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All scores (notation/sheet music) for all pieces on Mountain Hermit’s Secret Wisdom are available.
Some are featured right now for free on the Featured Page.
They are included in the CD (limited edition) when you buy it, or, you can find them in the one-by-one in the Compositions section of the website, or you can buy them all together right here with the button below:
About Mountain Hermit’s Secret Wisdom
Bass Zen bamboo flutes recorded in a cave. Contemplative nature music inspired by Zen and Taoist philosophy, breath cultivation and the texture of the living moment. We recorded these songs inside of an abandoned gold-mining cave-tunnel. Although this tunnel was man-made, it is cave-like in that there are no materials inside or around the entrance.
Adventurous and contemplative, rustic yet refined this music is a simple and deep exploration of sound and stillness. Most of these songs are Buddhist hymns based on nature, breath and awareness that are part of the shakuhachi tradition. The other songs are new compositions for Taimu, a wide-bore, bass variant of the shakuhachi flute.
Released December 21, 2013
Outside of the cave deep inside which this bass bamboo meditation album was recorded. Gold country on a fork of the Yuba River in Nevada County, CA.
Album crowdfunding campaign video.
Mini-movie featuring the Bonus Tracks from the cave recording session in July 2013.
The classical Buddhist songs (honkyoku 本曲) for shakuhachi are derived from nature, dreams, breath awareness and manipulation, devotional chant, existential philosophy and contemplation. They are part of a tradition over 1000 years old and connect to the Fuke sect of China (9th century) which contained the origins of what would become Japanese Zen flute. Focusing attention on the absolute, inescapable present moment is the basic practice of Zen.
Mukyoku (無曲 songs of nothing) are original compositions written for the Taimu (big nothing) flutes through an animistic compositional process (what do the flutes want to play?). Inspirational elements of mukyoku include Zen Buddhist honkyoku, Mississippi blues, melodically structured long tones, and breath texture.
“The sage emperor stands firm in the immeasurable
and wanders free in realms where there’s nothing at all.”
-from the Inner Chapters of Chuang Tzu (translated by David Hinton)
“Power is not the thing.
To be calm within oneself, that is the Way of the Wood.”
-The Parliament of Trees in Saga of the Swamp Thing