Michael Mandrell

Notes From Celtistan

The range of musical innovation on this CD is positively stunning!

It's unpredictable and full of passion and refinement. Michael Mandrell is sublime, his compositions completely unique. Benjy Wertheimer collaborates with Michael for the second time - bringing his east Indian instrumentals on esraj and tabla. These artists take you on a journey where you can lose yourself in wondrous images. Their range is masterful as they combine an infinite number of Celtic orchestrations, Hindustani rhythms and jazz modes. It's inspired music, spontaneous and filled with deep and abiding soul — a true gift.

Wonderful, moving, relaxing music. I listen to it everyday while driving in this crazy traffic. It calms me down! I highly recommend it!

–Susi Wong

Lovely! Subtle, sophisticated, beautiful, varied: a truly excellent CD. I'm most impressed. A truly excellent CD.

–Michael, Professor Emeritus, Boulder, Colorado

Anjali

Delightfully devotional, provocative and divine

In a contemplative tone, this is a timeless inner landscape of music transporting the listener into both the faraway lands of ancient India- through the soulful sounds of the esraj, tamboura and tabla- and the mystical Celtic landscape with lyrical splashes of acoustic guitar. Created as a yoga meditations companion, Anjali is a soulful and beautiful collection of East Indian fusion music, ideal for either coloring the environment in an unostentatious manner or for drinking in as one would a fragrant scent on the air.

Anjali extends a sincere invitation to sit and just be. With music like this as accompaniment, being is more than enough for a rewarding experience. Highly recommended by yoga practitioners nationwide.

Hauntingly captures one's full attention and resonates deeply within — a delightfully, devotional compilation of nada yoga — thoroughly and yet effortlessly transmits the essence of Anjali. Namaste! PS Yoga classes love this music!

It is breath taking though the music is calm.

–Celia Lyons

This is the only one that I'll take with me while I die…

–Ezra Wang

Benjy Wertheimer and Michael Mandrell are world-class musicians who will rock your heart and move your soul.

–John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga

The Great Spiral Dance

Just magnificent!

These tunes reach into you and awaken your spirit. Spiral Dance brings together, in the world fusion tradition, all Michael Mandrell’s original guitar compositions, adding flutes, East Indian percussion, Uillean pipes and other ethnic instruments. Michael's guitar playing is extraordinary. His tunes are lyrical — the stuff fairy tales are made of. They are slightly jazzy, seductively smooth and consistently beautiful.

As "Echoes" executive producer Kimberly Hass observes, "Michael's hybrid guitar style reveals a guitarist of eclectic sensibilities and delicate technique. His music circles the globe in imagistic compositions."

A wonderfully rich set of world music that seems to float just high enough to transcend borders. Mandrell has a focused aural destination in mind he takes us with him from start to finish. A radiant, compelling recording that should remind us that it's the joy of the journey that is to be savored.

–Brian Pearce

Michael has tapped the Source with these compositions — they open the gate for what the body wants to say. It's my experience that the connection they unfold is the heart of ecstatic expression, perhaps the Great Spiral Dance itself.

–Christine Carter

Sanctuary

There are probably a handful of songs we could each name that have changed our lives, this one offers alters you with solace, safety and holiness.

The music on sanctuary is about solace, safety and holiness — it helps transmute the raw substance of our lives into gold and creates a space of sanctuary celebrating the sacred as we discover it in the midst of our daily lives. It is the special alchemy between Michael Mandrell and Jenny Bird that has audiences reveling in their musical magic. This is their first joint recording.

Michael’s instrumental guitar pieces are powerful tools of transformation. His music ranges from exuberant and joyful to lilting, melting, otherworldly. Jenny’s free-form vocal accompaniment to two of Michael’s songs reveals a glimpse of the wordless intimacy between these two great musicians.

It is worth noting that Sanctuary was recorded entirely “off-the-grid” in Omar Rane’s solar powered Tone Palace, surrounded by the art works of the late great Bill Rane.

The Deepening Edge

Music for the Heart and Soul

Want to feel the pulse come back into your soul? Then this is the CD for you. Created in Taos, New Mexico it is Michael Mandrell’s first CD release — with soprano sax player Peter Barbeau. It’s a jazz supernova — blending Michael’s incandescent guitar melodies with the aching harmonics of jazz sax, and the beat of master percussionist, Phil Hollenbeck. The effect is of a summer’s breeze on a lazy afternoon — sensual and sweet as honey.

I just heard portions from this CD on NPR's Echoes program on my way to work on a cold dreary Saturday morning and the music by these guys made my day — if you need something to lift your spirits, transport you to a place of peace and encourage you to appreciate the beauty around you, this is the prescription you need. Very highly recommended.

–J. S. Grimsley, Columbus, Ohio

To order this CD contact: Blix Street Records