This NEW, updated CD, previously titled, Universal Love Currents by James Mikael offers expanded CD liner notes and a smoother, more relaxing flow of music with no tempo changes.

FROM THE MUSICIAN
“A sweet melody, a beautiful sound, is something that we’re all naturally, easily, effortlessly attracted to. Instead of being focused on one thing or another, the mind lets go and you feel an expansion, and ideally, a joy, or as Alan Watts used to say, “the Floodlight Consciousness”, instead of the focused, the spotlight. My goal with Universal Love Currents was to create music with an energy that could attune one to a higher vibration. Whether you hear it in a yoga class or during a massage or during a reiki session, I hope it makes you feel safe so you can let go. If you can be absorbing that energy and take it with you into your life, into your world, and in the course of that action give it away, give it to others. . . that would be my heart’s dream fulfilled.” – James Mikael

NEWS/REVIEWS
“Serene piano, the sweet sounds of nature, lush synthesizers – each can be beautiful in their own right, but mix them together and you have a recipe for peace and tranquility. UNIVERSAL LOVE CURRENTS from James Mikael is an album of sublime melodies that enriches the romantic spirit in us all. Mikael keeps the piano subtle which makes for a better interplay with the album’s other elements which include a symphony of birdsong on “Nature’s Gift” or the angelic cooing on “Love’s Ecstasy.” This is music for the mind – it will lift your spirits and fill you with joy. –Music Design In Review, November/December 2001

JAMES MIKAEL Q & A
When did you start playing music?
I started playing music when I was about 6 years old. Piano first and then the guitar. Around the age of 16 or 17, I felt a real pull towards piano and let the guitar go. In my 20s I started experimenting with electronic keyboards and different recording equipment... it's been a journey.

More recently I've focused almost exclusively on the piano. . . I’m just really in love with the acoustical aspect of the music, the way the piano vibrates a human being, vibrates our nervous system.

Your piano compositions have such complexity and depth, and a feeling of possibility and infinite space, which makes your music so appealing. Are you trying to achieve a certain kind of feeling with your music?
Meditation and the attunement to that along with the study of classical music has really been my path. . . meditation and music. Meditation allows me to approach the creative process with freshness, yet base my experiences in the classical realm. I hope that my energy and good intentions come through in the music.

What about music's ability to heal?
Sometimes the most healing thing for a human being is silence. There's a depth within each of us that we can touch that will heal us. So in a sense we really don't "need" music, we just to need to be in touch with our “self”. But then getting there is another story. There are ancient sciences, thousands of years old, the Vedas, that talk about sound, and how sound can be used to take you to the Silence.

For me sound and the silence are very much connected. Consider a still pond without a ripple upon it and yet when you drop a pebble there's such delight at the wave that the pebble makes. I don't think one could sit in the Silence for too long without wanting to make some waves. I remember being on long meditation retreats, and after a short time of the silence I craved, I wanted to make music.

There's a quote from one of the Scriptures in the Bible, from Genesis that says, "In the beginning, God said, "Let there be light..." To me, this translates as sound came first. Sound is so basic not just to a human being but to every form of creation and that sound influences us deeply, even without our knowledge.

Many people don’t have a clear perception of how deeply environmental sounds are influencing them. When they take a moment to relax, get a massage, talk a walk in a redwood forest or listen to relaxing music, something takes them to a place more inside themselves. During those moments, you realize how much the clatter of the world is constantly influencing us. Sound is so fundamental. . . it has such a deep effect, and I love playing the piano because when I'm at the piano I take the Silence that I've grasped inside myself and give it some expression, to create some “ripples on the water.” And that's extremely gratifying... I can't think of anything more satisfying in my life.

UNIVERSAL LOVE CURRENTS feels like a beautiful, peaceful journey -- how did that come about?
Universal Love Currents (ULC) was created over a period of five years, and NATURE'S GIFT, for instance, was a piece I composed after a long journey away from civilized life. It followed a time I spent traveling, living on faith. When I returned, I wanted to express all the good energy I'd gathered inside myself. I think the peace and relaxation and the ease of that comes through in that track.

Another track titled, A CHILD'S LOVE was composed when my son was still in the womb. My wife was about 6 months along and I sat down at my piano in the studio and the theme came forth. It was ultimately realized about two to three years later when I took the theme, expanded it and added the orchestral instruments.

