Healing Hearts 3
Louis Landon
2016 / Landon Creative, Inc.
63 minutes
Review by Kathy Parsons
Louis Landon?s Healing Hearts 3 is the third in a series of solo piano albums that are comprised of improvisations that were created while clients were in session at his Healing Piano of Sedona (AZ). These sixty-minute healing and music sessions consist of forty minutes of mentoring and twenty minutes of music that includes personalized music for the client?s own use. Landon created Healing Piano of Sedona several years ago to help people live life joyously, passionately, and stress- and disease-free. Landon is a Steinway Artist who has been a life-long musician. Healing Hearts 3 is his twenty-first album and fourteenth solo piano collection. Each of the thirteen pieces on the album was inspired by a different ?soul journey,? so the music is quite varied although it maintains a very calming and peaceful vibe throughout.

It is interesting to note that Healing Hearts 3 has the closest to the ideal sound Landon has been looking for on his recordings. He attributes that achievement to the mastering and editing expertise of Joe Bongiorno of Piano Haven Studio, also in Sedona. Landon has been trying to get the sound of a classical concert hall in his Peace Palace studio recordings and this album definitely has that sound, which is exceptionally beautiful - clear, warm and resonant.

Healing Hearts 3 begins with ?Standing In the Light,? a softly flowing piece with a poignant melody that gently soothes the heart - a favorite. ?Heart Song? is hushed, intimate and obviously very personal. ?Triumph of the Soul? starts out in the deep bass of the piano - very dark and lost. As the piece evolves, it gradually lightens as it moves up the piano keyboard, ending in a very positive place. I?ve often said that the piano is the best instrument to express the sound and feeling of rain and ?Night Rain? proves that point again. More energetic than most of the other tracks, the notes flow freely: sometimes smoothly and evenly, sometimes more percussive like big fat raindrops - love it! ?Tears? is heartbreak set to music, although tears are so often a big part of the healing process. Such deep emotion is expressed in this piece! Landon wisely follows sadness with ?Happy Man,? a lively slice of pianistic sunshine. ?Phoenix Rising? begins in the deep bass of the piano, obviously signifying a very dark place or crisis. Over the course of the composition, there is turmoil and pain, but then Landon gradually moves the piece into the upper end of the piano to a much lighter and more peaceful place - a stunning piece! ?Healing Time? is gently uplifting and so soothing and serene that I can actually feel it melting away tension - another favorite. ?Music Runs Through Me? flows quickly like a stream with sparkles of sunlight dancing happily on its surface. ?Balance? returns to a calm stillness that comes when things/life are in balance. Slow, lyrical and very peaceful, it?s the perfect closing for another great album from Louis Landon!

I have thoroughly enjoyed all three Healing Hearts albums, but I think #3 is my favorite. It is available from LouisLandon.com, Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby. Very highly recommended!
November 4, 2016

Recorded at The Peace Palace, Sedona, AZ, from November 2015 to February 2016. on a Steinway B.

Music mastering: Joe Bongiorno at Piano Haven Studio, Sedona, AZ



Louis Landon is a composer and Steinway artist. Formerly of New York and currently living in Sedona, Arizona, Louis has dedicated his life to music. His career has taken him around the world playing a variety of styles with some of the most recognized names in the entertainment industry. He toured nationally and internationally, playing classical music for Mikhail Baryshnikov; jazz fusion with The John Payne Band; Latin music with "Pucho and his Latin Soul Brothers?; pop music with Rupert "Pina Colada Song" Holmes; and rock & roll with John Hall, opening for "Little Feat?.

Louis began playing the piano by ear at 4 years old and began lessons at 5. As a teenager, he played guitar and keyboard in bands and went on to study music at Stony Brook University, Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music.

For the past 30 years, through his production company, Landon Music Company, Louis has written and produced music for film, video, and commercials. He recorded his first original album, Love Songs & Jazz, in 1994 and has since released 38 Albums/CDs on the LCI Record label. His latest, entitled Provocative Piano, was released on January 29, 2021. He has just finished up yet another solo piano album, Nighttime Piano for Relaxation and Deep Sleep, with a release date of April 23, 2021.

Louis Landon mission:

To create a more compassionate world by writing, recording and performing music that inspires love, peace, joy and gratitude.

Reviews:

?While some pianists are virtuosos in their playing and others may not be as technically proficient, but have great emotional content in their music, Louis Landon brings it all together with impeccable style and grace. His work covers diverse compositional terrain, incorporating influences of classical, new age, jazz, pop, and more in a mellifluous spectrum of moods and musical colors.? Michaeldiamondmusic.com

"He has a gift for composition that is second to none." Zone Music Reporter

"? indeed meditative and mellow, [he] sacrifices no musical rigor to achieve those ends. With backgrounds in jazz, Latin music, rock, pop, film composing, and classical piano, Louis brings his breadth and depth of experience to bear here. His playing and compositions are sensitive as they are complex and? a diverse range of influences is more than apparent.? Keyboard Magazine

Recognition:

Louis Landon's music has had over 140 million streams on Pandora radio!

Louis Landon's music has had over 34 million streams on Spotify!

Thanksgiving Piano was nominated for Album of the Year 2020 by Whisperings Radio.

Departure - Solo Piano was nominated for Album of the Year 2017 by Whisperings Radio.

