Timothy Cooper – East Wind

The East Wind CD contains nearly an hour of music and 30 selections (21 of them under two-minutes in length). The shortest piece, the 42-second “Lark on a Limb,” is light and delicate as a tiny bird, whereas the longest tune, the powerful four-and-a-half-minute “Dawn of Time,” explores “the tragedies of ancient cultures, come and gone.”

These pieces show the influence of various forms of Asian art such as a Japanese haiku poem, a Chinese watercolor-on-silk drawing, or a tiny cultivated banzai tree, perfect in their sparseness and simplicity. The music sounds delicate and crystalline one moment, but forceful and resonating the next. These original compositions contain deep emotionalism, penetrating perspectives and inspirational beauty.

“Over many years traveling throughout Asia, the spirit of Far Eastern culture — and its serene contemplative aesthetic — found its way into my subconscious. Those travels deeply affected me. I remember riding on buses packed with peasants in southern China in winter and chugging up old mountains covered by rounded tea trees; taking slow-moving trains down through the hot forests and jungles of Malaysia; and motorboating along the coastline of Northern Vietnam and passing by the breathtaking Kastral limestone formations jutting out of the South China Sea like ghostly visions in mystic dreams.”

Some of the tune titles on the CD hint at the Far East (“Asian Rain,” “Ancient Moss,” “Wonder Wall”) while others speak of seasons (“Winter Forests,” “Summer Shimmers”) or times of the day (“Morning,” “Daylight,” “Starlight”). Additional inspiration for the music came from Chinese writer and poet Tu Fu who lived in the mid-700s.