Reviews
On this page you will find those reviews which did not fit on the individual pages of my CDs.
Read more reviews chosing one of the CD titles from my discography.
Yoga: On Sacred Ground
"Don’t let the title of this album fool you. While the scope and sensitivity of Dunster’s journey through the seven chakras will certainly appeal to yoga practitioners, Yoga on Sacred Ground travels much further than its name implies. This is not just music for practicing yoga. This is music you can live by in the fullest sense.
Chinmaya Dunster is a magician on the sarod and as a composer. So often, we hear music that attempts to fuse the Eastern tradition with Western sensibilities and end up with something that lessens both. Dunster knows what he’s doing. He has gone inside the music of India, extracted its essence, and invested his work with spirit and passion in a way that touches the heart of our own experience.
The music is by turns vibrant, plaintive, pulsing with energy, and contemplative. The first track, ’Natrani (Queen of the Dance),’ combines a feminine Indian raga, warmly performed on sarod, with the gypsy flair of Spanish lute. This track leaps up and dances, whirls, shouts, makes life happen. Sarod and guitar share a sublime and subtle musical dialogue in ’On Sacred Ground,’ a theme which is echoed in a major key in ’Ha-Tha.’ The mysterious ’The Watcher’ shimmers with rhythmic and tonal complexities, played in a minor-keyed Indian scale, and contrasts sweetly with the light-hearted joyfulness of the final track.
This is Dunster’s third album on the New Earth label. If you’ve not yet experienced his musical genius, Yoga on Sacred Ground is a great place to start."
New Age Voice, March 2002
Buddha Moon
With this release, UK-born guitarist Chinmaya Dunster teams up with two virtuoso Indian classical musicians for a live performance of two morning ragas. The performances by Bikram Singh on the bamboo flute, Amano Manish on the slide guitar and Karunesh playing the claypot, are gentle and sweet. The recordings are quiet and Dunster parlays a highly respectable rendering of the ragas.
In all four of the tracks here, which amount to a solid hour of excellent meditation and relaxing music, the instruments are acoustic and very organic. The music was recorded live in India at dawn on a full moon morning. This is the time at which, according to tradition, Buddha reached enlightenment. It is also said to be the time at which he was both conceived and when he left his body.
The album is very consistent and has a lot of shakti flowing in the vibrations of each improvised note. The music is fairly simple and straight-forward in theory, but it is delivered with enough heart such that it just doesn’t matter. It succeeds in sustaining a quiet tranquil tone and allows the meditative process to unfold effortlessly.
Personally, I felt a lot more of a Hindu-Yogic influence in the performance of the ragas, but the artwork suggests a Buddhist connection. Either way, there is plenty of bliss imbibed here. I enjoyed this CD; check it out.
LA Yoga Magazine, March 2008
Celtic Ragas
"Although it’s not quite the fusion of reel and raga suggested by the title, Celtic Ragas features sarod player Chinmaya Dunster and guitarist Vidroha Jamie finding a surprisingly fertile common ground between Irish and Indian music. Dunster and Jamie, along with a group of musicians who play violin, percussion, flute, bass, and tanpura, create gentle soundscapes that range from the playful rhythms of "A Gypsy Tale" to the haunting, almost spooky beauty of "The Mists of Ruantallain."
The arrangements are focused, and even on slow, meditative tracks like "Mere Hamsafar," the tempo never drags and the melodies don’t meander. The mix of Indian and Irish elements works particularly well on "Tara," on which the buzzing, microtonal sound of the sarod meshes with the rhythms of a courtly dance and creates a sonic dream where the musicians of Ireland and India play in the castle of an ancient Celtic king. Dunster and Jamie describe Celtic Ragas as "Indo-Celtic chill-out music," a too-trendy term that nonetheless captures the essence of their soothing sound."
Michael Simmons
Celtic Ragas
"I love the unique blend of Irish and Indian style music on this record. It has become one of my favorites."
Celtic Ragas
"In the whirling of joyful melodies a sound is born.
It whispers: ‘Greetings, world! Greetings, love!
What a happiness to be here!
Oh, how I longed for all this!’
This music is really a talk of two close friends – an Indian sarod and a guitar. Indian and Celtic music. They are together. They are one whole. The alchemy of Divine music. This music wraps you up. It uplifts and inspires. It delicately helps your life energy to grow strong and takes you high above, in the World of Spirit, in the All-human World. This is the World where there are no East and West, little countries and large ambitions, and where is the All-human Unity, which is beyond Earth. In this Unity East and West are together.
They are together in this planet, being rendered by wars, conflicts and foolishness of people. And Chinmaya Dunster together with Vidroha Jamie let us feel all this by their airy, full of energy and inspired music. They help us to feel and sense the very Life.
What can be more precious than the very Life on this planet? What can be more beautiful than Love? This Love is completely reflected in the music of two perfect musicians. It comes by a strong jet. It alloys together the Celtic and the Indian music, the heritage of two great peoples. It alloys this all together in an equal flow. And we can feel that all the music is ‘poured’ on this planet from the one source. Time to come back. Time to be together. Time to live full life.
Thanks to the two remarkable musicians: Chinmaya Dunster and Vidroha Jamie! This music of Joy and Love weakens heart, fills us with life and let us feel that in this world exists other reality - the Reality of Spirit. This Reality is the real, the largest precious!"