Healing Hearts 2 - Solo Piano won 2016 ?Contemporary and Modern? Album of the Year at solo piano.com and was nominated for Album of the Year at Enlightened Piano Radio, also in 2016.

Healing Hearts - Solo Piano was nominated for Album of the Year at Whisperings Radio 2015.

Solo Piano for Love, Peace & Mermaids was nominated for Album of the Year at Whisperings Radio 2010.

Solo Piano for Peace was nominated for the 2009 ZMR Music Awards in three categories: Album of the Year, Best Instrumental Album - piano, and Best Cover Art by Zone Music Reporter. Solo Piano for Peace was listed at #30 of the top 100 albums for airplay in 2009 by Zone Music Reporter.

Peace Revolution! was Louis Landon's 7th CD and 2nd solo piano CD. It was #7 on the NAR top 100 charts and was played on over 50 stations worldwide.

unwind charted at #3 of the top 100 cds for the month of February, 2006 on Zone Music Reporter's website, playing on over 121 stations internationally.

Visit LouisLandon.com for bookings, CDs, sheet music, contact info and more.

Arranged for Clarinet Quintet & optional drumset, "Watermelon Man" is a jazz standard written by Herbie Hancock, first released on his debut album, Takin' Off (1962), in a grooving hard bop version that featured improvisations by Freddie Hubbard and Dexter Gordon.

A single of the tune reached the Top 100 of the pop charts. Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamar�a released the tune as a latin pop single the next year on Battle Records, where it became a surprise hit, reaching #10 on the pop charts. Santamar�a's recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. Hancock radically re-worked the tune, combining elements of funk, for the album Head Hunters (1973).

Hancock's first version was released as a grooving hard bop record, and featured improvisations by Freddie Hubbard and Dexter Gordon. A single reached the Top 100 of the pop chart. Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamar�a released the tune as a Latin pop single and it became a surprise hit, reaching No. 10 on the pop chart.[2] Santamar�a's recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. Hancock radically re-worked the tune, combining elements of funk, for the album Head Hunters (1973).

Hancock wrote the piece to help sell his debut album as a leader, Takin' Off (1962), on Blue Note Records; it was the first piece of music he had ever composed with a commercial goal in mind. The popularity of the piece, due primarily to Mongo Santamar�a, paid Hancock's bills for five or six years. Hancock did not feel the composition was a sellout however, describing that structurally, it was one of his strongest pieces due to its almost mathematical balance.

The form is a sixteen bar blues. Recalling the piece, Hancock said, "I remember the cry of the watermelon man making the rounds through the back streets and alleys of Chicago. The wheels of his wagon beat out the rhythm on the cobblestones." The tune, based on a bluesy piano riff, drew on elements of R&B, soul jazz and bebop, all combined into a pop hook. Hancock joined bassist Butch Warren and drummer Billy Higgins in the rhythm section, with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone. Hancock's chordal work draws from the gospel tradition, while he builds his solo on repeated riffs and trilled figures.

Hancock filled in for pianist Chick Corea in Mongo Santamar�a's band one weekend at a nightclub in The Bronx when Corea gave notice that he was leaving. Hancock played the tune for Santamar�a at friend Donald Byrd's urging. Santamar�a started accompanying him on his congas, then his band joined in, and the small audience slowly got up from their tables and started dancing, laughing and having a great time. Santamar�a later asked Hancock if he could record the tune. On December 17, 1962, Mongo Santamar�a recorded a three-minute version, suitable for radio, where he joined timbalero Francisco "Kako" Baster in a cha-cha beat, while drummer Ray Lucas performed a backbeat. Santamar�a included the track on his album Watermelon Man (1962). Santamar�a's recording is sometimes considered the beginning of Latin boogaloo, a fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with those of R&B

Hancock re-recorded the tune for Head Hunters (1973), combining synthesizers with a Sly Stone and James Brown funk influence, adding an eight-bar section. Hancock described his composition "Chameleon", also from Head Hunters, to Down Beat magazine in 1979: "In the popular forms of funk, which I've been trying to get into, the attention is on the rhythmic interplay between different instruments. The part the Clavinet plays has to fit with the part the drums play and the line the bass plays and the line that the guitar plays. It's almost like African drummers where seven drummers play different parts"; "Watermelon Man" shares a similar construction. A live version was released on the double LP Flood (1975), recorded in Japan.

On the intro and outro of the tune, percussionist Bill Summers blows into beer bottles imitating hindewhu, a style of singing/whistle-playing found in Pygmy music of Central Africa. Hancock and Summers were struck by the sound, which they heard on the ethnomusicology LP, The Music of the Ba-Benz�l� Pygmies (1966), by Simha Arom and Genevi�ve Taurelle.

This version was often featured on The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s segments.

The tune is a jazz standard and has been recorded over two hundred times. Hancock's recording has been sampled in "1-900-LL-Cool-J" from Walking with a Panther (1989) by LL Cool J, "Open Your Eyes" from Organized Konfusion (1991) by Organized Konfusion, "Smoke Some Kill" from Smoke Some Kill (1988) by Schoolly D, and "Pocket Full of Furl" from Uptown 4 Life (1996) by U.N.L.V. In 2003, pianist David Benoit covered the song from his album Right Here, Right Now.

A live and funky performance at the 1999 Montreux Jazz Festival Casino Lights '99 featured Fourplay, George Duke, Boney James and Kirk Whalum trading choruses, and Rick Braun.