Deep Listening
Introducing the Spoken Song Series - A Message from Chloe
Enjoy listening to these new Spoken Song meditative improvisations by Chloe Goodchild with acclaimed jazz pianist Rebecca Nash, in which voice and piano interweave to soothe and relax your ordinary habitual mind into a deeper listening, behind and beyond the surface mayhem of everyday life. Allow yourself to let go and surrender the busy left brain into the beauty and all-inclusive embrace of Life.
Deep Listening Tracklist
1) You Are A Wished For Song
2) What Is The Deep Listening?
3) Be Helpless Dumbfounded
4) Learn The Alchemy True Human Beings Know
5) Quietness (Inside This New Love, Die)
6) The Flute Of Interior Time
Go to the Listening Room for some audio clips
I have loved singing all my life. I sang in choirs throughout my childhood. My vocal upbringing included the whole repertoire of Western sacred choral music including Bach’s Passions the great Requiems of Beethoven, Mozart and Verdi and Benjamin Britten, and the contemporary sacred music of Herbert Howells, Bernstein, Benjamin Britten and John Tavener. This vast range of spiritual sound opened my ears to the huge potential and landscape of vocal expression. In the 80s I began to explore the sacred music of other world cultures in Africa, the Middle East, and India. These wisdom traditions awakened a more embodied and micro-tonal singing that inspired my own polyphonic and Asian-inspired compositions throughout the 90s and onwards.
In November 1997, I met the Rumi poet Coleman Barks, at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco. Coleman’s versions of the 13th century mystical love poetry of Mevlana Jellaludinn Rumi, liberated a more spontaneous improvised vocal expression, and we recorded our first album, “There is Some Kiss We Want with Our Whole Lives” the following year, with Steve Gorn(Wind),David Darling (Cello) and Glen Velez (Percussion). Coleman Barks’ Rumi versions are contemporary ethical messages enabling me to discover a new form of ‘sound-into-soul’ communication through this unique love poetry. This was a totally new style of love poetry addressing ordinary everyday human dilemmas, with courage, gentleness, humour and a quality of inclusivity and compassion that was at once relaxing, engaging, and transformative. As Coleman’s resonant, mesmerizing Southern bass voice would reveal courageous soul conversations, I would just let go into a stream of non-verbal improvisation that – of its own - seemed to gently highlight the meaning of the words, bridging my everyday spoken with my singing voice. I called this “spoken song” - a way of vocalizing that unifies spoken with sung voice, to create a seamless flow of sound and song, through the ever-changing moods, modes, vibrations, resonance, tonal energy and timbre of the human voice.
This has since evolved – 20 years later – into the new Spoken Song Series celebrated here - with Coleman Barks’ blessing - to record his Rumi versions, in a new collaboration with acclaimed UK jazz pianist and composer, Rebecca Nash.