Album Notes

Listeners tell me they're drawn to Journey Dance because they feel it's trying to tell them something.

I write music to heal, to survive, to share. Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you about Journey Dance. But I can tell you what people have told me about what was going on in their lives when they played Journey Dance. They played it

..while making love ...while children were in the womb ...while giving birth ...while children took their naps ...while spending hours on the road ...while healing in hospitals and at home ...while doing chores at the house ...while creating dance pieces ...one listener told me his son was inspired to learn to play piano ...and several people told me their loved ones listened to it while moving through the end of their lives.

It is simple on the surface, but its layers are deep.

Rick Hart

Here is a review:

Rick Hart writes orchestrations and forms which make his music fascinating but never academic. The colors of the unusual instrumentation strike the listener from the first note of every cut. His music fits in a rare groove which cuts across market stereotypes.

During his boyhood in Europe, Hart's ear developed around Gregorian chant, classical, and Irish music. Later, in America, blues, jazz, rock, country, bluegrass, and other indigenous styles melded into his musical vocabulary as he continued to experiment with sound, color, rhythm, and melody.

From the beginning, Journey Dance projects a spatial quality reminiscent of new age music. But soon its rhythmic complexity and constant timbral and textural changes bring it closer to its classical and folk roots. And Hart's unpretentious vocalization adds warmth to the acoustic ensemble.

Journey Dance is a fresh, unaffected landscape of melded folk, classical, and jazz.

- Mark Roberts, Dallas