Category: Morning Workout

Kori Linae Carothers’ Music and a four mile run ….

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….Perfect Together

The Morning Run……

So if there ever was a morning that had a good excuse for not running, today was it! We babysat Oliver last night and didn’t get home until 1:30 this morning!! While I knew it would be hard to get up at 7 to run this morning, I thought well maybe 7:30 would work. When the alarm went off this morning I thought “Do I really want to do this?” The answer was less than a resounding yes!  But at least it was a yes! The more  I thought about it I thought well I will be running tomorrow – that will be ok!  No – I said today was to be your long day – it doesn’t matter how fast you go, you just have to make it happen – so just do it!! My pre-run routine was the same as Friday, except for the head smack because today was not a Kundalini/Weights day, so doing the Meditation Preparation Routine was fine!!

Next came the music, I decided that a nice slow album would be great for the run. I had briefly listened Fire in the Rainstorm from Kori Linae Carothers a New Age album that is number 2 on the latest (July 2015) Music Zone Reporter’s Top 100 Radio Play Chart. The album is solo piano and I thought that was perfect for a lazy Sunday run!!

My goal was to just run comfortably and if that was at 11:20 or 11:30’/ mile pace that was ok. The goal was to run for distance, i.e. the four planned miles, and not for time.  One of the tricks that I use to keep my pace an easy one is to make sure that I could talk to someone who was running with me. As a result, I sometimes talk out loud on my runs just to make sure I’m slowing down a little! It also keeps people away from the crazy man!! Anyway I made the four miles and the total time was 44:25 at an average pace of 11:03/mile. Over the first mile the pace was 10:59, mile 2 was 10:45 /mile, mile 3 10:59 and mile four 11:25! Over the first three miles my pace was under 11 minutes per mile which was faster than I figured and the good thing was that I wasn’t really pushing it!!

Kori Linae Carothers

The Soundtrack: Fire in the Rainstorm – Kori Linae Carothers

Kori Linae Carothers hails from Cedar City Utah and grew up listening to the music of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Carly Simon, Seals and Croft, James Taylor, But the John Williams’ soundtrack to Star Wars, really caught her ear! She says that

. “…the group that made me want to be a musician and compose music was the Beatles. I absolutely loved their earlier material.” –

But her musical journey had a rocky start, at the age of 5 years old it was discovered that she was deaf in her left ear!

From her website….

….. Her young peers found out and the teasing began. In addition, throughout elementary and high school, Kori was constantly told she would never become a musician. Undeterred, she kept learning and practicing, never surrendering her dream. Despite these discouragements, Carothers was passionate about her calling and now, 45 years later, she is an acclaimed pianist and keyboard player with four albums to her credit. Clearly, she is an example of a person following her muse with courage, humor, and determination. – Read More

I really like this beautiful album of solo piano tunes. All of the tracks were composed by Kori who started taking piano lessons at the age of eight and composing her own tunes at 14!! Will Ackerman of Windham Hill Records who co-produced the album with Tom Eaton and Kori says this about Kori…..

Kori Carothers is, without question a brilliant pianist and composer. What sets her apart, however, is the broad range of styles she utilizes so gracefully. Kori moves between the worlds of achingly beautiful acoustic piano composition and lavish keyboard production with remarkable ease. –Read more

So check out Fire in the Rainstorm and the music of Kori Linae Carothers . As for me there are four other albums from Ms. Carothers that may be the soundtracks of future runs!!!

Links to Further Explorations of the Music of Kori Linae Carothers…

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Bandcamp
YouTube

Here’s Kori Linae Carothers performing “Time Passages” from Fire in the Rainstorm

 

Running with the Empirical Ghost of Lis er Stille

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The Run….

So while Elizabeth conquered the Broad Street 10 miler yesterday, I conquered the RG Riverside half a ten miler on Saturday, running five miles for the first time this year!! I had set out to run a 4.2 mile course I call the Harper Loop. I have not run that course yet this year mainly because it has a long ascent up Pancoast Avenue and then another shorter ascent up Fairview to Harper. Followed by a descent and short ascent along Harper followed by a longer descent down Cranberry Lane.  I did well keeping a slower and steady pace knowing that the hills would be a challenge. The first three miles were 10:44, 11:06, and 10:54 beat you can guess where the hills were!! I slowed down on mile four because I hadn’t really run a four miler with hills and I was tired. But when I stabilized my breathing thanks to the rhythms of Lis er Stille, I didn’t feel too bad, so I thought “let’s see if I can go five”, knowing that Lizzie was doing ten on Sunday! At least I could do a half of that!!

