Garden of Delight

Paul Avgernios

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 15, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Real Music
• ASIN: B000ZIZ0UM
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #56,918 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

It's a journey into eastern exotica on Garden of Delight, the latest album from Paul Avgerinos. Avgerinos is a veteran musician and multi-instrumentalist who was trained at the Peabody Conservatory and worked as an orchestral bassist. That was before he heard Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach and decided to plug in.

He's still wired, but now he uses his Connecticut studio as mission control for a world fusion sound that employs musicians from Turkey and the middle east as well as western players on instruments as technologically polarized as the Indian Bansuri flute and Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI). The flute is played by Steve Gorn, who weaves his soul-drenched melodies like wisps of smoke curving off a candle.

Listeners of New Age records in the 1980s might recall Kevin Braheny, who played synthesizers and EWI. He's changed his name to Kevin Braheny Fortune, but that distinctive EWI sound, part flute, part violin, returns here on tracks like "Night Blooms" and "Bird of Paradise," effecting middle eastern slides and arcs.
Avgerinos creates an attractive, smooth surface that can actually detract somewhat from the subtle changes going on underneath. He uses Christine Yandell and Malika Zarra as ethereal choirs and sensual sirens, and plants gentle synthesizer pads across his compositions. Tracks like "Jasmine" could be a seductive walk into a harem while the opening "Rose of Heaven," featuring Avgerinos on nylon-string guitar, creates the perfumed aura of a temple. Turkish Ney flute master Omar Faruk Tekbilek blows his serene, Sufi-inspired melodies across several tracks. He's joined by several other Arabic musicians on Oud, violin and percussion, who lend some gravitas to the proceedings. Garden of Delight is an enchanting vision that reveals more each time you travel down its paths. --John Diliberto, Echoes Radio

Product Description

A magic carpet ride with Paul Avgerinos through the splendorous cradle of civilization, featuring guest artist Omar Faruk Tekbilek. Exotic, sensual, hypnotic, mysterious, enchanting~Middle East dances with West ~Blissful Joy in the Garden of Delight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Treasure, September 4, 2009

By	lindahawaii (Kaneohe, Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Garden of Delight (MP3 Download)

Although I'm not one of the very expert reviewers that I appreciate and rely upon for many of my MP3 purchases, I'm puzzled that none of them have given a review of this excellent cd. Think of Sheherazade and the 1001 nights. This cd is a treasure, and offers something rare in new-age music: male voices singing something other than gregorian chant. Finding this cd was a very happy accident, and I hope other people will come to have the same appreciation of this artist that I now have.