REVIEWS OF CONCERTS AND RECORDINGS
BY FRANK PERRY.
"A master, with a true understanding of sound."
Richard Williams (Melody Maker)
"The brilliant percussionist Frank Perry has recorded a
meditative album of improvisation, predominantly for bells and gongs (Deep
Peace), an experience as therapeutic as it is musically rich, and played
in a manner so respectful of sound that your hearing becomes instantly more
discriminating."
John Fordham,
The Guardian. 9.7.198
"This strong and beautiful music is produced by many
varieties of bells and gongs, but with no electronics. The title of the music
has been taken from an old Gaelic prayer." DEEP PEACE
"The composer's own mystical experience of an angelic visitation
inspired him to write this unique music, for "petalumines", or bells
of metal invented by Mr. Perry. The piece is very spatial and expands the
consciousness. NEW ATLANTIS.
"These zodiacal pieces were inspired by the Himalayan paintings of
Nicholas Roerich. Oriental bells, gongs and Tibetan ‘singing bowls’
contribute to the variety of sounds. This is a rare experience that clears and
heightens the consciousness." ZODIAC.
All taken from Hal Lingerman's
book Lifestreams.
"A percussionist’s abandonment of the simple metronomic duties
(basic time-keeping) need not lead to a formless rattle around the tom-toms,
as these two albums so clearly demonstrate. Frank Perry and roger turner
concern themselves with the tonal possibilities of percussion, both having
dispensed with the formalities of conventional kit. Beyond this, there are no
similarities in approach. Perry boasts a vast array of metal and glass
percussion, both ancient and custom-made, with the capacity for long
resonance. He has developed an interest in meditational music, the products of
which have sounded uncomfortable in the confines of group performance (in the
jazz and improvised music circles) thus this solo album is long overdue. ‘Deep
Peace’ is a formidable achievement, the product of a unique vision.
Perry slowly develops a labyrinth of sound, which, although improvised, has a
strong sense of direction. At times it is difficult to believe that so much
tonal diversity can be coaxed from such limited means. Utilising a range of
metal and glass percussion, he builds on their natural resonance to create a
music of serene beauty and power, sounds humming into infinity and building
into neo-choral sequences. Highly recommended."
City Limits. Dave Illic.
"His music is very unlike anything else that is
available on the New Age music scene. Frank Perry is the original New Age
musician."
Roy Whenary (Dawn Awakening
Music) on ‘The Works’ BBC Radio 4
"Whilst most music reaches obviously for our emotions, the music
of Frank Perry reaches for our subconscious in an effort to heal us."
Toyah Wilcox (interviewing
Frank) for BBC Radio 4 series "The science of sound."
“It was an unusual night at London’s Wigmore Hall. But
then the Wigmore Hall is an unusual place. Looking more like a luxurious
funeral parlour than a concert auditorium. Large vases of flowers flanked the
stage.
It was in this slightly grim setting that Music Now presented a fine
concert, the first time that the Wigmore Has opened its doors to improvised
music. Yet somehow the formality of the place ill-suited the warmth of the
sounds created by Frank Perry’s solo percussion.
Perry began the show, obscured as ever by a massive frame hung with
literally hundreds of gongs, cymbals, bells, brandy glasses, African drums,
pieces of scrap metal, and somewhere in the middle of it all, a drum kit.
Perry more than any other percussionist I’ve ever heard, has a really
profound understanding of sound, obviously conscious of the importance and use
of so-called silence.
If anything, when Perry plays is closer to John Cage indeterminate
music than it is to “jazz”. In the course of a one-hour continuum, there
were probably as many moments when Perry wasn’t striking anything as when he
was. But rather than doing the Ornette Coleman thing of counterpointing
silence with explosive noise, Perry’s approach was to bring the volume level
right down, so that at times it was difficult to distinguish between sound and
the absence of sound.
And hearing the fragile beauty of these textures made the thought of
heavy 4/4 drumming seem suddenly obscene”.
Steve Lake Melody
Maker 15 – 12 – 1973 reviewing Wigmore Hall concert.
"The genius of esoteric sound has created a miracle."
Dave Lawrence, manager Nada
Records review of DEEP PEACE.
"This record is a long awaited recording of the
meditative percussion music of Frank Perry, whose musical equipment consists
of 400-year old Zen Buddhist Densho bells, Ming dynasty Chinese temple bell,
various Kyeezees (Burmese meditation gongs, none less than 50 years old),
Japanese and Chinese bell trees, Chinese Buddha gongs, Burmese chime bowls,
Chinese gongs, Paiste orchestral tuned gongs and symphonic gongs, Paiste
sound-plates and sound-discs, Tibetan, Indian, Swiss, Japanese and Chinese
bells, Tibetan invocation cymbals and meditation cymbals. Quite an array!
It is impossible to do justice to this 'music for meditation' through
words, for the experience is in the music itself. Suffice it to say, that on
hearing 'Deep Peace’, it is as if the whole world, and not just the
human ear, stops to listen and comes alive to its subtle vibrations. The
music conveys the experience of another dimension of reality hidden beyond ‘outer’
form, so that the vibrations of its sound resonate with and invoke a response
from the natural vibrations that live around us - the music of the spheres. In
the LP’s accompanying booklet, Frank Perry states that “…the Sun and
Moon principles, which form the basis of this work, are each dependent one
upon the other in their inseparability; being here representative of the
Eucharistic Christian Sacraments.”
The cover of the record depicts a beautiful mandala by Frank,
representing the planet Jupiter and the title is taken from an old Gaelic
prayer: “Deep peace of the running wave to you. Deep peace of the flowing
air to you. Deep peace of the quiet earth to you. Deep peace of the shining
stars to you. Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.”
So wrote Bill Anderton (editor) Solunar (Mind,
Body & Spirit magazine)
"The sounds and the music on this record are quite simply,
staggering. It's not so much what you actually hear in it, as how over and
above that it genuinely communicates a sensation of immense space and, yes, of
peace through sharing and listening.
Frank Perry is a percussionist who for many years has worked outside
any mainstream idea of drumming and percussion. He has long been more
interested in the spiritual and mystical aspects of sound, reaching back to a
way in which music played a role in religion now virtually buried in the West.
This is a long way from Sixties spaced-out music - listen to the record
and it is clear that Frank Perry has been on some long deep journeys and has
thought through exactly what the sounds mean to him and how he wants to make
music with them.
He builds up sound with a wide range of bells, gongs, chime bowls,
glass bowls, Tibetan invocation and meditation cymbals and his own home-made
discs. It is not so much drumming as calling a sound from one of these
surfaces - either deep and dark or ethereally high and thin.
Each succeeding sound, bowed or struck, exists both as a single
isolated action and also in relation to what has come into being, so that each
newborn sound stands stark for a moment and then melts into an eerie mass of
sound motion.
Frank Perry has spent many years finding out about how sounds can
induce or represent deep states of consciousness - this record is a result of
some of these years. The music is close to the feel of Tibetan music or any of
the ceremonial music heard from the East and it too has the sense of healing
of which music should have.
The most fantastic thing about this music is that it makes no demands,
except to slow down and accept patterns of openness and beauty. It is an
invitation - unspoken, unforceful - to one individual's vision and his
spontaneous improvising with the material he has gathered.
Try it - there are not many chances like this one."
Hannah Charlton (Melody
Maker review of DEEP PEACE. 23.5.1981.
"The music of percussionist Frank Perry is a prime
example of meaningful experience through art. His recording of MUSIC FOR
MEDITATION is of two compositions, "MOUNTAIN SUNRISE and COMMUNITY: I
AM IN YOUR HEART”, that are played on gongs, bells, chimes, bowls, pipes and
many other unusual percussive instruments. The emphasis of this music is on
the sound, in the same way that the emphasis of a mantra is on its sound and
not necessarily its content. This recording is more than a mantra for
meditation however, as the compositions have definite structure and symbolic
meaning within the structure. These pieces are music that not only consists of
individual vibrations of great beauty, depth and invocative power, but there
is also a completeness in each work that is a reflection of the relationship
between microcosm (each individual sound) and macrocosm (the complete work).