Boy did the mileage on the GPS on the iPhone increase slowly over that last mile!! I ended up going a lot farther than I thought I would need to go to make that last mile! My last two miles were in 11:47 and 11:39. At least the last mile was slightly faster!! My final time was 56:34. Lizzie’s split at the five-mile mark was 54:38 so I would have only been a minute and change behind her!!

When I told my wife that she said “You don’t have to beat her, you’re 63 and she is 24!” True I thought but hell I’ve been running for most of those years and she’s been running for two!, besides I’d like to be better than her at something!! Anyway, both my 5 mile run and Lizzie’s run have motivated me…. hopefully I can stay motivated!!

The Soundtrack: Empirical Ghost – Lis er Stille from Denmark

The soundtrack for the run was Empirical Ghost from Lis er Stille. Lis er Stille is a Danish prog rock band. They are cataloged in the Post Rock/Math rock sub-genre.

Lis Er Stille is a band from Denmark founded in 2004 as an art project between the painter Vindril and singer Martin Byrialsen. The idea of this project was for Martin to make Vindril’s paintings into music, but as time passed the music grew and a band was build from it….

…When looking at Lis Er Stille from the surface most of their compositions resemble that of post-rock bands as well as some alternative rock bands like Muse, Coldplay and others, but there’s also a prog rock undertone in them. Some people recall past prog rockers when hearing Lis Er Stille while most will likely see links with the modern prog and related bands. Highly recommended for fans of post-rock and the modern alternative / prog bands. Full Biography at ProgArchives.

lis er stille - press photo - by kasper hemme

lis er stille – press photo – by kasper hemme

The musician line-up for the album is….

Martin Byrialsen / Vocals + Keyboards
Asbjørn Helboe / Bass
Tue Schmidt Rasmussen / Guitars
Jon Gotlev / Drums

The music is distinctive and good and I kinda like the vocals. The one bad thing about the album is that is short for a progressive rock album clocking in at 52 minutes for the ten tracks. So the album is great for a four mile run but comes up short (in length only) for a slow five-mile run!! Now what may be a challenge is to complete the run before the end of the album!! To do that I would need to run the course at a 10:24 pace! A challenge for later in the year!!

Links for Further Explorations of Lis er Stille

Official Website: Bandcamp
Facebook
ProgArchives

Here’s a video for the track “Gold Future” from Empirical Ghost by Lis er Stille

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrY7w-MjFvc

 

 

 

Morning Kundalini with an R Carlos Nakai Soundtrack

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 Kundalini to Master Your Domain – Music Feather, Stone & Light – R Carlos Nakai

Feather Stone and Light - R Carlos Nakai - my favorite Native American Flute player

 

This morning has been a kind of throwback Tuesday. It all started when I used one of my all-time favorite R. Carlos Nakai albums Feather, Stone and Light as the soundtrack for my morning yoga routine. If it wasn’t the first R Carlos Nakai album that I bought it was certainly among the first and it has been a favorite since the first time I brought it home! The album features the string work of Will Eaton and the percussion of Will Clipman along with R. Carlos wonderful Native American flute artistry.

The Morning Workout – Master Your Domain

The yoga routine that I did today was a Kundalini kriya to Master Your Domain. The kriya is my favorite among the kriyas that I did routinely several years ago. It is the only one that I still try to do on a regular basis. I don’t know if it’s all mental or not, but it seems that every time I do this kriya I fly through the rest of the day, more focused and consequently I’m able to get more done!!

After I finished the kriya, I wondered, if there was anywhere on the Internet, where the kriya is described. Silly me! What I found was the following video and a whole lot more at the Spirit Voyage Music Channel

Kundalini Yoga Video : Master Your Domain with Anne Novak

Now I will say that Feather, Stone and Light may not be the best album for meditating, worked well for me.

This kriya has a 5-minute meditation to end the kriya, I extended that meditation another 13 minutes and loved every minute of it.

