Uniquely gifted as a deeply prolific composer, UK born pianist and multi-instrumentalist Alise Ashby started her career creating music from a place of will, thinking more theoretically about where the music should go based on her years of classical training. Emerging in recent years as a powerful force in ambient and new age music, she now says that when she sits down to write, she sees herself as merely the vessel. She opens to Grace and asks her muse, “Music, what would you like me to express today?” – allowing the music to guide the incredible unfolding process.
Though she released two independent albums in 2016 (Far & Beyond) and 2017 (Diamonds), Alise has taken her recording career to an exciting new level via her association with top genre producer, mixer and mastering engineer Tom Eaton and Heart Dance Records, a label whose mission is creating heart driven music for relaxation, meditation and healing.
Earlier in 2024, she released her label debut The Gift (a dual eight-song set with renowned cellist and shamanic sound healer Kristen Miller and the seven piece solo project Stardust. Alise’s purpose with the latter recording was to bring comfort, joy and peace amidst life’s great challenges, and allow herself (and by extension, her listeners) to be open to experiencing the magic that can show up in life when we let go and surrender. In a most compelling and extraordinary way, these two collections prove that a gifted artist only needs a little over 20 minutes (each) to relax the mind, tug the soul strings and transport the listener’s spirit to a realm of delicate beauty.
An equally inspiring, dynamic and sparkling yet soothing and meditative six song immersion into those deep places in the heart, Alise’s latest EP Love Notes reflects and speaks to the pure, true and beautiful love she found later in life with her husband Manny after years of many steep challenges. This includes having her first marriage fall apart after the release of her debut album Moonlight in Vermont in 1999 and setting aside her larger musical dreams for many years to dedicate her life to being a single mom.
Beyond her rejuvenating and life-affirming experience of personal romantic love, Love Notes speaks to the spirit of universal love and, as she says, “the importance of each and every one of us learning to live from that place. When we come from that place with every interaction in our day, not only do we make a difference in the life of another, but how we see the world outside reflects back to us in beautiful ways.
Alise adds that with Love Notes, she’s stepping further than ever into expressing her creativity in personally fulfilling ways. “I listen to what music’s vibration wants to say versus creating what I think others would like,” she adds. “I know I am being completely universally and spiritually guided. As a person, this is how I strive to live my life every day – being completely authentic, living my passion as a light worker for positive change amidst a challenging world.”
Perhaps best experienced as a dreamlike mental/spiritual journey from the elegant, soulful and dreamily atmospheric “A Moment in Time” through the shimmering, tenderly reflective “Whispers of Devotion,” Love Notes invites us to immerse in an otherworldly fusion of ambient soundscapes that artfully weave together Alise’s expansive talents on piano, guitar, lush pads (which provide the harmonic “strings”) and easy flowing percussion.
Alise offers two compelling points of entry to the full journey via the two lead singles. The first, “Sweet Surrender,” offers some of her most passionate piano playing and a bit of emotional guitar harmony amidst a mystical atmospheric setting. It magnificently conveys the awe she feels when she thinks of the series of beautiful synchronicities that led her and Manny to each other. The second single “Tenderness,” blends a sweet piano melody and hypnotic atmosphere in a lyrical contemplation of universal love that comes with a call to treat each other and all living beings with kindness and compassion, with the understanding that we are all interconnected.
The two other pieces are the hypnotic, haunting “Smokey Sunset,” inspired by Alise’s love for the natural world, and “Echoes of Love,” another magical rendering of the profound relationship she shares with Manny, this time expressing gratitude for all the special memories, past, present and future that they’ve created and continue to create.
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