JIM GELCER/DAVID VITO GREGOLI, Quiet Expanse

Having the immense privilege of immersing in and expounding in words upon eight of the ten individual singles leading to the full unveiling of Jim Gelcer and David Vito Gregoli’s masterwork Quiet Expanse was like focusing on different shimmering mesmerizing and meticulously cut facets of a diamond before pulling back for a wider view of a breathtaking gemstone.

From the release of “Forgiveness” in June 2024 through the drop “Healing” in March 2025, each intricately composed and produced track stood powerfully on its own, but ultimately is now a chapter in an overarching narrative that takes listeners to different places in the human heart and spirit.   

For those who haven’t been following the ten-stop journey to the full collection, it’s important to get more acquainted with these two storied musicians and composers. Driven by a straightforward vision of creating what Vito calls “a peaceful environment for the listener,” the project joins two veteran acclaimed artists (with extensive solo and collaborative discographies) and dedicated yoga practitioners from very different musical backgrounds.

The L.A. based multi-instrumentalist Gregoli has worked with an impressive array of new age and world musicians, while the Toronto based Gelcer is renowned as a veteran drummer in the realms of jazz and Indian kirtan music. Rooted in a seamless flow and their natural creative chemistry, the duo’s vision came to fruition via modern technology, with a friendship based on mutual interests forged on social media and built via a nonstop flurry of back-and-forth digital files.  

“The concept of Quiet Expanse was to create a relaxing atmosphere for yoga and meditation,” says Jim. “Most of the tracks are named for positive attributes we aspire to - like Healing, Hope, Compassion, Forgiveness, Authenticity, Resilience, Letting Go and Flow. We had known each other for years from our times performing at Yoga festivals like Bhakti Fest and had admired each other’s work over the years. The time was synergistic for us to collaborate.”

Explaining the evolution of the concept further, Vito adds, “Jim initially reached out and we found had so many common friends, musical influences and aspirations that it made sense to collaborate on a project. We talked about ideas and the concept of doing something meditative appealed to both of us. Having admired Chuck Wild’s series of album called “Liquid Mind”, we decided it’d be nice to do a series of these albums that evoke the meditative quality. Jim is also a yoga teacher so he brings a unique perspective on direction.”

For those fans who have been building a playlist of the ten tracks and are content to listen to the songs of Quiet Expanse that way, it’s interesting to note that Jim and Vito create fresh tracking of these songs that help us experience them in a whole new way as integral parts of the overall narrative.

They begin by placing the first lead single “Forgiveness” at the top of the program, as if to emphasize the importance of this concept as the essence of cleansing the soul. Vito builds on Gelcer’s hypnotic melody and sweeping “space music” energies with a classical horn section, Scandinavian Nykelharpa (keyed fiddle), fretless bass and strings. Together, they create a wall of sound that feels like an alternately soaring and earthbound film score. The symphonic ambient dreamscape “Compassion” was the third single but the track on the album as if to tie it to “Forgiveness” as the virtues the world is in most crying need of.

And what is the thing we need most to incorporate these concepts into our own realities and draw on them to face an often cold, divisive and challenging world? That would be “Resilience,” which offers initially subtle, then building strength via a swirl of majestic synth ambience, both elegant and percussive string strums and seductive basslines and percussion. Its synth generated angelic voices feel like calls from a heavenly realm, nudging us to believe in higher things even as we grapple with way too much nonsense down here. As if to establish the core reality here that they are bringing the truest parts of their artistry to these pieces, they match the fourth single with the fourth track

“Authenticity,” a piece steeped in the powerful traditions of Indian music whose hypnotic droning vibe evolves into passages with spacious ambience and a sitar modulated at various intensities.

By choosing “Flow” as the piece to kick off the second half of the album, Jim and Vito show confidence that we’re firmly in the flow and receiving all intended messages through their powerful emotional expressions, Assured our senses are fully engaged, they tie the alliterative concepts of “Hope” and “Healing” together as if to say where there is one the other soon follows.

On “Hope” the listener encounters the inviting and jazzy exotica of Jim’s beautiful chiming vibraphone amidst a swelling symphony of ambience. He lays the foundation for this part of the excursion with bass, drum and synth, while Vito introduces a seductive cello element and another expected word music texture via the santoor, a trapezoid shaped hammered dulcimer and a variation of the Iranian santur.

The divine blend of instrumentation and nature sounds on “Healing” lead to a journey through a soundscape ripe with colorful surprises, clearing past the proverbial brush on the wings of  Jim’s lyrical bamboo flute grace and the mesmerizing melody he weaves with his Auracle hand pan. At the same time, Vito brilliantly plucks away at his Mexican tricordia, aka madriola, a twelve-stringed variation of the mandolin normally heard in Mexican folk music. The adventurous instrumentation of this and other tracks reflects the duo’s ongoing musical curiosity and the lengths they will go in fashioning their sonic magic.

A reflection of the philosophy that “the art of life is letting go” – which by the way, existed long before Frozen, Queen Elsa and Idina Menzel – “Letting Go” artfully intermingles the duo’s gentle sitar pluck and breezy hand panning (with on and off percussive fills), all caressed by a brainwave busting Indian drone sound and soothing ambience. Listeners, if you’re not mind, body and soul cleansed by this point, start back at track one and listen straight through again. Once we’ve truly let all our pain and stresses free, the duo seems to be hinting, we’ll all fee like we’re riding the “Floating Waves,” the final track which I once described as a “soul-soothing, wafting orb of musical meditation.

Smack in the middle of the collection, immediately after “Authenticity,” is the album’s lone “cover,” a Jim/Vito haunting re-imagining of Erik Satie’s famed classical piece “Gymnopédie No. 1,” which the duo is fairly certain is the only version whose melody – normally performed on piano – is played on hand pan! It’s played elegantly and soulfully by Jim, with Vito intertwining his tender acoustic guitar harmonies, strings and electronic cello counter melody.

The fact that Jim and Vito created new mixes of almost half the pieces (“Compassion,” “Resilience,” “Authenticity,” “Letting Go”) and fashioned an entirely new tracking sequence speaks to their desire that Quiet Expanse, despite having been introduced slowly over the past year-plus via single song streaming, is now best appreciated as a full album new age/ambient meets world music experience.