Translator: Geoff Jensen Reviewer: Denise RQ
(Guitar music)
(Music ends)
(Applause)
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Music has the power to heal, transform, and inspire,
and we have the power, through deep listening,
to increase our intuition and self-awareness.
I would like to dedicate my time with you today
to the memory of my father, Carlo Feriante.
My dad passed away last year at the age of 97,
and my dad loved music.
He started playing the accordion around age 60,
even though he did not have
an aptitude for music or even an ear for music,
but he had a big passion for music.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
And he was very technical about it,
but emotional at the same time,
but he played in a very animated way.
And after many years of playing,
he sounded really good and encouraged a lot of people to play music.
My dad was my biggest supporter.
We started playing music around the same time.
It was in the mid-70s, in Rome, Italy.
I was going to the Overseas School of Rome,
and I was 13 years old.
And one day, I heard a flamenco guitar concert.
That music spoke to me.
It felt very familiar to me.
So the course of my life changed after that day.
I started looking for guitar teachers, classical and flamenco.
I traveled for my lessons,
and I studied and practiced, and practiced and practiced.
After four years,
I played a concert in Rome. I played a concert in Berlin.
When I was 21, I was able to go and study
with the great Spanish master Andrés Segovia
in Madrid, in a master class.
So for the last 35 years,
the guitar has been my life, my profession,
and I've been able to share the gift of music
with people around the world.
I'd like to share with you a segment out of my upcoming book on healing music.
"When I was in my early 30s,
I went through a time of personal transformation.
I wasn't always aware of the healing powers of music.
In my early years, I was deeply moved by the songs and how they made me feel.
I was transported.
The melancholy minor key songs always resonated with me.
I was seduced by music.
It wasn't until I went through a time of deep emotional pain as an adult
and experienced a time of personal exploration,
a time of transformation and coming into my own,
that I began to see inside the workings of sound, and art, and human intention.
Once I came out of the other side of this experience,
I became aware of my role and responsibility
in evoking, seducing, and conversing with sound.
During this time,
I was pulled in by the Moon and her mysterious energy.
Most of my art, in one way or another, was inspired by the Moon.
One thing I learned is the power of silence.
Everything emerges out of silence: the power of calm, a state of mind,
a state of heart that is quiet, and sitting in an expansive way,
letting the ripples of the daily worries settle and fade.
The music I'm talking about works with silence in a sympathetic way.
It's the guide into the sometimes uncomfortable doors
where the self and the silence reside.
I'm talking about looking into yourself
and seeing the vast beauty that is really there.
It's a listening and honoring of the stillness.
As you gently listen and spend the time, your inner eyes will see more and more.
Intuition will increase.
Awareness of your inner forest will increase."
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you. Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you!
Transformation and healing come in their own time
when we are ready for growth and change.
The same song can affect different people in different ways.
Think of our bodies, our minds, our emotional and psychological states
almost as the fabric, or almost like the soil
for the seeds of the sound to interact with.
I've played the same song for a group of people,
and the responses can vary, anywhere from, "Oh, that song almost made me cry."
Somebody else would say, "That made my dance."
And somebody would say, "That made me think of a long-forgotten memory."
So, during the time of transformation that I was referring to,
I was very prolific with art.
I was living in the Market, downtown Seattle.
And like I said, I was fascinated with the Moon, the night sky,
but I was actually corresponding with or moved by something
that was beyond that.
I started painting, writing poetry, and writing songs.
And the songs I wrote during that time ended up on an album called Angelica.
Now, almost 20 years later, I still get correspondence and emails
and letters from people saying this music had a healing effect on them.
For example, one man wrote to me and said that his sister had passed away,
and he let me know
that he was listening to Angelica as he was processing his grief.
Recently, a woman came to one of my shows,
and she said she had had brain surgery
and she was having these terrible headaches,
and she wanted to let me know that she had on this album of mine
for two months constantly, and it helped her with her physical pain.
So, during my time of healing,
I poured the elements of my journey into those notes and into those songs,
and the consequent were songs of healing and consolation.
Now the funny thing, or not funny but more mysterious thing,
is that I could sit down right now at a little desk
and put on my composer's hat, and in an intellectual way,
write a song that might be very similar to the songs I'm referring to.
It might sound the same, but it would not have the impact.
It's missing the story, the wound.
It's missing the innocence, the inspiration.
Speaking of inspiration,
I'd like to share a couple of stories with you from my journeys.
Years ago, I used to go to Sun Valley, Idaho and play concerts.
And one time I was invited
to play a concert for a group of actors called the Company of Fools.
It was a living room concert, or a "salon concert," as they call it.
So I was sitting in this beautiful mansion,
and the audience was ready, I was ready,
but there was this dog that was walking around,
and it was greeting everybody, it was a happy dog, you know,
but eventually, it was distracting
so one of the actors managed to take the dog
to the back of the room and calm it down.
So I played my concert.
When I stand up to take a bow, and people are clapping,
this dog gets up from the back of the room,
comes all the way over to me, and licks my hand.
(Laughter)
Then, it doesn't stop there.
It turns, stands next to me, and addresses the audience.
This was like an incarnation of a performer or something.
(Laughter)
So it was inspired by the experience.
(Laughter)
I'd like to leave you with a story regarding my father, Carlo.
Like I said, Carlo lived to be age 97,
and he was actually very active throughout his whole life,
up until the last six months.
In the last six months, eyes started to fade,
and he was in bed all the time; he wasn't getting out, he wasn't walking.
But one day, my mom wanted him to hear an accordion concert.
So she put him in the wheelchair, took him down to the dining room.
He knew the man that was performing.
My dad loved it; it was what he loved.
So when the guy finished playing, to my mom's amazement,
my dad, who hadn't walked in several months, just gets up,
walks over to the guy, thanks him for the music, and sits back down.
So music has mysterious powers over our minds and bodies.
It's an inspiring force.
I believe that through deep listening to ourselves through music,
we can see more of our personal and collective beauty,
and I hope that in my lifetime,
I can see a more peaceful and compassionate world.
I hope that you will join mE
in these acknowledgments of honor, and of beauty, and awakenings, and song.
Now I would like to take you on a sound healing journey,
my guitar and I.
(Guitar music)
Take you on a journey into the intersections of silence,
of the self,
and the collective imagination.
(Guitar music)
(Music ends)
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you very much. Thank you.
(Applause)