"My long career recording various genres of flute music has taken me many places over many years. It has been such a rewarding journey for me. With Sea Dreams, I return to my favorite place – the great Pacific Northwest and its vast ocean – for inspiration for these new meditative soundscapes using various flutes.
Bringing fresh dimension to this album are the evocative keyboards on various tracks by Michael Grant, who did a superb job. Michael's atmospheric work brought a feeling of mystery to the songs.
Additionally, for this project I slowed down my sound and used the sea wave cadence for a flow – something I'd first done on Pacific Moon many years ago. The resulting contemplative music reflects the quiet and profound peace that the sea has always offered me.
This is not a recording to showcase flute technique, but instead an approach with an ear for long tones and big shape patterns to create the kind of slowly unfolding, mesmerizing zone one enters by the seashore, where you can hear all those intervals out on the water. This music is a reflection of what one gets by the sea: a sense of open space, and a sense of deep calmness.
One learns to leave more space as one gets older – not just sounds full of notes but rather "tone poems" that can take shape when you're not trying to copy a genre of music...pieces that emerge, improvised on the spot and never captured again, only once in the moment. I hope you enjoy hearing these new tracks as much as I did recording them." –Gary Stroutsos, Seattle 2023
TRACK LIST
1. Salish Sea Dreams 07:25
2. Ebb and Flow Whalesong 04:10
3. Calming Tide Pools 08:50
4. The Rain is Coming, Heartbeat and Flute 14:50
5. Falcon Cove Mysteries 06:34
6. Deep Water Dreaming 06:23
7. Contemplation for Sleep 06:52
8. The Rain Has Come, Sleep and Release 04:24