phenomeNEWS - This Month's Music Review

This Month's Music Review
by Greg Ozimek
music@wwnet.net

Increase Vitality
Andrew Weil, MD and
Joshua Leeds

YeeHaa! Yes, and welcome to 2007! a year of all your possibilities, hopes and dreams coming into your hands and use!

Is it time to pick up the tempo of your life? of your day? of your moment? Oh yes it is!
Surprisingly! there is a music CD that is able to get you up and moving unless you are a rock or otherwise glued to a chair. And I have it here for your listening enjoyment and action-oriented daily living.

Can you tell yet that I’m excited to bring you this CD collection of music?

The idea that music can affect our emotions and well being is an enormously compelling idea, at least it would be if we already hadn’t been exposed to sounds that made us laugh – music that made us feel romantic or made us cry or feel energized.

However, take this idea and actually expose your ears and body to specially selected music from the centuries of classical music that has stood the test of time and you have one of the latest applications of the science of psychoacoustic music and it works so very well.

Increase Vitality is “totally amazing!”

Inspired composers like Bach, Beethoven and Chopin instinctively understood the revitalizing effect that music can have on your emotions and physical body.

Increase Vitality is the brilliant addition to best-selling author and physician Dr. Andrew Weil and producer and sound researcher Joshua Leeds, Dr. Andrew Weil’s Music for Self-Healing. This is a series of classical music recordings for promoting good health.

Certainly that is what is purported.

What I find is a breath of fresh air or an oxygen mask which propels me into activity which I sometimes might not be that enthusiastic to join in.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling not as rested from the previous night’s rest, listening to one or more of these three tracks of this CD while I’m dressing or within earshot makes me forget about being envious about my pillow laying there invitingly and enticingly by itself on my comfortable and warm bed.Performed by the award-winning players of The Apollo Chamber

Ensemble, every arrangement is delivered with an emphasis on the underlying psychoacoustic components.

WARNING: Don’t listen to this CD on January 1st and possibly not January 2nd either. Just don’t. And DON’T listen to it when you are nearing bed time. Ever.

However, when you are ready to jump into life, now that is quite another story.

Increase Vitality presents 18 invigorating selections in three uplifting sequences that naturally stimulate body, mind and spirit. Orchestration includes piano, flute, oboe, English horn and cello.

The first sequence “Easy Does It” offers gentle auditory arousal for recuperation or those sensitive to sensory stimulation.

“Get Up & Go” provides “aerobics for the ears” with enlivening pieces by Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Eastern European gypsy-style compositions.

“Have Mercy!” is the highest octane, powered by musical surprises, propelling tempos and the intriguing arrangements of Beethoven, Chopin, Monti and others. It’s like presto! but more like 20 minutes of presto! presto! presto! It’s like, “does your chiropractor know what you’re doing?” This third sequence is like an endorphin rush of the most l33t of endorphin rushes (ask a gamer kid for the translation).

The whole CD is weeee! without the Whew!!

Joshua Leeds is a sound researcher, music producer and educator. He is one of few published authorities in the emerging field of psychoacoustics – the study of the effect of music and sound on the human nervous system. He is the author of The Power of Sound and Sonic Alchemy.

Leeds application-specific soundtracks are used in homes, clinics and classrooms around the world. He presents seminars internationally and is a faculty member of the California Institute of Integral Studies and Globe Institute of Recording, both located in San Francisco.
Dr. Andrew Weil is a clinical professor of internal medicine and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona’s Health Sciences Center in Tucson.

Dr. Weil is a well known and an internationally recognized expert on medicinal herbs, mind-body interactions and integrative medicine.