It takes Frank two hours to set up his percussion, which rather limits the
venues at which he can play. But to produce a single tone from a bell or gong
in which can be heard the song of orchestras and celestial choirs is the
reward that emanates from the source of this music to both musician and
listener."
Bill Anderton (editor) for New
Life magazine Volume 1, No. 2 July/August 1977.
Haunting, otherworldly, evanescent, ethereal; any attempt
to describe the experience of this album exposes the limits of my vocabulary.
Frank Perry improvises upon a symphonic array of Eastern bells, gongs, and
glass bowls to create a work of eerie tranquillity and breathtaking harmonic
richness. Compositionally, this album is more satisfying than Henry Wolff and
Nancy Hennings' comparable work with Tibetan bells - in a very real sense one
is drawn into an internal journey. No piece of music since Fripp and Eno's
"An Index of Metals" has had such a profound consciousness-altering
effect upon me."
Michael Draine OP magazine US
review for DEEP PEACE July/August 1983.
"Perry boasts a vast array of metal and glass percussion, both
ancient and custom-made, with the capacity for long resonance. He has
developed an interest in meditational music, the products of which have
sounded uncomfortable in the confines of group performance (in the jazz and
improvised music circles) thus this solo album is long overdue. "Deep
Peace" is a formidable achievement, the product of a unique
vision. Perry slowly develops a labyrinth of sound which, although improvised,
has a strong sense of direction. At times it is difficult to believe that so
much tonal diversity can be created from such limited means."
David Illic for City
Limits 5-11-1981.
"Improvised music often takes on a nervous, hyperactive
style that appeals to people of similar disposition. The music of Frank
Perry, an ingenious if somewhat fey percussionist who emerged in the
late-hippie era, is now refined to such a degree that he is content simply to
strike his specially constructed gongs ("Petalumines") every few
minutes and let their glowing resonances vibrate on and on. Not exactly
action-packed, of course, but if you have the patience Perry's true
musicianship is abundantly clear - he cherishes and appreciates beautiful
sounds."
John Fordham review of
"NEW ATLANTIS" for the Guardian.
Deep Peace consists of two
long tracks, Deep Peace of the Flowing Air to You and Deep
Peace of the Son of Peace to You, which sound like the result
of many hours of meditation. Side one commences with a sustained frequency,
which has a very healing quality. Gradually other sounds are brought into
play, forming a sonic interface of vibrating metal and glass, slowly changing.
A good accompaniment to watching the clouds float by in the sky or any similar
activity!"
Review from One Earth magazine (Findhorn community August '81).
"Over the years Frank Perry has collected a percussion kit of
gongs, bells, cymbals and drums from all over the world; he has added to it
instruments of his own devising. To see this kit delights the eye; to hear
Frank Perry play it refreshes the soul.
For this work he uses only bells, gongs, cymbals and sound plates,
mainly of Tibetan and oriental origin. One of them is 400 years old and
several are over fifty years old.
His music has developed as an expression of his own meditation; to
listen to "Deep Peace" is to share his meditation.
The resonances of a great Japanese gong are gradually built up until
the vibrations capture and still the mind, holding it caught in a shining
moment: delicate small bells dance across this web of sound: the mellow sound
of softly struck cymbals and the clear bright notes of small hand gongs and
bells in metal and glass weave in and out of the underlying shifting, ebbing,
flowing resonances. The recording is as superb as the playing.
Simply to sit and relax to this music will indeed bring Deep Peace to
those who are fraught or weary; as an adjunct to meditation, it aids the
development of the true meditational state, helping one to transcend the
everyday state of consciousness. Its effect in group meditation is profound.
The disc is accompanied by a 2,000-word article by Frank about the
spiritual inspiration of the music and describing some of the instruments used
in it."
Jean Williams for Aquarian
Arrow No. 11 Summer Quarter.
DEEP PEACE is a solo album by Frank Perry; a percussionist devoted
to a contemplative, visionary lifestyle who constructs complex sound textures
that function on many levels of existence and perception. This Album is very
well recorded, and captures the sonic microstructure of Frank’s work.
Frank's record, and his masterly weaving of sound textures elicited from his
array of metallic percussion instruments deserves more analysis than I have
time or space for at present."
Paul Burwell for Performance magazine June/July '81.
"Many members of the London Lodge and at New Lands will already have had
the opportunity of listening to Frank's unique music at one of the concerts he
has given in the Lodge. But now many more have the opportunity to hear his
deeply inspiring music played on his own carefully built-up collection of
instruments. These include 400 year old Zen Buddhist Densho bells, a Ming
dynasty Chinese temple bell, Burmese meditation gongs, Tibetan invocation
cymbals and many other bells and gongs.
He takes the title of his record (the music on the record is all
improvised, in response to the attunement with the divine Source and all
sound), and Frank takes his title from a Gaelic Prayer, familiar to many:
Deep Peace of the running wave to you
Deep Peace of the flowing air to you
Deep Peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep Peace of the shining star to you
Deep Peace of the Son of Peace to you.
This quality of peace certainly enfolds the listener, who is taken on
an inward journey towards the centre of all life and peace, becoming more and
more attuned to the great sound, the OM, the common denominator within all
life.
For those who can respond to this unique music, this record will be an
invaluable aid to meditation, and is highly recommended for Frank's own
dedication illumines every sound, drawing forth an answering note of response
in the listener's heart. He has been a student of White Eagle's teaching for
many years and is dedicated to the brotherhood work."
Jenny Dent for the White Eagle magazine Stella Polaris.
"Frank Perry is at the very forefront of exploration using
such sounds."
Composer Lawrence Ball
for Index of Musicians.
"And Perry makes the overtones and harmonics of bells and gongs
hang in the air like smoke rings.......Perry's work is tranquil and spacious
as meditation, and with as much of an inclination to magnify the minutest
details of sound."
John Fordham, TIME
OUT magazine.
"The most beautiful sound-structure I've ever seen. A kind of
pulpit formed by metal frames hung with dusky bronze, brass and silver
instruments. His improvisation is not the amazing kind, it has no spontaneous
extravagances neither is it whimsical. Whilst long-term timing is easy going,
short-term timing is delicately managed. Perry builds up a texture with a few
carefully matched sounds and the odd repeated pattern, then leaves it for
another."
Adrian Jack for Music and
Musicians.
"His solo performance at the Arts Centre was a spellbinding event.
He was surrounded by an awesome collection of various bells, gongs and other
non-membrane percussion instruments from which he coaxed eerily beautiful
sounds. The gentle, hypnotic nature of the music was a perfect reflection of
Perry's own spiritual philosophy."
The Cornishman. Performance.
"He is the only truly melodic and harmonic percussionist I've ever
heard. I must admit I think there's a touch of genius about him."
Keith Tippett (jazz
composer/pianist) Hampstead & Highgate Express.
Dave Gelly, for New Music
Express says: "Frank Perry is a master at juxtaposing small,
frail sounds which have you straining to catch their subtle nuances."
Review for album Ovary Lodge (RCA/VICTOR) and especially for
Perry's solo piece.
"Coaxing ethereal sounds from ancient bells, gongs, chimes
and bowls, Frank Perry is not so much a musician - more an explorer."
David Haith Bournemouth
Advertiser.
"Amid the hustle and bustle of the Mind and Body exhibition at
Olympia in 1977, I came across an oasis of peace and stillness; Frank Perry
was using his vast array of percussion to create an atmosphere of
contemplation, and I found that I was able to stand quietly and let the noise
of the rest of the exhibition fade into the background. This was the start of
my interest in Frank Perry's music.
Frank Perry's music is delicate, and with a wide range of tonal
quality, the sounds being allowed their own time and space. This is music that
requires the listener to allow time; time for the music to speak.
