Always looking for mist and transparencies, he developed a unique style that strove to capture on canvas the very act of perceiving nature in different lights, at different hours of the day, and through the changes of weather and season, the "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. Claude believed in painting directly in front of nature, working quickly and seeking to render his impressions of the most fleeting effects.
Claude Monet lived in Giverny for 43 years, with a flower garden called Clos Normand in front of the house, and a Japanese-inspired water garden on the other side of the road. He did not like constrained gardens, often creating with the colors in his garden as much as with his canvases. He liked to mix the simplest flowers (daisies and poppies) with the most rare varieties. "I like to paint as a bird sings," reveals his heartfelt connection to art and nature.
Creating peace through music has always been the Evensons’ mission, striving for truth, and for new ways of seeing and new expressive musical techniques; celebrating the fact that each artist has an individual style. Each of these artists have achieved through their lives undisputed proof that the past is not our prison, the spirit of independence and rebellion is a precious antidote to defeatism and broken traditions. They wanted to show by example, taking responsibility for human life on Earth, seeking to change how we collectively think about sharing the planet’s resources, and learning to live in a respectful way with nature.
From the beginning, recordings of birds at dawn became a frequent foundation for their new music. Once, while on a bird-watching trip early in his youth Dean learned to appreciate the wonderful, musical complexity of bird-songs. “You don’t notice those things when you’re young unless they’re pointed out to you,” reflects Dean. “Hearing them for the first time like that changed my whole perspective on what nature was and what I thought about sound.” From that point on, music, nature and spirituality became the primary threads with which Evenson wove the fabric of his life, to fulfill the vision of “Peace Through Music,” which became the company motto. Their beautiful, peaceful music often incorporated recordings of natural sounds–streams, bird-songs, wind, ocean waves–and there were many unexpected results to making their new peaceful and relaxing music, such as the positive health benefits of calming and lowering blood pressure, which came as an unintended result. Dean has been known to exclaim, "There is the next step -- Take It!"
When Monet and his family settled in Giverny, he wanted to add a water garden, and he worked out an agreement with the local government to divert a portion of the Epte River so he could create the pond. Monet's house and gardens, the water lily pond, and Japanese bridge, have been restored and have been open to the public since September 1980. The grounds of the old cider mill is now a shrine, the house contains the famous collection of Japanese woodcut prints. The house and garden, along with the Museum of Impressionism, are major attractions in Giverny, hosting tourists from all over the world.
The Evensons’ recent visit to honor Monet’s world began with the many museums in Paris where his paintings are exhibited. The couple especially enjoyed the Musée de l’Orangerie where the huge water lily paintings he did toward the end of his life are displayed. The large oval-shaped gallery holds the gigantic canvases, creating an immersive experience of the water lilies and water gardens. Later, they lodged in Giverny in a renovated inn near Monet’s home and the original gardens, spending five days gathering video footage and field recordings of the gardens, now visible in a series of music videos in support of their inspired album, MONET'S GARDEN.
The success and pioneering nature of all this creative work attests to a life-long commitment to the positive evolution of life on this planet in relationship with the natural and spiritual world, as well as a celebration of the Impressionist movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting. As a tribute to their love of the painter Claude Monet and to their love for each other as partners in marriage for 50 years, Dean and Dudley recorded their album MONET’S GARDEN, releasing it in May 2021. The music and the water garden serves as a bridge between the old cider mill, the bird songs and the love of creativity.
Rising like a dragonfly from the surface of the pond and searching forever, the flute expresses freely brushed colors that take precedence over lines and contours, and with the harp, the sound emphasizes shapes and forms at the edge of the place where the day meets the world under the water. "Water Lily Nymphs" (6:01) establishes the journey and path of this album, where the artists have sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exact representations.
Cautious and aware in the midst of daily life, follow along on an elevated path to explore all the hidden recesses of the water garden. The "Wisteria Foot Bridge" (6:03) where the flute has a backdrop of drone and harp, all enjoying movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and tonal flourishes.
A singing bowl is a standing bell that is inverted and played using a mallet, rotating around the outer rim to create a resonant musical tone, signalling that the mind is thus awake at this moment. "Golden Tones" (5:29) presents soft and lovely colors, gently brushed surfaces, sights where the always-shining sunlight is captured, while all around the flute circles and spins slowly.
