What happens when you mix the heart-melting magic of Jami Sieber’s music (Hidden Sky, Second Sight, Lush Mechanique) with the mind-opening power of some of the greatest poetry of all time?
Only Breath is a revolutionary meeting between music and poetry that merges poems from around the world with compositions that flow from the depths of stillness to wild, worldbeat rhythms. Jami Sieber and spoken word artist, Kim Rosen, have discovered a compelling new expression of the ancient partnership between poetry and music: a startling and beautiful dialogue where the spoken poem becomes a layer of the music and the music an essential voice within the poem.
Jami Sieber’s music has always been in a category by itself, equally attractive to listeners who crave irresistible rhythms (she won “Best Rock Instrumentalist of the Pacific Northwest”, no easy feat for a cellist!) and those yearning for music that speaks of silence, reflection and prayer. She explores the breadth of her instrument creating sounds never before associated with the cello, reaching inside the soul with her passionate playing and her compositions that are contemporary and powerfully evocative. Kim Rosen’s gift of speaking the poems of ancient and modern writers from around the world has touched thousands with poetry’s power to awaken, inspire, and heal. The poems she delivers dissolve the walls of culture, religion and generation to speak directly to the soul.
Only Breath is a is a river of sound that carries the listener seamlessly through many landscapes of the heart: from the ecstasy of Sieber’s pulsing cello and vocals as they meld with the words of Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Poetry”, to the contemplative depths of Rumi’s “Listening” set in elegant duet with a single acoustic cello, to the tumultuous flood of percussion, flute, bass, vocals and cello that carries Stanley Kunitz’s famous poem “King of the River,” to the anguish of Ulali’s grief-cry as it pierces the politically fierce and startling poem, “I Know the Truth” by Marina Tsvetaeva, to the stunning rhythms, Native American chanting, rap vocals and exotic instrumentation of the trance-dance that celebrates two of Rumi’s poems, “Dance, if You’ve Torn the Bandage Off” and “Only Breath”. The CD closes with Derek Walcott’s “Love after Love,” set in a velvet-deep quartet of cellos with guitars, percussion and bass. “Give wine. Give bread,” the poem invites. “Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life… Sit. Feast on your life.”
Guest artists include Steve Gorn on bansuri bamboo flute, the First Nation singing group Ulali, Kai Eckhardt and don benedictson on bass, Erika Luckett on guitar, Michaelle Goerlitz and Susu Pampanin on percussion, Benjy Wertheimer on tabla and esraj, Julie Wolf on keyboards, Evan Schiller on drums, Rhiannon and David Worm on vocals and others.
Only Breath is an invitation to rediscover what mystics, poets and shamen have known for centuries: when you join powerful rhythms with the language of the soul, the mind can’t contain the experience and bursts open to an unsayable “Ahhh!” of pure wonder, knowing, feeling and revelation – beyond the known territory of the mind.
“Kim’s gift of speaking poems is a gorgeous incantation, an irresistible call to break... open. Through this most startling and beautiful meeting of poetry and music, spirit and flesh, we are drawn inside the wild and wise heart of the deeply feminine, where we are gratefully shattered and healed.” —Eve Ensler, poet, activist and author of The Vagina Monologues
“It’s as though Jami has found a way to extract the heart of the cello and to play the music that comes from deep within that heart. In her hands, the versatility of her instrument shines through.”— Music of the Spheres
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