Music has as many frontiers as there are musicians and listeners; it is
thanks to musicians like Frank Perry - who pursue a specific, but often
changing goal, doing their best to prevent pressures from diluting the quality
of their effort - that music which is less obvious, less immediate, is able to
grow and flower."
Eddie Franklin-White
for Sounds International magazine.
"His motivations are different from those who make
music for the sake of making music. He is more like a monk singing plainsong,
for whom the music and the worship are intertwined. He is psychic. "Like
me, my father was a trance medium, and at the age of 16 I started doing
portraits of people in the other world and gave them away to people whose
spirit guides they were. I had started to play drums, and immediately these
experiences took place, they transformed my music. I had to find new bottles
for new wine."
The new bottles took the form of solo
performances in which the notes struck bear a complex relationship with the
Theosophical and Rosicrucian beliefs which he holds. Spelling this out to an outsider is rather like explaining the
details of the Trinity to someone who has never heard of Christ; it is
something to do with the seven globes of existence corresponding to the seven
octaves of the piano, and with representing colours by sounds. All of this is
not, to put it mildly, along orthodox lines as laid down by the Royal College
of Music; for a start, one of his helpers in his music has been a "Shamanistic
Tibetan who lived on earth several thousands of years before Buddhism came to
Tibet."
Jonathan Sale for The Guardian.
DEEP PEACE
INFINITE PEACE
ETERNAL PEACE
CRYSTAL PEACE STAR PEACE
"Frank
Perry's tapes are all very unique. They are unique chiefly because they
entirely bypass normal musical considerations as they are aimed at the
meditator, and not the prerequisites of the commercial market. Anyone who has
seen Frank Perry's percussion kit, which is more complex than anything else I
have ever seen, and includes dozens of bells, gongs, glasses, bowls,
windchimes, and things whose names defy easy recognition, such as Petalumines,
Ufoms and Nectarine, Planicervs, really cannot fail to be impressed, if not
totally intrigued. His music, or sounds, are highly evocative, and are
reminiscent of nothing else on Earth - except, perhaps, esoteric Tibetan
Temple Music, which of old was used to induce very deep and lasting trance
states, leading to initiation. The effect of his music is both unbelievably
ancient as well as futuristic, and can only be said to depict other states of
reality and other levels of consciousness. The sounds are also unbelievably
pure. Recorded at the White Eagle Temple at Liss. Listening to these tapes one
doesn't get all excited, nor does one dance up and down - that's not what they
are about at all. One listens, one meditates, and one allows oneself to be
transported beyond the normal confines of time and space, while opening one's
consciousness to the Spirit. Frank Perry is a pioneer into dimensional
realities which have not yet been explored by contemporary music, and in that
he stands alone."
Vee Van Dam (editor) Spiral magazine.
"Anyone lucky enough to have heard Frank Perry chanting or playing
his singing bowls, gongs and many other unusual instruments will know that
they have listened to a master of the art."
Editor
for FOUNTAIN magazine.
"I have listened to several records like this one. There is no
melody, no chords, no apparent rhythm, very little happening - just stillness
and sounds. How to judge if not by feeling! I enjoyed it. Some gong and bowl
albums are simply off. This one is not. Long tracks and quite a few surprises.
Music for meditation. Sounds that sometimes go to the edge of our hearing
habits - they are meant to. Quite an interesting sound trip."
Daniel Perret for KINDRED
SPIRIT magazine reviewing BELOVODYE . Volume 1. (The
Illumined Road).
"Frank Perry's offering is a slow-moving album full
of shifting sounds, mostly the resonances of gongs, singing bowl, Chinese
Buddha bells and Noah bells. Perry uses these instruments to open a gate to a
world of stillness beyond the transience of time, but always alive with the
drama of each moment. A masterful album."
Brian Lee for i to i
magazine. Jan/March '94. Belovodye.
"Why is it percussionists are producing the most radical
re-evaluation of sound? A couple of months ago we had what I regarded as the
most interesting album of the year - Mickey Hart's Planet
Drum in which the Grateful Dead drummer gathered together distinguished
colleagues from different cultures to produce a fascinatingly varied and
exciting all-percussion album. Now that has been topped by a solo album from
the British musician Frank Perry. I was going to call him a percussionist but
that would give a completely wrong impression because Frank creates a totally
absorbing universe of sound that extends far beyond the idea of the percussive
and plugs your imagination directly into his. If ordinary music is like
painting, then this is sculpture. Frank's music is created in part from an
immense number of gongs, whose sonic richness does for me what Keanu Reeves
does for young women, Tibetan bowls whose clarity creates a sound you seem to
be able to walk right into, and other vibrational exotica. As a composer - for
this music, though improvised, is very structured - Frank Perry must rate as
one of the most original of the later 20thC, for he has developed a coherent
language of rhythm and pitch based not on metrical parameters but on the
organic value of the sounds themselves. That may seem a rather daunting
description set down in cold print. But experience it for yourself: this
record shares that unique property of truly great art of communicating both on
a very direct emotional level but of reserving an esoteric depth, for those
who care to apply their minds as well as their senses. We are told that Belovodye,
'the land of White Waters' is the Russian equivalent of Shambhala, the
mythical kingdom of the spirit. This is the first part of a two disc set which
represents a journey from the world of the senses to the mystic perceptions of
inner consciousness and is in part inspired by the paintings of Nicholas
Roerich. I know that practically every New Age album promises you this trip,
so the claim is a little devalued, but the difference, my friends, is that
this one delivers."
Mike Steer (editor)
for Catalyst reviewing Belovodye.
"Frank Perry is one of Britain's most prominent
composers and percussionists. His sonic textures are exquisitely subtle,
psychically potent, deeply contemplative and, above all, extraordinarily
beautiful. This album ZODIAC is music to awaken one's deepest and
highest universal consciousness, based upon pulsating, intertwining harmonic
overtones - the result; sheer aesthetic indulgence! Meditative
masterpieces."
Mantra Music.
"The British composer Frank Perry, also from a jazz
background, has similarly abandoned the intellectual musical traditions of the
West and has found his music through his response to the sheer sound quality
of the instruments he uses: gongs, bells and singing bowls, in fact all manner
of sacred percussion. Although his music is typically still, allowing the
sound of each instrument to speak and to resonate in its own time, it has a
fiery quality, perhaps coming from the birth of the metal. It is through this
tension of fire and stillness that a space is created which allows the deepest
meditation states to be reached.
Frank's latest album on the Isis label BELOVODYE - LAND OF WHITE
WATERS is space music, inner space that is, transporting the listener to a
peaceful realm of truth and goodwill, Belovodye, the Russian version of the
mythical land of Shambhala. Also now available is Frank's earlier album ZODIAC
which is a depiction in an astonishing range of the energy of each of the
twelve astrological signs.
With the music of Frank Perry we are at last approaching a sense of the
music as a universal language that relates beyond culture and musical style to
something deeper. For although all the streams of western music - classical,
rock and jazz - have responded to the influence of the music of other
cultures, jazz maybe, being music improvised from the quality of the moment,
is the form best fitted to allow the listener space for their own journey to
inner stillness."
Brian Lee for CADUCEUS
magazine Issue 23 Sound Healing.
"Frank Perry raised the vibrations to even greater heights during
his demonstration of Tibetan Singing Bowls and lecture on "Sound, Healing
& Meditation" the meditation at the end of this talk was both
powerful and revitalising."
Pam Collard, organiser for
Salisbury Festival of Light on World Healing Day, reviewing the Day.
"Tibetan bowls and a choir of bells - with Frank Perry; a
rare and special experience of touch, meditation and sensitive co-operation
with an acknowledged master."
Review of workshop at Gaunts House.
"But of course not all free music inclines to the explosive and
the chaotic, and, though both play under the vague umbrella of the free style
(in fact there’s no such thing, “free” has more to do with attitudes
than individual techniques), I doubt that there’re two drummers on the
planet as different as Han Bennink and Frank Perry.