With a curling melody that remind me of tales from the Gaelic hills, honoring the spirit of purple flowers who are named for rainbows, behold flute with harp and chimes. "Splendid Irises" (5:06) puts us in a warm and gentle frame of mind. The blossoms are seemingly caught off guard in various poses, taking small, thin breaths, exploring open composition, with an emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities. The synthesizer is present but mostly remains below the surface of the water, "Water Garden" (5:54). With cautious breathless colors alight, the autoharp provides the sky and the flute traces the dragonfly path. The transition from winter, the time of silence, into spring, the time of awakening, "Spring Impressions" (5:43), slow and mindful, a procession of stiring forms of life to represent momentary action, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of the creatures who inhabit the garden.
Weaving a story of magic and sunshine, flute, harp and bowls combine to rapture and mystery on the walkway through the conservatory of botanical delights, "Enchanted Garden Path" (5:22). Harp floats and flute flitters, the iridescent play of sunshine in a "Field of Flowers" (4:57), the sky is lazy, huge with breezes and bouncing papillons with the polychromatic blossoming sentinals of the season. Music can often resemble a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance.
In "Pond Reflections" (5:38), the water is both a home for koi and a mirror for the garden and both worlds exist simultaneously, reflections of the world above and hints of the world below the surface. The synthesizer and autoharp swirls slowly while the flute constantly explores the play of natural light, shadows are boldly captured, and compaired with the blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness previously not represented in studio recordings.
Forming a shelter of shadows next to the waters edge, long green leaves wait for the gliding breezes to ruffle the canopy of various greens and yellows, "Cascading Willows" (5:38). Harp is met with the subtle synthesizer to greet the birdcalls behind the gentle flute. The trembling of leaves, the shimmer of water, and the vibration of sun-drenched air: "Play of Light" (4:50). Sustained tones flow like honey and decorates the theater of zephers and luminescence, which relaxes the boundary between subject and background, with the idea that the shadow to capture a fleeting moment out in the open air.
For the final track we have "Evening in Giverny" (4:44), the little village in twilight blends the mundane normal daily modern life conveniences with the entrance of the village to the wood, and the Seine Oise Marne which lies beyond. The flute and harp tell the story of a day spent exploring the old gardens built by the master of illumination and exotic delights. Sleep and dreams remain, sometimes imagining the tones of the evening to produce effets de soir—the shadowy effects of evening or twilight.
Creating “Peace Through Music” has always been their life mission, Dean and Dudley Evenson are striving for "truth," for new ways of seeing and new expressive musical techniques; celebrating the fact that each artist had an individual style. It was once considered unladylike to excel in much of anything since a women's true talents were then believed to center on homemaking and mothering, women were believed to be incapable of handling complex subjects which led teachers to restrict what they taught female students. These two individual artists have achieved through their lives undisputed proof that the past is not our prison, the spirit of independence and rebellion is a precious antidote to defeatism and broken traditions.
Musical Impressionism is characterized by suggestion and atmosphere, exploring the sensation in the ear that hears the essence of a subject, rather than delineating the details of the subject. By creating a welter of techniques and forms, and quickly capturing the essence of the subject, rather than its details. Creating from nature in a direct and spontaneous style, and availing the new technologies as they can. The original Impressionists were the first ones to use paint in convenient tubes, containing new colors such as cerulean blue, cobalt blue, viridian, cadmium yellow, and synthetic ultramarine blue.
Dudley works with video, photography, graphics, writing, music and dance. She plays harp and zither with intuition and feeling and uses her voice as a complementary instrument. Dean’s life has taken many unexpected twists and has led him and his family through many remarkable, ground-breaking experiences. Dean explains, “I’ve always wanted to do the best thing for the planet and what I do is in service. I don’t have a lot of projections about what I’m supposed to be doing or where I should be going. I just follow my inner purpose and personal vision. It’s the intuition, the learning, the inner knowing of which way to go that is the important pathmark for us.”
TRACKS
1. Water Lily Nymphs
2. Wisteria Foot Bridge
3. Golden Tones
4. Splendid Irises
5. Water Garden
6. Spring Impressions
7. Enchanted Garden Path
8. Field of Flowers
9. Pond Reflections
10. Cascading Willows
11. Play of Light
CONNECTIONS
Soundings of the Planet
Soundings of the Planet channel
http://www.youtube.com/SoundingsofthePlanet
Soundings Mindful Media archival channel
http://www.youtube.com/SoundingsMindfulMedia
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