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Welcome to episode 35, “The Quantum Heart,” featuring composer, multi-media artist, and tennis player Harley Gaber (1943-2011). Gaber’s music was deeply informed by his study of Buddhism and Taoism, as well as his lifelong interest in quantum physics. He is…

Welcome to episode 33, "The Godmother of Music Therapy," featuring opera singer, New Thought philosopher, and pioneering music therapist, Eva Augusta Vescelius (1853-1917). After co-founding the family-run Vescelius Opera Company and touring the world for over a decade, Vescelius’ interest…

Welcome to Episode 31, “The Oracle of the East Village,” featuring filmmaker, painter, musical ethnographer, and occult magician, Harry Smith (1923-1991). Smith is best known for his influential 6-LP Anthology of American Folk Music, as well as his experimental films…

Welcome to episode 29, The Magic Rustling, featuring renowned filmmaker, painter, and musician David Lynch (1946-present). From Eraserhead to the latest season of Twin Peaks, Lynch has forged a dream-soaked art so abstractly unique that it spawned the adjective Lynchian…

Welcome to episode 28, A Sound Within, featuring Buddhist musician, poet, translator, and world traveler, Louise Landes Levi. She has translated renowned mystic writers such as Mirabai, René Daumal, and Henri Michaux. She's released over a dozen books of her…

Welcome to episode 26, “The High Priestess of Delphi,” featuring composer, choreographer, master weaver, and Sapphic feminist, Eva Palmer-Sikelianos (1874-1952). After almost founding a lesbian artist colony on the Greek island of Lesbos with fellow Sapphic pioneer, Natalie Barney, Eva…

Welcome to Episode 25, “The Dawnbreakers,” featuring Russell & Gina Garcia. Raised in Oakland, CA, Russell Garcia (1916-2011) was a world-renowned composer, arranger, and conductor, working for decades with jazz icons, as well as for major Hollywood film and tv…

Welcome to Episode 24, “The Song of the Violet Flame,” featuring harpist, composer, and religious leader, Lotus Ray King, aka Edna Ballard (1886-1971). Raised in Chicago, Ballard got into metaphysical literature and harp playing as a teenager. With her…

Welcome to episode 23, Music of the Gods. Rather than focus on a single artist, this episode explores the role of the Five Percent movement in the origins and development of American hip hop. Founded in 1967 by Clarence 13X…

Welcome to Episode 22, The South Side Shaman, featuring trumpeter, harpist, composer, teacher, community activist, and astronomer Kelan Philip Cohran (1927-2017). Early on, Cohran joined the cosmic discipline of Sun Ra’s Arkestra for two years. Next he worked with Malcolm…

Welcome to episode 21, A Wandering Monk, featuring the brilliantly black, queer, composer, dancer, conductor, pianist, and grammy-nominated singer—Julius Eastman (1940-1990). His music often employed his unique “organic method” of composition, while some works, anticipating post-minimalism, fused avant-garde and…

Welcome to Episode 20, The Obeah Man, featuring Bahamian born singer/songwriter, painter, and Obeah practitioner, Tony McKay (1942-1997). Coming to Greenwich Village in the 1960s, McKay took on the identity of Exuma, the Obeah Man. His mystical wardrobe, lyrics, paintings…

Welcome to Episode 19, “The Religion of Dreams,” featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1937). Blind from the age of 2, Kirk became a maverick figure in the jazz world, notably for his ability to play three reed instruments at the same…

Espiode 18, A Strange Mastery, focuses on Thomas Wiggins, aka, Blind Tom (1849-1908). Wiggins was born blind and sold a slave with his parents to a plantation family in Georgia. From a young age Wiggins was a musical prodigy, and…

Welcome to Episode 16, which focuses on 19th century abolitionist, song-poet, pastor, and herb doctor, Joshua McCarter Simpson (1821-1877). Simpson was born free but an indentured servant until the age of 21, after which he taught himself to read and…

Episode 15, “The Nature Singer,” features California-based musical naturalist, environmental activist, anti-gun, vegetarian, fire-extinguishing singer, and Christian Scientist, Charles Kellogg (1868-1949). He was raised for several years in the High Sierras by the Native American and Chinese members of his…

Welcome to Episode 14, “Signing of Sounds.” This episode features the enigmatic Texan composer and occultist, Jerry Hunt (1943-1993). Living in his self-made home in rural Texas most of his life, Hunt became a virtuoso avant-garde pianist, a pioneer of…

Welcome to Part 2 of Episode 13, "The Magic of Tone." This episode focuses on French-American composer, painter, poet, prolific author, and renowned astrologer, Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985). Coming to America from Paris in 1916, Rudhyar’s intuitively dissonant Theosophically inspired music…

Welcome to Part 1 of Episode 13, "The Magic of Tone." This episode focuses on French-American composer, painter, poet, prolific author, and renowned astrologer, Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985). Coming to America from Paris in 1916, Rudhyar’s intuitively dissonant Theosophically inspired music…

Welcome to Episode 12, Marcotone Meditations. This episode features one of the stranger personas in our history, British-American Edward Maryon (1867-1954). He was a Theosophical composer, a mythical Count, a criminal forger of master paintings, and a man of many…

Welcome to Episode 11, The Cradle of Harmony, on the life of painter, composer, fiddler, inventor, and spiritualist William Sidney Mount (1807-1868). Mount, who lived primarily in Stony Brook, Long Island, pioneered genre painting, giving a strong focus upon African-American…

Welcome to Episode 10, “Surrounded By Infinite Space.” With around 500 works to his name, Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) is one of the most prolific American composers of the 20th century. His works are pervaded by an idiosyncratic mysticism and as…

Welcome to Episode 9, “Born With Second Sight.” Through the life of pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, we meet a self-described psychic, a child prodigy pianist, and a renowned composer of zodiac jazz and catholic jazz masses. From her…

Welcome to Episode 8, “An Unconventional Faith,” in which we explore the radical world of Henry Cowell (1897-1965). Cowell was one of the most prolifically experimental composers in American history. He was one of the first composers to incorporate diverse…

Welcome to Episode 7, "A Veil of Sound." Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) is a pioneering composer from the early 20th century, and the first female composer to win a Guggenheim fellowship. Her early experimental work was inspired by the esoteric…