Offering

This CD begins with a few relatively upbeat songs then winds down into more prayerful, introspective ballads about our relationship to ourselves, our planet and the cosmos. These messages of hope are tenderly accompanied by cello, flute, keyboards, violin. REVIEWS: '55 minutes of some of the most healing music you're ever likely to hear. The stories she tells, and the pictures she paints, will have the thoughtful listener in tears as hearts open and the floodgates of emotion come pouring through. Uplifting, profoundly moving, these songs sill become friends... Devotional singing on the most exalted of levels.' -- New Age Retailer Biography of Kirtana (pronounced Keer-tahna, from the Sanskrit root: kirtan, meaning 'that which is worthy of uttering') Born in a small coastal town in Maine, Kirtana received her first guitar at the age of eleven as a Christmas present. It was a Sears Silver Tone. After a few months of struggle and calluses to her fingers, her sympathetic parents replaced it with a small Spanish classical guitar. And thus Kirtana's sparse, mostly self-taught, classically-influenced guitar style emerged.. For many years, most of her musical performances took place in her bedroom to an audience of one, as she had no aspiration to use music to entertain but was content with the self-expression and catharsis that songwriting and poetry offered. As a teenager, Kirtana was drawn to reading the books of such spiritual masters as: Yogananda, Ram Dass, Alan Watts etc. She was initiated into Transcendental Meditation at the age of 17 and by twenty-two was teaching meditation in Maine. After teaching for a year and a half she decided to finish her formal education, begun a few years before at the University of Maine at Orono. She graduated three years later from Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA (The TM College), with a BA in Literature. In the early eighties, she moved to California where she has lived ever since, drawing constant nourishment and inspiration from the beauty and energy of the central coast. After a few years in Big Sur, Kirtana was moved to record some of the songs she had been quietly amassing over the years. Her debut album, Healing Rain, issued on her own label, was the result: a collection of ten songs centered around the theme of personal healing and transformation. Once the CDs and tapes arrived, she knew she would have to start singing publicly or they would just take up space in her closet. Her early gigs were at folk venues, first opening for others (David Maloney, Ramblin Jack Elliot, etc.) and then offering concerts of her own. Even though she met with some success in her attempts to fit in with the New-Folk circuit (She was a finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1991, a winner at the Napa Valley Folk Festival in 1992 and a showcasing artist at the 1995 North by Northwest.), her spiritually infused lyrics and odd-sounding name left her feeling somewhat out of place. Still, encouraged by the sales of her first CD and by some mysterious artistic compulsion, she produced a second CD three years later, called Parrish Light. And gradually she moved away from traditional folk venues and turned toward New Thought Churches and gatherings of a more spiritual nature. By the time she released her third CD The Offering; Epiphanies and Prayer Flags in 1997, her attention was less on some of the personal concerns addressed in earlier songs and more on her relationship with the Cosmos. Just before Th