In Perry’s world there appear to be no approximations. If the kits
played by Bennink and Lytton sometimes appear to be almost random heaps of
scrap metal, Perry’s looks more like a Christmas tree or some delicate
oriental sculpture. It takes a couple of hours to assemble, moreover, being
pieced together from literally hundreds of percussion instruments, ranging
from Chinese drums and tambours up to rows of suspended brandy glasses and
finger cymbals.
Perry, incidentally, believes (wait for it) that his body is
intermittently controlled by other-world entities who are attempting to bring
their message to Earth through his music. Apparently, he also enlists the aid
of a Tibetan lama from the spirit world who guides him in his choice of
instruments.
Whatever these beliefs give Perry’s music religious (some might say
pseudo-religious) connotations. His sound has a meditative poise and
tranquillity.”
Steve Lake for Melody
Maker Jan 1977.
“His solo gigs can be like the crystallisation of all the natural
sounds you've ever heard...the sounds that he draws often seem to have more in
common with the meditational bells of Tibet, or the ethereal time-suspending
qualities of the Balinese Gamelan."
Steve Lake for Melody
Maker.
"I had not heard this music until I was asked to write this article. A copy arrived at a time my partner and I had put aside for meditation and study. So, without reading the liner notes other than to observe that it was connected with a journey, we played it, sitting by the light of one candle. The first impression on us both was that Track One related to so much of Frank's previous music which we know and love; the floating bells, the spaces the 'hanging' near silences: however from Track Two onwards ('A higher way opened') there is an almost Wagnerian richness with voice and percussion some of which I find on the edge of uncomfortable. This is most assuredly not a veiled criticism; for me that arts are at least in part about keeping our perceptual nerve ends alive; part of a 'cutting edge.'"
Eddie Franklin,
for Contemporary Music Review.
"Frank Perry, an accomplished performer on resonant
metal instruments, performed with centred conviction on Tibetan singing bowls,
including overtone chanting. He then presented Hovhaness' 11th Symphony All
Men Are Brothers as accompaniment to paintings of Nicholas Roerich. The
combination of Roerich's colossal breadth of vision with Hovhaness brought an
uplifting occasion to a grand close."
Composer Lawrence Ball for Caduceus
(Autumn '91).
First 'world'
music composer
"A concert celebrating the 80th birthday of American composer Alan
Hovhaness whose work bridges music from the East and West was held at Colet
House, London on July 7th 1991. It will be repeated in November at a venue to
be announced.
The programme, presented by musicians Frank Perry and James D'Angelo,
included a photographic slide presentation of the mystical paintings of
Russian painter and archaeologist Nicholas Roerich as background to Hovhaness'
11th Symphony All Men Are Brothers.
Hovhaness, born in 1911 of Armenian and Scottish descent
is rarely heard in Britain, although he has produced more than 275 works,
including 25 Symphonies and 8 operas. His best known works are: The
Mysterious Mountain and God Created Great Whales.
Composer Lawrence Ball writes: Arguably the first 'world' music
composer, Hovhaness was very evocatively performed on piano by James D'Angelo.
This music ranged from classical fugue to modal melodies and drones. One heard
the soaring, pure and sweet taste that characterises Hovhaness - rarely
acknowledged in Britain.
James also presented with Suzanne Higgins (mezzo soprano) his Four
Songs on Hymns from the Rig Veda. Their distinctive quality - languid and
beautifully 'static', allow the listener to savour some phrases many times.
Frank Perry, an accomplished performer on resonant metal instruments,
performed with centred conviction on Tibetan singing bowls, including overtone
chanting. He then presented Hovhaness' 11th Symphony All Men Are Brothers
as accompaniment to paintings of Nicholas Roerich. The combination of
Roerich's colossal breadth of vision with Hovhaness brought an uplifting
occasion to a grand close.'
Full version of review by Lawrence
Ball in Caduceus Autumn 1991.
"Frank Perry enthralled us with most beautiful and lasting sounds
for meditation from bells and gongs - from 400-year-old temple bells to the
gongs of a modern orchestra, we were delighted that he came and inspired so
many of us."
Colum Hayward for Stella
Polaris.
"A concert of solo percussion and solo guitar might seem unlikely.
In practice it was highly entertaining, artistically successful and well
received by a committed audience. One thing that surprises about Frank Perry
is that, although a salesman of sound, he is a superb time keeper. Since he
operates alone this only has meaning in terms of the perfection of his
performance. To sell sound as a total commodity eschews the need for forward
momentum, yet this is just what his rhythmic barrages possess. His kit is
completely improvised yet it is tuned beautifully. The subtlety of his
rhythmic patterns in the restrained moments are well suited to the gentle
sounds he obtains and the listener is never conscious of meaningless
'tinkling'. A sense of purpose permeates his playing to the exclusion of
athletic display. The audience were completely silent and the daunting Wigmore
Hall defied the listener to breathe, never mind cough.
This was a riveting event of free music"
Barry McRae Jazz Journal
January 1974 review of Wigmore Hall concert.
"Frank Perry has long been an explorer of ethnic and world musics,
and a pioneer in new percussion techniques: he's even created his own
instruments! Although his roots are in jazz, he was a co-founder with Keith
Tippett's experimental fusion outfit Ovary Lodge, little of his solo work has
been such. Mostly, Frank Perry likes to create meditative sonic drifts that
ooze and flow, in which his percussives are caressed and rubbed rather than
struck, resulting in a music that is subtle yet unusual in texture and
sometimes remarkably intense.
Like his releases on Celestial Harmonies, this is really mood music
rather than something to listen to attentively. In fact, if listened to too
loudly the sonic waves can start things oscillating and furnishings vibrating!
Be warned, such music can be very intense. Quiet is how I like to listen to
it, relaxed and drawn in by the resonant tones."
Alan Freeman reviewing Belovodye.
AUDION #28 Spring 1994
"Frank Perry has long been a master of percussion with 16 solo
albums to his credit as well as numerous collaborations and television
soundtrack credits.
Earlier this year he recorded his debut album for Isis, "Belovodye
(Land Of White Waters)". The fact that the album is also subtitled
"Volume 1 The Illumined Road" gives hope that there is more to
follow.
Simply to call this album new age is to do it an injustice, but that is
probably how it's going to get labelled, which is a shame because there is
much more to the recording than that.
Yes, there is something about this that seems to be aiming for a higher
consciousness and it came as no surprise to discover that Perry also lectures
on the evolution of human consciousness.
Instruments from different cultures are combined to create new
combinations of sound, that because they are essentially percussion based
create evocative soundscapes that include rings and rattles and very few
crashes and clashes.
Occasionally the mass of percussion, includes instruments like Tibetan
singing bowls.
The end result is a fascinating album that is as adventurous as it is
mysterious, as enchanting as it is invoking and to my mind the best of the
first crop from Isis."
Review of Belovodye. Unknown
Frank Perry's work, too, is the result of the rigorous discipline of
devotion to spirit. Consequently he has become a channel for spiritual
energies weaving and flowing into soundscapes, which allow the listener to
rise in consciousness and glimpse dimensions luminous, rarefied vibration. The
sounds he creates are charged with spiritual energy, with light. They shimmer
with refined emanations. This has a penetrating - and ultimately healing -
effect on the auric field of the listener.
In Eastern percussion, like singing bowls, gongs, bells etc., Frank has
found the ideal means by which to convey something of the quality of his
spiritual experiences. Their sounds are self-sustained, vibrating and
expanding through space, where they create intricate harmonic textures. The
feeling of timelessness or being outside of time is sustained on the form
level, as his collection of instruments fuses many cultures and traditions.
Paradoxically, his music is something very ancient, yet never heard before, a
glimpse of what music might become in a future spiritual culture.
It satisfies intensely on all levels; spiritual vision and a unique
instrumentarium combine in creating fluid and free forms, developed out of
pulsating harmonics and vibrations. There is no rhythm as we know it, although
free rhythmical passages may develop, but are never permanent. However, all is
pervaded by a tremendous silence, which in some of his work can lead the
listener into cosmic and angelic dimensions of creation. Frank's output
consists, so far, of twelve albums and it is with this last one, Belovodye,
Land of White Waters, that he has reached a new level of
integration of 'energy and form.'
