Album Notes

Cellist Jami Sieber has a talent for using her instrument like a painter, adorning her musical canvas with washes of vivid tones and reflective moods. That impressionistic, expressive nature is more evident than ever on her gorgeous album Unspoken. The instrumental soundtrack of the recent collaborative release, Only Breath, which features Sieber’s celloscapes in dialogue with mystical poetry, Unspoken is infused with the ineffable essence of the verses, allowing the listener to bask in the waves of music as they move from joy to grief to intoxication to stillness.

From trance-dance rhythms to prayerful stillness, Unspoken dissolves boundaries of musical genre, melding indigenous chants and rhythms with visionary compositions that quiet the mind and set the body dancing. Beginning with Sieber’s pulsing, ambient cello and vocals in “Opening”, a current of multi-layered sound carries the listener seamlessly from the lush and contemplative depths of “Benediction”, through the rushing torrent of percussion, flute, bass, vocals and cello in “The River Between” to Ulali’s primal cries at the close of “Night Song”. In the center of the journey, Benjy Wertheimer’s esraj and Jami’s electric cello weave a richly textured interior world that gives birth to the irresistible grooves of the two worldbeat dance tracks, “Broken Open” and “Unspoken,” which fuse Native American chanting with layers upon layers of exotic instrumentation. The CD closes with the heart-opening track, “Returning,” set in a quartet of cellos with guitars, percussion and organ.

Unspoken is a spiritual journey beyond ordinary consciousness, equally attractive to those who crave grooves that move the body and those seeking the music of silence, inner reflection and prayer. A ground-breaking recording that unifies indigenous and modern, stillness and movement, inner and outer; Unspoken awakens the senses and inspires the depths of the imagination.

Features:
Jami Sieber (electric and acoustic cello, and vocals)
Ulali (First Nations Womens Vocal Group)
Kai Eckhardt (electric and acoustic bass)
don benedictson (bass)
Steve Gorn (bansuri flute)
Benjy Wertheimer (esraj and tabla)
Julie Wolf (organ and piano)
Erika Luckett (guitar)
Marjorie DeMuynck (duduk)
Rhiannon (vocals)
David Word (vocals)
Michaelle Goerlitz (percussion)
Susu Pampanin (percussion)
Evan Schiller (drums)