J. Gary Sill Radio & Website
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2022.10.24When I was living in Vancouver, I would sometimes perform live concerts but times have changed. These performances will be different working from the new home and studios in Halfmoon Bay on British Columbia's beautiful Sunshine Coast.Today, my music is finding its way into our Writers Radio project and my happy task is to edit and score each program. This music is almost entirely free of solo piano. I have found that the traditional orchestra, string quartets and woodwind ensembles provide exactly the right setting for the writers to read their works.I am sure you will enjoy the new approach to my music and I can heartily recommend that you follow this link, writersradio.ca to spend some interesting time with the programs.
Thanks for listening!
GaryMy wife Carole Harmon and I create and work in our newly constructed Studios Building. Her photography and writing, as well as my music, are being well cared for in these beautiful interior and exterior surroundings.
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About
In The Beginning… It is safe to say that most people, who know my work at all, will know about my solo piano playing, especially the more "inner" performances. But I also have a body of electro/acoustic compositions, which although I never intended to keep them secret, still remain, shall we say "undiscovered". While I hope that the atmosphere of my piano improvisations is present in these recordings, I think you will find that the variety of aural landscapes and changing rhythms also serves to enhance the enjoyment.
Thanks for listening,
Gary
J. GARY SILL
Performer • Composer • Arranger • Teacher • Producer
Jelaluddin Gary Sill presently lives on the west coast of Canada in Halfmoon Bay. He has taught piano and keyboards, analog and electronic composition, written extensively for film, television and the theatre and has performed across Canada. Gary is highly accomplished in jazz and pop idioms, but he is best known for his extraordinary improvisational skills. In the past twenty years, he has released numerous recordings of improvised and composed music. -
New ReleaseNew ReleaseNew Album Release - April 6, 2023
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Media
Video
Video
Occasionally I create a video to help communicate my music, reversing the usual roles in media. Here video is serving music.
Click the video image to go to the player.
"Air"
Music Video
1 of 3
solo piano
"Ancestral"
Music Video
3 of 3
solo piano
"Mother Moon"
Music Video
2 of 3
solo piano
"What Sea Lions Think"
2018 Holiday Video
"Sonnet For Hunters"
Poem and music setting
"Pavana" Christmas 2017 Invitation Video
"There Should Be A Waltz With You"
Jerry DesVoignes & J. Gary Sill
performing in the
Canadian Music Centre
Fragment: A Kind Progress
darkness… light
A Poem from Carole Harmon with a Music Setting -
SufiHidayat Inayat-Khan - Composer
Hidayat Inayat-Khan
ComposerHidayat Inayat-Khan (August 6, 1917 - September 12, 2016), was a Murshid, or Sufi teacher, as well as a musical treasure for Western formal music. He composed a great variety of music as well as numerous musical settings for the performance of Sufi spiritual practices. For more than twenty years I had the privilege of performing and/or producing the recordings of this body of work with Hidayat.
Jelaluddin Gary Sill
with Aziza and Hidayat Inayat-Khan
Hidayat Inayat-Khan's music is a search for a combination of oriental raga systems and occidental polyphonic structures that follow as much as possible the basic principles of western music analysis while adding the enchanting flavour of oriental raga. His music is a formulation of the emotions; a ‘tuning of the heart’.
Here is an explanation of what he meant by "Raga"
Hidayat Inayat-Khan
from "Documentation of Symphonic Works and Chamber Music (2013)"
"The term Raga, which is generally translated as ‘Melodic Formula’, is much more complex than just a specific mode, as usually expressed in Western music, but the true meaning of the word Raga is really ‘Emotion’. The structure of a Raga is immutable, as opposed to western harmonic systems, which are modulative. A raga stands for a group of notes produced for the purpose of invoking a particular state of mind, which can be explained as being the ‘Tuning of the Heart’.
A Raga consists of a group of notes, which are distinguishable from each other by the way that the intervals are structures between the ascending and the descending notes, placed within the unfoldment of the melodic line.Classical treatise describes numberless types of Ragas whereby the principles ones consist of five, six or seven notes. All notes, other than those of the scale, which are not compromised in a Raga, are called Sandavi, meaning dissonant tones, because they do not fit within the pattern of the chosen group of notes.
Within these groups of notes called Ragas, there is a dominant note and a consonant note, which are repeatedly heard during the entire performance, and the magic effect created through the enchanting intermingling of the dominant and the consonant, together with an appropriate rhythmic pattern, emphasises the characteristics of a chosen quality, creating thereby a specific meditative atmosphere."
Hidayat Inayat-Khan, Lake O'Hara, 1980
Visit…Symphonic WorksThe Symphonies of Hidayat Inayat-KhanJ. Gary SillMessage Symphony, La Monotonia, Virginia Symphony, Zikar Symphony, Gandhi Symphony
2000, 104' 38"The “Cherag’s Procession” is a composition by Murshid Hidayat Inayat-Khan that is often used as a start to the Sufi Universal Worship ceremony.00:0000:00- Cherag's Procession
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Sufi Music and PracticeFree Downloads
Visit…ZikarThe Gentle Singing Zikar of Hazrat Inayat KhanHidayat Inayat-Khan, J. Gary SillSpiritual Practice1987, 42 21"
Visit…Zikar Special EditionThe Gentle Singing Zikar of Hazrat Inayat KhanHidayat Inayat-Khan, J. Gary SillSpiritual Practice1987, 24 47"
This version features the Sufi Invocation recited by Murshid Hidayat Inayat-KhanZikar Invocation EditionThe Gentle Singing Zikar of Hazrat Inayat KhanHidayat Inayat-Khan, J. Gary SillSpiritual Practice1987, 24 47" -
Listen to Albums
Visit…Calm WatersMusic foe Inner PeaceJ. Gary SillAmbient Water Sounds
Orchestrated with piano2023, 33' 00"
Visit…Golden HighwayPiano SongsJ. Gary SillFormal & Improvisation
Solo Grand Piano2010, 42' 27"
Visit…Restless Hearts12 Compositions For Solo PianoJ. Gary SillAmbient Pop & Jazz
Solo Grand Piano2002, 62' 00"
Visit…Stonehenge Is BurningBob Day and Gary SillJ. Gary Sill and Bob DayAmbient Jazz
Nature Sounds
Electronica
Grand Piano, Flugelhorn,2007, 42' 27"
Visit…WireNew Music for the PianoJ. Gary SillAmbient Jazz
Aural Landscape
Piano Improvisation
Grand Piano2018, 53' 37" -
LiveCANADIAN MUSIC CENTRE - SOLO PIANO CONCERTFrom the archives: Saturday, October 13, 2018 PerformanceCANADIAN MUSIC CENTRE
SOLO PIANO CONCERT
"I performed this concert at at the CMC. It was an opportunity to play the legendary Murray Adaskin 1960 Heintzman Salon Grand Piano.
Thanks to all that came to a night of improvisational piano solos in one of Vancouver's most appreciated and creative cultural spaces".J. Gary Sill
Murray Adaskin’s Heintzman Salon Grand Piano
This is what the CMC has to say about the piano:
"Murray Adaskin’s 1960 Heintzman Salon Grand Piano is a storied instrument, as much for the many important works Adaskin composed and performed on it as for how many of the current generation of celebrated composers studied at this keyboard.
It was manufactured at the very apogee of Canada’s finest piano maker and has a gorgeous, warm sound. It truly is the crown jewel of our centre. It has been played by Sir Ernest MacMillan, Benjamin Britten, Mario Bernardi, and John Newmark among many others. It truly holds a unique place in BC’s musical history."