The title suggests a kind of Shambhala, a Deity of Light, and the six
tracks are stages of a voyage to this place, both a physical location and a
state of Being. The album is subtitled 'The Illumined Road', on which the
listener/pilgrim traverses vast and changing visionary landscapes all
suggested and created by a staggering array of tone-colours. These landscapes
blossom vividly in the imagination; valleys, canyons, caves and high
mountains; all connected by this winding road as a luminous thread.
In one track the sound of a high pitched panic bowl may suggest a
sudden new vista of transcendence opening before our astonished eyes; in
another, bowls, digeridoo and overtone chanting combine to set up a sound
current of great inner friction, shocking us deep into the body, the
"Ancient Pathway". Then the beauty of the flute, in the silence like
a vault; the pilgrim has passed through many trials, tests and initiations.
Everything dies away in this last stage of total letting go.
The last track brings luminous revelation and we see, at last, the City
of Light. Deep gongs create tall columns of golden vibration, a majestic
resonating sound pervades all, and we feel the presence of Great Beings. Light
and sound descend into form, form continually ascends the ladder of vibration,
spirit and sound are irrevocably fused.
Andreas Bettray, Caduceus,
issue 32, Summer '96. Review of Belovodye.
Fascinating slide show in England.
At the Peredur Centre for the Arts in East Grinstead in Sussex a slide
show of paintings of Nicholas Roerich took place on 26th January, 1994. Most
of the slides shown were of less widely known paintings reflecting the
marvellous colour moods of the mountain landscape.
The presenter, Frank Perry, composes music inspired by N. Roerich's
paintings to accompany such events. On travels to Asian countries over the
past twenty years he has built up an excellent collection of the finest
musical instruments.
On this particular evening he accompanied some of the slides with his
music on gongs and with Tibetan Singing bowls, thus creating a splendid
atmosphere in the room.
As he had recently undertaken an extensive journey to Russia, he
reported on the life of the Roerich family with the help of slides he had
taken in various places, in Ishvara for instance, the Roerich's former estate,
which is now a museum.
About 50 visitors attended this evening and were so impressed by
Roerich's works that the question was asked again and again as to why there
were not reproductions of all Roerich's paintings and why this treasure was so
little known. It must also be said that Frank Perry's photographs are of an
excellent quality, displaying to the beholder the whole beauty of these works
of art.
K.Werner.
for Roerich Forum No .4. 1994.
'Two western artists respond to the traditions of Tibet'
The land of Tibet is unique, high on a mountainous plateau with one of
the most inhospitable terrains. Its own indigenous shamanic magical tradition
of Bon first met Indian Buddhism in the 8th century AD and over the centuries
it has evolved into a powerfully focused way of liberation.
Equally powerful is the fascination that Tibet holds for western
esotericists. Ever since Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical
Society, spoke of her visit to Tibet at the end of the nineteenth century,
Tibet has contributed to the west's dream of the east and interest in eastern
spirituality. This stream of fascination was further fed by the books that
Alice Bailey channelled from the entity known as The Tibetan.
It is from this esoteric
tradition that Frank Perry comes - that and contemporary jazz. This
combination has led him to develop a language of sacred percussion using
bells, gongs and bowls that he has obtained not only from Tibet but from all
over the east including Burma, Japan, Thailand and China. On one side of his
100 minute tape The Singing Bowls of Tibet, Frank speaks of how he was
introduced to the supernatural world that is evoked by the sound of bells and
of their deeper sacro-magical significance. He gives fascinating background to
the use of sacred percussion in Tibet not so much for music but for spiritual
and ceremonial practice such as inner cleansing, meditation and clearing
chakras.
The talk is illustrated with the sounds of the instruments themselves,
with yin bowls and yang bowls and the so-called panic bowl. As well as the
esoteric aspects Frank gives solid practical information about playing the
bowls, about the metals used in making them, and advice on how to choose and
care for them.
The second side of the tape begins with a guided meditation that leads
into an amazing journey into the world of inner sound. Frank Perry's knowledge
of this world comes from a deep awareness of musical structure and an
understanding of what he calls ' the psychic content' of music. For those who
do not know Frank's musical world, this tape is an excellent introduction; for
those who already do, it will deepen and enrich the acquaintance.
Brian Lee for Caduceus
Issue 37, Autumn '97
“Now we were treated to increasingly ethereal and spiritually
awakening sounds and vibration. Frank Perry ‘played’ his Tibetan Singing
Bowls and used overtone chanting to evoke the atmosphere of the Himalayas,
assisted by a changing backdrop of scenic paintings by the Russian artist
Nicholas Roerich. It felt almost as if we were transported to this magical
place. I was reminded of Peter Mathiesson’s comment in his book The Snow
Leopard, that these magnificent and awesome mountains ‘ring with silence.’
Sharada for ‘Ambrosia’
Journal Issue 21.
“Frank Perry’s Tibetan Singing Bowls produced that delicate and
deep, mountainous cool thrill with a background scenery of snowcapped hills
and valleys and a Nataraj dancing.”
Gitaprakashanandaji
for ‘Ambrosia’ Journal Issue 21.
“Frank
Perry hears, rather than sees, what Yoga means for him. Those who attended
Congress this year cannot forget the resonance not only of Frank himself but
of his amazing collection of singing bowls from the Far East and his stunning
presentation of the paintings of Nicholas Roerich. Visitors to Congress were
amazed to be able to see, hear and experience the bowls in Frank’s
collection, many of which are ancient and very rare, and to hear some of the
stories of how he came to acquire them.”
Rosemary Turner (Editor) Spectrum B.W.Y. Journal Autumn 1998.
"Ember Glance - The permanence of memory was an installation of sculpture, sound and light at Tokyo's Creative '90 exhibition, from which this book/CD box is the takeaway package. As befits a project that, as Mills writes, 'examines the ideas of space, time and memory', it's dominated by swirling, abstract imagery. Long-time Eno collaborator Mills illustrates his full-colour, coffee-tableish tome with photo-montages of the installation, its composite elements (gauze veils, mirrors, 'found' objects, landscape images, lightboxes) amid various shades of expressionist art while Sylvian's instrumental soundtrack, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, is another of his lengthy (32 minutes) ambient watercolours aided by Frank Perry's Noah bells, bowed gong and finger bells which contribute a delicate, sombre tones of Eastern promise. It all comes in a sturdy box, and is a limited edition of 20,000."
Martin Aston. Q Magazine
“Frank Perry, musician, lecturer, astrologer, and
long-time server in the White Eagle Lodge, is one of the foremost authorities
on the metal percussion instruments of Tibet and most of Asia. He has
performed musically all over England and Europe, he has released numerous
recordings of his own music, including the classics Deep Peace and New
Atlantis, and has been in demand as a lecturer on sacred Tibetan instruments
in venues from the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Societies to Cambridge
University and other distinguished centres of learning."
“The rarer sacred ritual instruments of Tibet are well suited to
convey spiritual experiences through sound, for they are charged with
psycho-spiritual power that assists in the entering of the garden of the Soul
– World/Temple of the Spirit/Land of Light.”
Frank Perry.
Alex Cline for The
White Eagle Lodge (U.S.A.).
CRYSTAL PEACE STAR PEACE
THE HEALING BOWLS OF TIBET
DIVINE PEACE
“Frank Perry’s music takes place in a slow moving world – the only
time is the time it takes for a sound to be heard and die away. It is a world
of exquisite beauty whose landscapes vary between the purity of Tibetan
singing bowls, the ritual of bells and the power of gongs and cymbals. It is
music created by improvisation and spontaneous composition that can lead us
deep within ourselves into meditational states. To celebrate his 50th
birthday Frank has issued seven CDs of some of the most profound and
spiritually aware music I have ever heard. Last time I reviewed three albums,
here we review the other four.
Star peace, dating from 1986 is a reworking of his earlier album
Zodiac which was inspired by the esoteric meanings of the twelve
astrological signs developed from the mystical paintings of Nikolai Roerich.