How do you think music relaxes people? Have you ever analyzed that? How did you choose the different instruments in the arrangements to complement the piano?
A sweet melody, a beautiful sound, is something that we're all naturally, easily, effortlessly attracted to. And perhaps you're having an interesting day where you've been forced to think about a lot of things you'd rather not think about, or do a lot of things and you're hustling and bustling and you hear a beautiful melody... The mind gets a chance to let go.

You go from a linear to a more expansive feeling.
Yes, yes, exactly... So instead of being focused on one thing or another, the mind lets go and you feel the expansion, and then you feel the joy. You feel more of the -- as Alan Watts would say: "the Floodlight Consciousness", instead of the focused, the spotlight. Because we're so much in that spotlight consciousness all the time.

If you sit quietly and really take the time to listen to a piece of music, it can create discernible changes inside of you. We all vibrate at different rates, different speeds, and sometimes we feel combinations of tones that sound like this: (James plays a major triad: C - E -G, a positive, happy sound). Sometimes we feel combinations like this: (James plays a minor triad C - E flat - G, a sadder sound). Or we feel combinations like this: (he plays two dissonant chords -- sharp, loud, uncomfortable). Whatever we go through in our everyday experience has so many different levels of those combinations of sounds -- of relating to people and situations. When you play music, if you really take a moment to let it sink in, perhaps during a massage or yoga or meditation, you can experience sounds that are pleasing, that will allow you to just let go.

Have you been influenced by any specific composers?
I would say my favorite composer is Chopin, because Chopin worshiped God or nature at the piano. The piano was everything to Chopin. You really feel his love for the piano when you play his music. It's very intimate, very heart-rending music -- it has an effect on a human being.

Of course, I studied Bach -- you have to study Bach, Bach provides the fundamentals for your technique. Bach is like the planets moving around the sun -- there are no mistakes (laughs). Bach’s mathematical precision affects a human being from the inside out and makes us feel in tune with the music of the spheres. . .

How would you connect the inspiration of those composers to your own music?
I've always been composing, even from the beginning of just "ker-plunking" on the piano. As I gained more technique through the years playing Chopin, playing Mozart and Bach, my understanding of what they've done has created a great resource. When an idea comes to me, I plug it in to that large arena of musical experience, of everything I've heard, everything I've ever played.

That's what I also tell my students -- some of them are very creative at a very young age, and yet there's not the chops, the fingers aren't there, the experience isn't there, but if you keep studying people's music and learn from them -- have that apprenticeship with them, you find yourself building your ability and broadening your range. Once you synthesize all of this and hook it up to your own experience and imagination you have the freedom to just let yourself go as a composer and musician.

What would you like people who are listening to your music to get out of that experience?
ULC is entitled that because I really feel there's an energy available in the music that can attune one to a higher vibration. It’s the kind of music I envision being used during a massage, or a yoga class, or some place where you feel safe and you can let go -- if you can be absorbing that energy and take that with you into your life, into your world, and in the course of that action give it away, give it to others... that would be my heart's dream fulfilled.

I'd like to see ULC played in prisons, in hospitals. If somehow playing this music could provide even a little glimmer of light, like a flame they could fan and begin to allow that light to grow... that would be extremely fulfilling.

Many people seem to feel disconnected from themselves, from those around them... It seems like the goal of your music is to provide a healing catalyst, to help people feel connected to meaningful things in their life, to help them find a meaningful path.
That’s true and it reminds me of the time I gave ULC to one of my students who was about 4 or 5 months pregnant. Later, she mentioned to me, “Your music made me feel like I was in a cocoon, that I was in a safe space even though I was in a rush to do a lot of different things.”

My hope is that my music will allow people to feel better even if they’re in environments where perhaps they don't feel totally comfortable. Use ULC to achieve quietude, and then rejuvenate and go back into the world. I think we all need to take the time to do that.

Sound takes our consciousness to different levels. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to change our environment, to change the people in our lives. My focus, my love, is to create music that vibrates people from a deep place and opens up their sense of the tremendous possibility in life, even in everyday life.

That's the other beautiful thing about music. It takes us into the Now. All the things we worry about vanish. Music vibrates the silence within us, much in the same way that when you sit near a stream of water and listen to the trickling, gurgling sounds -- it does something to you. It enables you to become more an ocean of silence, an ocean of pure consciousness rather than that little spotlight of just your own experience. We expand and experience more of our higher self, our true self, our expanded self.