“Songs of the Soul” Concert — San Diego, California

It is with great joy that we bring you three performances from the Songs of the Soul concert from September, 2008 in San Diego, California.

These concerts are organized by Sri Chinmoy students, in honor of the life and work of Sri Chinmoy, who attained Mahasamadhi on October 11, 2008.

Throughout his life, Sri Chinmoy endeavored to foster the individual and collective development of mankind through prayer and meditation, music, art, sport and selfless service to humanity.

With love, sweetness and oneness, Sri Chinmoy’s students serve humanity these same activities, seeking to expand these positive contributions to the individual and collective development of mankind.

These Songs of the Soul concerts are a celebration of the life of Sri Chinmoy. In this feature we bring you three tracks from the Songs of the Soul concert in San Diego, California, from September 2008.

The first of these three tracks from the Songs of the Soul Concerts in San Diego features Adesh Widmer, from Switzerland. Here are some notes from Adesh:

“I have studied Indian Classcal Music in Sri Lanka from P.V. Nandasiri from 1977 to 1982.

1987 I started regular meditation under the inner and outer guidance of Spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy. One very important aspect of Sri Chinmoy’s meditation is to sing spiritual songs as a part of our meditation. Sri Chinmoy has composed over 18,000 spiritual songs. While singing Sri Chinmoy’s compositions I felt so much inner peace and inner nourishment from these songs, so I started to play these songs on the Sitar what gave me so much satisfaction and joy.

Using my knowledge of Indian Ragas I began to improvise with Sri Chinmoy’s compositions in the Indian Classical style, creating new Ragas with these spiritual compositions.

Now I only play Ragas that I create from Sri Chinmoy’s songs and thus I hope to convey the inner deep message of these songs in this special way. I am so grateful to Sri Chinmoy for allowing me to use his songs for my improvisations on the Sitar.

To participate in the Songs of the Soul Concerts was the absolute highlight in my musical life, to play together with all these high level musicians was a great honor for me.

Special thanks also to the Tablists who have accompanied me in San Francisco and San Diego. Their playing has contributed so much to the seemingly great success of our performance.”

Tracks two and three feature Jigyasu Tervo (Arranger, Keyboard and Vocals), Martanda Sekse (Vocals), Hridananda Andrés Ramón (Charango and Vocals) and Rahis Khan (Tablas).

We hope you enjoy the soulfulness and beauty of this music.

Artist: Various
Release year: 2007
Duration: 16:10
Acknowledgements: Sri Chinmoy
Format: Advanced Audio Coding