The twelve originally separate tracks which use the full range of Frank’s
collection of over 500 sacred percussion instruments as well as overtone
singing have here been remastered as a continuous fifty minute musical
journey. Then, with the blast of a conch shell, we are in another world of
strange beauty and mysterious power, the bonus track, ‘Temple of the Ancient
|magical Presence’. This is perhaps the most dramatic of all of Frank’s
albums.
The soundworld of the album Crystal Peace however is one of
purity and simplicity. Of the three tracks, the first, ‘Crystal Star’
which was inspired by another Roerich painting, The Unknown Singer, is
a composed piece which gradually moves from Chinese Buddha Bells to the
translucent sound of bowed tuned discs. This leads into the title track, ‘Crystal
Peace’, twenty minutes of timelessness. The last piece, ‘Chintamani’
takes its name from the Tibetan legend of the sacred fire carried down from
the mountain on the back of a white horse to give light to humanity during a
time of darkness. It is a musical meditation which uses only the sound of
Indian Noah bells.
The CD Divine Peace makes available material from The White
Temple recording sessions of 1986 which was too long to be issued on
cassette. A ten minute piece for Tibetan bowl and overtone singing, ‘The
Temple Within’ acts as an overture to ‘Mountain of the Shining Ones’, a
totally spontaneous forty minute improvisation that seems to live on the
precipice of the moment. The album is completed with a piece from 1996, ‘Message
from Shambhala’ representative of Frank’s live festival performances,
using deep Tibetan bowls, the wordless message of overtone chanting and the
exotic sound of water bowls.
As a musician who has had training in spiritual healing, Frank works
consciously with the healing qualities of sacred sound both in sessions with
patients and in the music he records. The Healing Bowls of Tibet is the
music from his 1997 cassette The Singing Bowls of Tibet (reviewed in
Caduceus 37) minus the spoken word. The main piece at over forty minutes is
‘The Way of the Bowls’ which Frank describes as ‘an imaginary journey
round a garden of sounds’ beginning with an 800 year old heart chakra bowl
and ending with a passage for overtone choir. The final piece, ‘Within the
Petals of the Rose’ is a sound massage which uses over 150 bowls and focuses
on their healing qualities.
Frank Perry is not setting out to create something comfortable and
relaxing in his music. It is beautiful certainly but behind that beauty is a
power like that of Rilke’s angel ‘that disdains to destroy us’ and
behind that power is a peace, what Frank calls ‘the deep inner peace of the
spirit’. And that peace is the source of healing.
Brian Lee for Caduceus
Issue 42 (Winter ‘98-’99)
STAR
PEACE DIVINE
PEACE
THE HEALING BOWLS OF TIBET
Frank Perry
has always been seeking to exploit the pure beauty and inner sound produced
from long, mostly metallic sustained percussive sounds to reach his meditative
goal.
Frank’s ‘Star Peace’ is one of three limited edition CD’s on the BEL label, with a cover painting on each by Frank himself, along with informative liner notes explaining fully not only the instruments used, but the fundamental philosophy behind their use. Both ‘Divine Peace’ and ‘Star Peace’ include recordings going back to 1986 – captured in glorious digital UHJ surround-sound by engineer Richard Elen - but with the majority relatively new material. ‘The Healing Bowls of Tibet’ was all recorded in 1997 and features mostly the incredibly sustained sounds of Tibetan Healing bowls. For an absolute treat of sonic sonority listen to track 3 ‘Message from Shambhala’ (‘Divine Peace’) a wonderfully atmospheric track that opens with the most powerful and amazingly sustained sound. These three CD’s have everything, and if you haven’t come across him before they will paint a concise and comprehensive picture of his work. With Frank playing a wide range of metallic percussion, including his own invented instruments – the Petalumines, Pyrahermeezees, and Ufoms, as well as his amazing overtone singing (overtone singing in the style of Mongolia and Tibet) - it’s understandable that the listener is asked to suspend the chronological sense of time, and become a part of the experience. This set of CD’s make a brilliant collection and introduction to one of this countries leading exponents of this un-egocentric percussion style, formed around his lifetime personal spiritual beliefs and goals, and is highly recommended at any level you approach it.
Trevor Taylor
for Avant magazine Issue 11 Spring 1999(editor)
Music in Service to the Divine:
Shelia Dhar: Voyage Intereur 2 CD’s
Frank Perry with Stargate: Rainbow Healing Peace
On the face of it I have chosen two very divergent types of
music and musician: the one deeply rooted in the Hindustani vocal tradition,
its humble and exalted servant, the other a pioneer in the art of sacred
percussion weaving together various different cultural strands. These he
forges into his own unique sound world, all language all his own and never
heard before-
Yet, both share an absolute allegiance and devotion to spirit as the
foundation and sole inspiration for their music. It arises out of deep inner
silence before reaching the physical world as sound.
The effect of such music is alchemical: its stepped-up vibration begins
to have – however incrementally – an uplifting and purifying effect on our
physical world and being. It touches and nourishes the core of our being and
harmonises and aligns the different levels of our energy.
Frank Perry has had powerful spiritual experiences which led him to
look for a musical medium which would both reflect something of their quality
as well as assist others on their meditative journeys. This led him to the
Tibetan Singing bowls and a plethora of Eastern percussion, so rich in
overtones, instruments which opened up a new world where Sound and colour are
one.
While exploring the world of harmonics with his instruments, he also
discovered his unique vocal abilities:
In 1971 he received the gift of his Tibetan Tantric ‘undertone’
voice. Similarly, he began his overtone singing in 1980 – again without any
formal training. He says himself that these abilities are spiritual gifts,
prepared, and trained for in other incarnations –
His
new album “Rainbow Healing Peace” demonstrates the remembered gifts
remarkably and in conjunction with two other musicians, the composers Bill
Martin and Susan Nares. They formed an overtone choir called “Stargate”.
It is mainly their work together which is featured on this album in groups of
two or three tracks each. However, Frank has framed these with sympathetic
instrumental improvisations as well as 2 solo Hoomi tracks enriched by a
bowl-drone and a mixture of gongs and bowls respectively.
The harmonic choir pieces are all improvisations that were inspired by
the image of the Aurora Borealis visualised in meditation. This practice
harmonised the group and created a strong aggregate note, allowing the sound
to arise out of the meditative silence. The music then follows intricately all
shifts and fluctuations in the blended field of the group energy. Often voices
will arise in unison blending into an almost drone-like resonant unity until
in one or the other voice there emerges a corona of harmonics. The third voice
will then take up and amplify one of these and give it a new intenser glow.
The constant shifting of colour through a change in vowels, harmonic or
normal voice or through microtonal slides and pitch-inflections is quite
protean, yet the underlying meditative spaciousness allows even the subtlest
musical event to stand out with great clarity. It has the curious ability to
dilate and suspend time. In these sound worlds, time does not pass in linear
progression but it only felt as a pulsation of harmonics, an expanding texture
from a sound core.
One seems to be gazing into a pool of silence in which sound ripples
the surface with the most exquisite colours and shades and where each shift is
perceived, as it were, in prismatic close up. The normal perception of
intervals is suspended as the harmonics create a kind of hall of mirrors in
which one perceives the same note in different dimensions and within different
special parameters. This arrests ordinary consciousness with its predictable
linear patterns and draws it into the underlying silence.
Three pure gong and bowl pieces enrich and frame this harmonic
adventure:
“Milarepa’s
Rainbow of Sound” (track 2): a very delicate gong shimmer, gently
crescending and decrescending.
“Rainbow
of Light Bells” (track 5): this is a very exciting piece: microtonal bell
clusters create a pulsating focus of intense radiance. Mixed in are bowl
sounds amplified by the mouth and ‘left behind’, as it were, as the bell
nucleus expands upwards into rarefied space.
Finally: “Tongues of Fiery Light” (track 8): a group of bowls sustain a golden, multi-harmonic cluster, from which leap and into which return the ‘flames’ created by the undulating harmonics of the water bowls.
