Search - Timothy Cooper :: East Wind

EAST WIND is NO. 25 on the International New Age Reporter Charts in February 2009! Of his music, Cooper says, "I love the piano's ability to create oceanic sound a great wash of sustained sound that can seem at once infinite and intimate, with no borders or boundaries--only the presence of being... Sometimes my music has no definable beginnings, no absolute endings: only waves upon waves of sound headed as if for all shores, as in the music of dreams." Bio: TIMOTHY COOPER Timothy Cooper is trying to construct a better world. His tools are his music, art and films as well as his job as the Executive Director of Worldrights, the human rights advocacy organization -- a career that has involved extensive travel, especially throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. He titled his second solo piano recording East Wind because it was influenced by the people, culture, art and scenery of the Far East as well as the ancient mystery and compelling power of the Orient. I want to help our global society become more peaceful and harmonious, and one way to do that is to release gentle and positive music into the world, explains Cooper. I used the title East Wind as a poetic metaphor for the winds of change blowing from the Far East, bringing with them new sensibilities, an influx of trade and seismic global power shifts. The Far East is on the rise today and is of consequence. But on a simpler level, I also wanted to infuse the sound of an Asian wind into my piano playing how that mercurial wind sounds blowing through bamboo forests at night, whispering across green seas at dawn, howling over the Great Wall in winter, tangling with the open fires of the Orient to make them burn brighter, and moaning with people s sorrow and pain. The East Wind CD contains nearly an hour of music and 30 selections (21 of them under two-minutes in length). The shortest piece, the 42-second Lark on a Limb, is light and delicate as a tiny bird, whereas the longest tune, the powerful four-and-a-half-minute Dawn of Time, explores the tragedies of ancient cultures, come and gone. These pieces show the influence of various forms of Asian art such as a Japanese haiku poem, a Chinese watercolor-on-silk drawing, or a tiny cultivated banzai tree, perfect in their sparseness and simplicity. The music sounds delicate and crystalline one moment, but forceful and resonating the next. These original compositions contain deep emotionalism, penetrating perspectives and inspirational beauty. Over many years traveling throughout Asia, the spirit of Far Eastern culture -- and its serene contemplative aesthetic -- found its way into my subconscious. Those travels deeply affected me. I remember riding on buses packed with peasants in southern China in winter and chugging up old mountains covered by rounded tea trees; taking slow-moving trains down through the hot forests and jungles of Malaysia; and motorboating along the coastline of Northern Vietnam and passing by the breathtaking Kastral limestone formations jutting out of the South China Sea like ghostly visions in mystic dreams. That coastline is captured in the video for the tune East Wind available for viewing at Cooper s website. Some of the tune titles on the CD hint at the Far East ( Asian Rain, Ancient Moss, Wonder Wall ) while others speak of seasons ( Winter Forests, Summer Shimmers ) or times of the day ( Morning, Daylight, Starlight ). Additional inspiration for the music came from Chinese writer and poet Tu Fu who lived in the mid-700s.