Search - W. A. Mathieu, W.a. Mathieu :: Streaming Widsom / In the Wind

When you watch flowing water, you see it is alive. Its moving waves, over millions of years, have evolved into the wavy motions of its creatures. Similarly, when birds are flying against the sky, the intelligence of the air becomes a visible kind of music ? the flocks are like chords, and their flight patterns like atmospheric chord progressions. The cross-rhythms of African music evoke the streaming wisdom of these fluid elements in an extraordinary way. From the early 1970s I became entranced with the deep, secret metabolism of Shona cross-rhythms and West African kre-kre rhythms, and began incorporating them into my music. Streaming Wisdom and In the Wind, recorded from 1979 through 1982, were my first two albums of such music. Now, twenty-five years later, it's equally satisfying to re-master and re-release the material combined as a single CD. William Allaudin Mathieu (b. 1937) is a pianist, composer, teacher, recording artist, and author. He has composed a variety of chamber and choral works and made numerous solo piano recordings. He has written three books on music ? The Listening Book; The Musical Life; and Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression. Allaudin was a disciple of North Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath for 25 years. He studied African music with Nubian musician Hamza El Din, jazz with William Russo, and European classical music with Easley Blackwood. In the 1960s, he spent several years as an arranger/composer for Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington, and was the musical director for the Second City Theater in Chicago (which he helped found) and for the Committee Theater in San Francisco. In the 1970s, he served on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. In 1969 he founded the Sufi Choir, which he directed until 1982. The past two decades Allaudin has devoted to composition, performance, recording, teaching, and writing from his home near Sebastopol, California.