Two
solo Hoomi pieces frame the entire CD. “Singing Crystal” (track 1) is
gentle and subtle.
It features minute microtonal slides and inflections which expand
slowly over a whole octave. Certain notes open like flowers or mandalas and
shine with a corona of harmonics. The voice is rich and warm and the sounds
arise from a great meditative depth and authority.
“Stargate
Sirius” the penultimate piece begins with a highly dramatic instrumental
introduction: gongs nixed with water bowls and their flame-like harmonics
reach two overwhelming crescendos before over a deeper bowl ostinato the hoomi
starts. The voice is luminous with extremely high and compressed harmonics
while the soft deep bowl pulsates below.
However, there is a 13th, final track, the most powerful of
them all, and it is the culmination of this choir’s work together: “Song
of the Hathors” starts in unison, then fans out, still on the same note,
over four octaves. Suddenly the sound intensifies until it erupts into the
most exciting section of Tibetan tantric undertone “bellows”. These move
into sustained pulsations which underlie and structure the whole piece.
The
second male voice then soars into the most amazing, almost violently
compressed, harmonics. They are extremely high and scintillating and gain in
intensity and match the wildness and power of the subharmonic “bellows”.
The high female voice clusters around the ground notes of the male high
harmonics until it, too, begins to soar.
This
wonderful piece concludes what is a remarkable disc with electrifying
vitality.
Andreas Bettray
Caduceus Magazine (Autumn 1999)
THE
MUSIC OF FRANK PERRY
Frank Perry has been pioneering
meditative music with Tibetan singing bowls and Eastern sacred percussion
since the 1960’s. Originally a jazz drummer he soon began to move away from
more conventional forms of music after an early spiritual awakening. His
search for a musical equivalent to his inner experiences of heightened states
of consciousness, and for sounds which could induce such feelings in the
listener led him to the ancient singing bowls of Tibet. These bowls have been
made for centuries – until the 18th century – according to
secret metallurgic recipes using seven different metals, including gold and
silver. In order to make these metals alloy, secret mantras had to be recited.
The bowls were then hand-beaten. In addition to their sound-colour, which is
determined by their size and shape, as well as the mixture of metals, some of
the bowls are dedicated to specific deities of the Buddhist pantheon. The
deities actually appear on the inner levels when the bowl is being played.
Frank has bowls dedicated to the Taras, both white and green, to Maitreya, the
future Buddha and to the Adi – the primordial - Buddha. Other bowls are a
‘whispering’ bowl, featured with a ‘talking’ bowl on his latest album
“Divine peace”. This ‘talking’ bowl was given to Frank by Khyntse
Rinpoche, a Tibetan master, in 1982 and it has a powerful purifying effect on
the aura. Another rare bowl in Frank’s possession is an ancient exorcism
bowl. He can literally perform exorcisms with it, and does so mainly from his
private sound-healing practise, liberating people from negative energies and
entities.
These bowls belong to the ancient Bon religion of
Tibet, representing expanding Earth energies, whereas the Buddhist
contribution to sacred ritual percussion consists of the bells, which
represent sky-and-spiritual energies. Primarily they were used by itinerant
monks and yogis for a great variety of purposes including healing, shamanic
trance and induction of altered states of consciousness – in very specific
ways! Frank has classified over 40 different types of bowls. At present he is
writing a book about them, the definitive guide to their secrets, saving and
preserving for mankind this extremely ancient knowledge of the spiritual power
of sound: Nada Brahma. Much of this knowledge has been lost, but frank is able
to channel it thanks to his Tibetan guides and his own memories of other
lifetimes.
His instruments include a vast
array of meditation gongs from Java, temple bells from China and Japan as well
as instruments he has invented himself. His music induces extraordinary
meditative states of consciousness, both in and out of the body. Its primary
function is sacred, however, all the sounds coaxed from a huge variety of
instruments are extremely beautiful and speak directly – as any great music
will – to the mind and the heart.
By Andreas Bettray (Wilde Ones newsletter vol. 4).
Belovodye
- 1 & 2
Frank Perry
Mountain Bell Music (see resource guide) MBM CD 011 & 012
review by Maxwell Steer
Eight years separate the
recordings which form the two parts of this important work. Belovodye is a
Russian word meaning ‘The land of the white waters,’ and refers to the
folk myth that far in the East, in an inaccessibly high valley, there lies a
kingdom of pure spirits – the Shambhala legend. Frank Perry has interpreted
this symbolically in music through his extraordinary range of brass percussion
instruments of Eastern origin - gongs, bells, cymbals, the Tibetan bowls for
which he is probably best known, and several metal instruments of his own
invention.
Each track really is a piece of music, but not one that sounds like any
existing definition of music. Yet each is an integral work of coherently
organised sound. Superficially it may sound like the work of some other new
age doodlers who use an exotic
timbral palette to trick out banal musical ideas, but if you fully immerse
yourself in Perry’s extraordinarily vivid sound-world - headphones are
strongly recommended - you are offered a transcendent pathway to a profound
inner experience. This is not to say that all are offered either the same
pathway or the same experience or indeed that everyone is necessarily
offered anything, for this depends entirely on whether the listener’s
openness but Perry is a profoundly intuitive musician who has spent years
studying esoteric arts -including astrology, which he uses to construct the
‘ground plans’ of his improvisations - and
brings his encyclopædic knowledge of contemporary experimental music into
play in the unique timbral and vibrational qualities of his work. Unlike
contemporary ‘secular’ experimental work this is delicate and sensitive
music, even when loud as it sometimes is, which respects the open state it
evokes in its listeners auditory channels; yet it panders to no pollyanna-ish
idea of merely-sensuous background prettiness which you find in ambient or
so-called New Age music. You have to listen to it with the primary focus
of your will, if you're to
receive its gift.
When I first heard Belovodye 1, on its release in 1993, it presaged a
revolution in my own musical æsthetic. I was over-awed not just by the
luminous sound-world of these sustained metal pitches which Perry places
alongside and over each other with consummate understanding of the
extraordinary vibrational relationships which the harmonic structures of each
sound have with each other. Instruments are rarely struck, instead they are
excited by stroking in such a way that the tonal purity is truly enabled to
‘speak’ to the spiritually-attuned listener. I found in Perry’s work the
living (live) accomplishment of what I had endeavoured to evoke by the medium
of electronic (dead) music.
The new
Belovodye 1 on Perry’s own label is a remix of the version originally issued
on a small commercial label. If I’m honest I have to say that I prefer the
original mix, but that may just be because it has been a constant friend over
the last decade. I don't think anyone coming to it afresh would be in any way
put off. Belovodye 2 is an unparalleled triumph, a true masterpiece from all
perspectives; as experimental
music, as performance artistry of the highest calibre, and as the sustained
utterance of a truly exalted spiritual ‘note’. I would never use the word
masterpiece lightly, but this is one indeed. Within the 79 minutes there are
five tracks evoking Vulcan, the Sun -a glorious 34-minute sunbath for the ears
- Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, subtitled Singing the Praises of the Blessed One
Within All. As the equivalent of 150th Psalm in pure sound it had that sense
of uplifted wonder and heart-release that characterises true worship in the
spirit. Particular praise must be given to Oliver Nares’s wonderful and
sensitive recording of the instruments.
CD
REVIEWS FOR CADUCEUS
FRANK
PERRY:
Tibetan Singing Bowls
Volume 3: Ancient Tibetan
Initiation Bowls
Mountain Bell
Music CD012
Tibetan Singing Bowls
Volume 4: Chakra Healing
Mountain Bell
Music CD013
It
is both a musically rich tapestry which you can perceive as an archetypal
structure Perry intuits at a psychic level.
At the same time the sounds are a therapeutic vibrational medicine that
clearly cleanses mind, body and soul.
The vibrations can do their work whether or not you decide to actually
listen to them as you would ordinary music. For it has to be accepted that
musical sounds operate on our physical and energy bodies through sympathetic
or forced resonance if even we are deaf.
