Off Chants Recordings:
Sketches of India (1995)
Dancing Down the Dawn (Never released)

Here are all the  pieces that Off Chants recorded, 14 in all. The player will play them all for you, or you can choose a track. Short background information on each of the tracks are below. Enjoy! Please go to the contact page and  let us know if you've listened to and enjoyed this music.
Sketches of India CD

1. Full Circle.
I remember when John first came up with the opening melody on the simple Orff xylophone instrument, which is charmingly out of tune for the opening of a CD! Various themes from our "living room" encounters made it into this suite."Ananda" means bliss, a wonderful word to chant. NPR used this track for quite some time as linking music during All Things Considered.

2. Confluence
This was a spontaneous, unplanned impovisation at the end of our recording session between John on sitar and Forrest on piano, although the two of them had been working on sitar-piano duets as a concept for a good year or more. It remains a unique document of two musicians from different worlds hold a genuine heart-fel dialogue. All the themes arose spontaneously, in the spur of the moment. Love it when that happens.

3. Mussoorie Road.
The Mussorie Road winds up from Dehra Dun to the hill station of Mussoorie in northern India, where Forrest and Lynnell met John and Jan. The most' "Indian" of the tracks, with its steady drone and modal improvisations, including a great sax solo from Danny and concluding with traditional improvisations using the sargham syllables by Jan and Lynnell.

4. Sketches of India suite. A cycle of four songs composed by Forrest in reflection of the years he and Lynnell lived in India and worked at the Woodstock school.

• Kerela
  Depicting the green beauty of a train ride through Kerela and imaging meeting Krishna on the way
  
• Ladakh
  A setting of one of the 100,000 songs of Milarepa.
  
• Varanasi
  A slow meditation on the ancient city of Shiva.
• Old Delhi Train Station
  Combining a view of the chaos of the Old Delhi Train Station with a Hindu creation myth where Brahma becomes the world by spliiting himself into the mainy creatures and into male and female forms.

5. Mandala. This was a little piano piece that Forrest wrote when he was quite young. It turned into an extended piano improvisation, growing wings.

6. Namaste. Our folk-rock anthem! Forrest wrote this on a beat-up old guitar while sitting on a beach in Goa. It pays omage to the gesture of "Namaste" and wishes all cultures had a gesture that signified "I bow to the god within you."

Dancing Down the Dawn CD

1. Riversong. One of Lynnell's chants, in a full arrangement with four-part harmony. A beautiful evocation of letting go into the flow of life.

2. Dancing Down the Dawn. A song composed by Forrest and Lynnell with great improvisations by the members of the group. The words come from the hopefullness that arises from meditation on emptiness.

3. Bakri. A tune by Danny Harvey which includes a great duet for recorder and tabla, followed a more modern jazz arrangement. The head is in a cycle of 13 beats, a wonderful tala!

4. Lightly Falling. This was one of the last "living room" improvisations by the members of Off Chants. It was written together while the snow was drifting down on a late winter Pennsylvania afternoon.

5. Tara. A piece that goes back to some of the original musical conversations between Forrest, John, Lynnell and Jan. After the main chant was born, Lynnell thought to use the words of the Tara mantra and we sang it like that in performance, with Jan's opening improvised salutation. The final coda was written by Forrest in the fireplace room of the Mt. Vernon Unitarian Church, with John there to "channel," which then became a vehicle for group improvisation in an ecstatic plea for compassion and healing. This is the version you have here. Om tare tutare ture soha. May all beings have happiness.