Dan Kennedy Album Features Solo Piano Pieces And Tunes With Other Musicians

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Pianist Dan Kennedy hopes that his music can help inspire people to reach their complete potential. "I named my latest recording Bloom Road, " he explains, "because life is a journey, like going down a road, and I had a vision of a person's soul blooming and reaching its full expression."

The cover of Bloom Road shows a long dirt road through a huge field of wildflowers with stormy rain clouds on the horizon, but also a rainbow emerging. The music on Bloom Road is a combination of some solo piano pieces along with ensemble tunes featuring wood flute and saxophone.

More information on Dan Kennedy is available at his website (dankennedy dot us). His three CDs - Lantern, Intuition and Bloom Road - (and digital download tracks from those recordings) are available at his website and at online sales sites such as CDbaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody and many others.

Bloom Road features Kennedy, who has a Master of Music degree, on piano and keyboards. On a few tunes he is joined by several special guests - saxophonist Charles Neville (The Neville Brothers, Ray Charles, B.B. King, James Brown, Little Walter and hundreds of other classic R&B acts), Native American wood flutist David Rose (who has recorded with Painted Raven, Mars Lasar and as a solo recording artist with an album that went to #1 on the One World Music Chart and won their Best Native American Flute Album Award), and bassist Greg Loughman (JoAnne Brackeen, Patti Page, Philip Aaberg, Mark Murphy).

Bloom Road begins with "Moonrise, " a duet between Rose on flute and Kennedy on synth ("to let people know right off there will be a variety of styles of music on the album"). Kennedy switches to solo piano for the slow multi-sectional "Prayer for Janet" ("a tune offering compassion and caring for a friend, and also a wish for healing"). "Sweet Rain" expands the sound to include piano, flute, bass, drums and various sounds including rain and thunder ("a joyful piece about rain after a drought, nourishing the bloom of a flower").

What follows are three more solo piano numbers - "Falling" ("a modern-classical, intensely-emotional piece about a person taking a big fall in life"), "Beautiful Day" ("a love song about a day of leisure and solace with someone you care about"), and "Dulcimer in C Minor" ("a continuation of a series of compositions I have been writing while imagining my piano as a dulcimer, from my time in London where I saw an elderly man dancing by the Thames River playing a dulcimer with complete abandon"). The beautiful melody of "A Moment" is centered around the piano part, but is supplemented with delicate synth strings and the deep richness of a cello ("this work is a tip of the hat to the Buddhist philosophy of being in the moment").

The album's title track includes a flute-piano duet, a couple of Neville sax solos, a solo piano section, synth strings and Far Eastern percussion. "Pop Top" captures the feel-good gospel sound of a hot R&B quartet (piano, sax, bass and a full drum kit). "Heaven" is a solo piano number featuring left and right hand counter-melodies ("A spiritual piece of longing and wondering"). The upbeat and highly rhythmic "Torrent" brings back the ensemble sound of piano, sax, bass, synth and drums ("I went for a sort of late Miles Davis fusion sound, noisy, like a downpour rain-storm or a raging stream"). The album ends with a vibrant solo piano rendition of the Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons hit "Who Loves You." Bloom Road was co-produced by Kennedy and industry veteran Warren Amerman who has produced and engineered hundreds of acts at his studio The Rotary Records.

Kennedy started his recording career with the EP Lantern which was produced by legendary acoustic guitarist Will Ackerman, a Grammy winner, founder of Windham Hill Records, and popular producer (Alex de Grassi, Michael Hedges, George Winston, Liz Story, Scott Cossu, Philip Aaberg, Fiona Joy Hawkins, and numerous others). The CD was engineered by Grammy Award winner Corin Nelsen and included special guests percussionist Glen Velez, bassist T-Bone Wolk, and vocalists Noah Wilding and Samite. For that project Kennedy visited nearby Vermont to record in Ackerman's Imaginary Road Studios. The recording climbed onto the main international airplay chart for this type of music. The composition "Dulcimer in G" was added to the Sirius-XM Satellite Radio "Spa" Channel where it has been in rotation for five years.

For the next album, Intuition, Kennedy traveled to Kakinoki Studio in Pennsylvania, this time with Corin Nelsen producing. The CD also featured English horn player Jill Haley, saxophonist Premik Russell Tubbs, guitarist David Cullen, percussionist Jeff Haynes and drummer Steve Holley. Intuition went Top 10 (#7) on the monthly international Top 100 Zone Music Reporter Chart, stayed on the chart for five months and received airplay on 200 radio shows, stations and channels worldwide. The album also made several lists of Top 10 Albums of the Year including New Age Music World and Audiosyncracy. The recording went to #1 on the ReverbNation Instrumental Music Chart for four weeks. In addition, the tune "Moving On" was placed in the public service film "Not My Child" about teen drug abuse. The video for the tune "Could Be" was named the RNA New Age Video of the Month.

Kennedy lives in an 1860 farmhouse in Massachusetts, the state where he was born and raised. He fell in love with music as a child. "When I was very little my mom put on Stravinsky's 'Firebird Suite' and that made an enormous impact on me - the orchestral sound and the variety of musical colors that I could almost see." Dan took piano lessons, eventually learning pieces by Bach and Debussy. "But I also was always inventing. Composing was very natural to me and I was fortunate to have teachers who were willing to listen to what I was coming up with and encourage me."

In high school Kennedy began to play show tunes and pop music in addition to classical. He played at recitals and at school accompanying the choruses. He attended Oberlin Conservatory where he received his Bachelor of Music degree. There he not only studied classical, but also jazz piano ("My favorite jazz pianist was McCoy Tyner"). Kennedy also played solo piano (including many of his own compositions) regularly at the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse. "The Cat is one of my favorite musical memories, as they had a Steinway, and I played these three-hour sets to pretty tuned-in audiences."

Kennedy moved to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory of Music where he obtained his Master of Music degree. "I had superb teachers there and took composition lessons from Michael Gandolfi, a highly respected composer who taught me a valuable lesson when he told me to write using my own voice and to block out every other voice or influence." Kennedy started hearing music from the influential Windham Hill label in the late Eighties, artists such as George Winston and Scott Cossu. "I was surprised when I heard George Winston because his music already seemed familiar to me and his success in the marketplace was encouraging." After college Kennedy also began performing more shows (35 concerts in 2014). He was the winner of the composition competition for the New England Conservatory Honors Woodwind Quintet in 2004, and he has earned numerous grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

"I feel my music is based on pure emotions, " states Kennedy. "That's what a composer does. He takes all of his experiences and feelings, and pours them into his music with the hope that the listener feels the emotional intensity and is affected by it. I really want the listener to get something out of the music whether it is peace, happiness, inspiration, serenity or soul-stirring change."

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