Since 1968 Perry’s aim has been to dedicate himself to finding and using sounds that have definite healing properties – primarily the singing bowls. He has amassed a very large collection of them through listening to more than 4000 bowls over a 20-year period.
As
Perry states:
“In certain schools of Tibetan Yoga particular religious objects are
charged with psycho-spiritual powers and the most sacred singing bowls are
likewise charged.
Some of these are intended to assist us along our spiritual path of
unfoldment such as special chakra bowls.”
The
Initiation Bowls music composed in 1993
consists of 5 tracks (roughly 78’ total), the longest being ‘Awakens
the Five Treasures of Mount Kanchenjunga’ at almost 34 minutes. On this
track and ‘Singing the Praises of the Blessed One Within All’ Perry
includes his remarkable overtoning. It
has a unique quality like no other that I have heard. It is as if he makes
contact with some Tibetan master of the ancient past and channels the master’s
voice in a totally natural way. As
though it is not a learned technique. In
each of the tracks we go through an initiation.
As Perry explains: ‘It is those initiations which the spiritual life
of each and every one is guaranteed to pass through during many lifetimes’
What is striking is that, although he uses essentially the same
instruments for each piece, each track nonetheless has its own particular
structure. While the titles might have no significance to the perceiver, I am
sure they are quite inspirational as a stimulant to unfold these structures.
The
Chakra Healing music consists of 7 tracks, one for each chakra, ranging in
length from 9 to 16 minutes. Each track has an inspirational sub-title such as
‘Hymn for the Golden Child of a Fiery Heart’ for the heart chakra.
These sounds are related directly to the awakening of the Kundalini
energy to some degree.
Perry describes it as a ‘sacred science’ that should be approached
with due reverence and care.
Therefore he gives instructions about placing oneself in an undisturbed
place and sitting properly.
Moreover, he it feels it important to have some closing ritual after
being resonated by the sounds.
Unlike Volume 3 with its complexity and richness of sounds including
the overtoning, Chakra Healing has a potent simplicity and subtlety using
primarily the singing bowls – carefully selecting them to activate the
particular chakra.
The complete experience is one of purification wherein the sounds seem
to swirl into the energy centres and awaken them to resonate at their true
frequencies.
At the same time the primary energy of kundalini is stimulated in a
rising pulsation.
The
essence of this music that Perry draws down to Earth is Akasha itself.
That is, space opens up, time slows down and silences are heard.
These sounds with their enormous range from the deepest rumblings of
the gongs to the high tinnabulations of the Tibetan bells just hang there in
space as a fluid geometry creating slow beat patterns. Therefore brain states
are altered and you enter higher dimensions of existence where you can come
into contact with your still, all-knowing Self and experience deep peace. This
is the inner journey par excellence. With these recordings Perry has reached a
pinnacle of spirit and expression. The expression ‘sacred sound’ is often
very loosely used to describe all sorts of toning, chanting and music.
In the case of these CDs it can be applied without reservation because
you feel in the presence of some benevolent power far greater than the little
self can fathom.
These sounds call you to wake up and be who you truly are.
You are helpless to do otherwise.
Reviewed
by James D’Angelo for
Caduceus
SLIDE SHOWS
Fascinating slide show in England.
At the Peredur Centre for the Arts in East Grinstead in Sussex a slide
show of paintings of Nicholas Roerich took place on 26th January, 1994. Most
of the slides shown were of less widely known paintings reflecting the
marvellous colour moods of the mountain landscape.
The presenter, Frank Perry, composes music inspired by N. Roerich's
paintings to accompany such events. On travels to Asian countries over the
past twenty years he has built up an excellent collection of the finest
musical instruments.
On this particular evening he accompanied some of the slides with his
music on gongs and with Tibetan Singing bowls, thus creating a splendid
atmosphere in the room.
As he had recently undertaken an extensive journey to Russia, he
reported on the life of the Roerich family with the help of slides he had
taken in various places, in Ishvara for instance, the Roerich's former estate,
which is now a museum.
About 50 visitors attended this evening and were so impressed by
Roerich's works that the question was asked again and again as to why there
were not reproductions of all Roerich's paintings and why this treasure was so
little known. It must also be said that Frank Perry's photographs are of an
excellent quality, displaying to the beholder the whole beauty of these works
of art.
K.Werner.
for Roerich Forum No.4. 1994.
“Now we were treated to increasingly ethereal and spiritually
awakening sounds and vibration. Frank Perry ‘played’ his Tibetan Singing
Bowls and used overtone chanting to evoke the atmosphere of the Himalayas,
assisted by a changing backdrop of scenic paintings by the Russian artist
Nicholas Roerich. It felt almost as if we were transported to this magical
place. I was reminded of Peter Mathiesson’s comment in his book The Snow
Leopard, that these magnificent and awesome mountains ‘ring with silence.’
Sharada for ‘Ambrosia’
Journal Issue 21.
“Frank Perry’s Tibetan Singing Bowls produced that delicate and
deep, mountainous cool thrill with a background scenery of snowcapped hills
and valleys and a Nataraj dancing.”
Gitaprakashanandaji for
‘Ambrosia’ Journal Issue 21.
“Frank
Perry hears, rather than sees, what Yoga means for him. Those who attended
Congress this year cannot forget the resonance not only of Frank himself but
of his amazing collection of singing bowls from the Far East and his stunning
presentation of the paintings of Nicholas Roerich. Visitors to Congress were
amazed to be able to see, hear and experience the bowls in Frank’s
collection, many of which are ancient and very rare, and to hear some of the
stories of how he came to acquire them. . .
Frank combines slides of Roerich’s paintings with a soundtrack of his
own music to magical effect.”
Rosemary Turner
(Editor) Spectrum B.W.Y.
Journal Autumn 1998.
"Frank Perry, an accomplished performer on resonant metal instruments, performed with centred conviction on Tibetan singing bowls, including overtone chanting. He then presented Hovhaness' 11th Symphony All Men Are Brothers as accompaniment to paintings of Nicholas Roerich. One heard the soaring, pure and sweet taste that characterises Hovhaness - rarely acknowledged in Britain. The combination of Roerich's colossal breadth of vision with Hovhaness brought an uplifting occasion to a grand close."
Composer Lawrence Ball for Caduceus (Autumn '91).
"Music - from bowls and shells come the magic suggestion of the Tibetan sounds."
The setting is perfect: a dark tunnel under the Central railroad station, a few lights that create strange shades, many young people, in attentive silence, sitting on the ground waiting for the images and sounds of Mr. Frank Perry, that the press agent introduces us as "shaman, visionary percussionist, musician, astrologer, philosopher, past life therapist". And Mr. Perry at first sight corresponds to these words: a bearded man with penetrative eyes, patient gestures, very few words, his hands slightly touching his sacred bowls, producing never-heard sounds that create mysterious suggestions. The show, or, well, the rite, starts when the images are projected on the wall: pyramids with huge steps, mountain-tops sparkling with ice, monoliths reaching the sky that recall the chain of megalithic mountains that cross the world, yogis that sit on the water, others almost buried in the snow and Mongolians riding horses, and then lowlands and and rivers that seem to cross the Man's path to lead Him to purification. And with the images, the sounds of the singing bowls filled with water that moan as touched by Mr. Perry's hands, creating acidulous notes that slowly decay to bass tones and blend with archaic vibration of a sacred trumpet, made from a shell. It should be better to make reference to symbols, those symbols coming from images painted as in dreams, coming from sounds of the sacred instruments, and then you could realise that you are invited to an initiation rite where you can enter an astral dimension, or leave your mind and fly upwards to the sky behind the tunnel's darkness. And so goes on for hours, with people completely engrossed in this event, nearly unable to applaud, overwhelmed by mystery and fate."
Vittorio Franchini on Corriere della Sera (most important Italian daily newspaper) March 10th, 2000
© Copyright by Frank Perry 1981. All rights reserved. Revised - latest 1999.
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