So after watching the video of this kriya and knowing that there are similar videos for other kriyas, I think that I will start to do more Kundalini yoga

.This may work out well because it was when I was doing the Kundalini yoga before that I became a vegetarian. So if I want my diet to veer that way, eating less and less meat, Kundalini may help move me in that direction……Sat siri akal!

Music From Feather, Stone & Light

Here is the title track from Feather, Stone & Light…..and I’m off to the store to get the final ingredients to make Vegetarian Mousaka! Wish Me Luck!!

 

 

Life’s Soundtrack – Running’s Easier with Blues from Lisa Mann’s Satisfied!!

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So I ran last night, but I didn’t write a post about the run. I ended up spending the evening  transferring my iTunes library from the desktop to my laptop, because I use the laptop more than the desktop now, while I watched the Phils lose, By the time I was ready to write, I was too tired! I think the trick is to write the post as soon after the run as possible!!

Anyway  I still am running a lot slower than I was in the  spring, but the run last night was the easiest since I’ve started up again. The proof of that is over the last two miles. Last Thursday the time for mile three was 10:47  and mile four was 11:34. Last night over the same course, mile three’s time was 10:24 and mile four’s was 10:50!! So there is improvement, no matter how small. The other good thing was that when I came home from work last night, I wanted to run, rather than feeling that know I should run- but !! I still feel like a slow jogger and not a runner yet!! There will hopefully come a time when I feel like I’m running and not plodding!

SatisfiedThe soundtrack for the run was Lisa Mann and her “Really Good Band’s new blues album Satisfied and I was more than Satisfied with the album and I think that her band is really good!!!

It didn’t take long for this album to hook me, on the first track “See you next Tuesday”,first there was Lisa’s vocal sounding really bluesy and then half way into the first song, what’s that I hear, oh boy, kick-ass organ and then a wailing guitar!!! The music stayed that way throughout the rest of the album, a great guitar riff here, a some organ or piano there, throw in some saxophone and harp’ and then a solid bass line and vocals that made it all hang together. And it hung together well through tracks like “Satisfied”, “Surrender to the Blues”, and two of my favorites “Till the Wheels Come Off” and “King of Black Coal”. Who am I kidding, I like them all!! Lisa Mann, who has been hidden away in the Pacific Northwest has earned a spot in my library, right along side musicians like Samantha Fish, JoAnne Shaw Taylor, and Laurie Morvan!!

Really good bandNow the folks in the Pacific Northwest have known about bassist Lisa and her band mates:  Jeff Knudson (Guitars, Backup Vocals, Co-Production), Michael Ballash (Drums, Backup Vocals and Bunny Wrangler??) and Brian Harris– (Keyboards, Organ and Backup Vocals) for a while now. In 2011, she and her Really Good Band represented the Cascade Blues Association (CBA) at the International Blues Challenge, where they made it to the semi-finals. From her website

.Lisa is a proud inductee into the Cascade Blues Association’s Hall of Fame after winning the Muddy Waters Award for Bass Player of the Year three times in a row. In Nov of 2012, Lisa took home the Muddy for Bass yet again, and to top that off, she took home Female Vocalist of the Year and her “Really Good Band” won Contemporary Blues Act of the Year.

Her latest CD, Satisfied, is currently the CBA’s choice for the Best Self-Produced CD competition through the Blues Foundation. Lisa also won the Portland Music Award for Outstanding Achievement in Blues in 2012. Read More

and if all that is not enough!

Lisa’s vocals appear on Canadian blues master Bill Johnson’s Juno Award nominated CD, Still Blue. (www.billjohnsonblues.com). She is also the voice of internationally acclaimed symphonic rock band Cry for Eden. (www.cryforeden.com)

Don’t some people just make you green with envy!! I listened to Cry for Eden’s album last night, a different genre and musical style and she nails the vocals on that album. too!! So check out Lisa Mann and her really good band!!! From the Blues Music Magazine Review of Satisfied!!

For the moment, Mann is mostly a Northwest regional secret, but I suspect that brighter days are within range for Mann, as she’s a talent to be reckoned with. With music that deserves to appear on North American radio charts, she should begin to receive an abundance of strong press reviews, and thus be in position to garner fans from coast to coast.

And I fully agree with that statement!!!  Here’s Lisa and the band tearing it up at the King of Beale competition in Memphis, TN. on Saturday, February 5, 2011!