Winner of The Best Vocal Album from the Zone Music Awards, as well as awards from the Pacific Composer’s Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Global Music Awards, supported by Sirius XM Spa & Chill, KCBX, WXPN, to name a few, the New Age Music Guide, Michael Diamond Music, Ambient Visions & more, Lis Addison has amassed over 10 million streams across platforms and her last four albums were in the top 10 of the international charts.
‘Seven Gifts (Remix)’ is an updated version of one of her older works that she composed, produced, and performed, following decades of North Indian Classical Raga training and Electronic Music mastery. A mix of traditional Indian mantras and chill, soothing beats, Lis Addison has perfectly captured and blended the old into the new.
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WHO IS LIS ADDISON?
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Lis Addison is a Composer, Vocalist, Keyboardist and Producer. She writes in the Ambient, Classical Crossover, World, New Age and Electronic Music genres. Lis has composed and produced fifteen solo albums, soundtracks for film and dance and has over 10 Million streams on Spotify, Apple and Pandora. She is the creator of Kinetic Voice, a vocal and dance practice for health and wellness.
Addison has toured in Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, Tanzania, the UK and the US. Her music has received favorable reviews in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Korea, Mexico, Russia and the US. Lis has won awards from the Pacific Composer’s Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Global Music Awards among others. Her last four albums have been in the top 10 of the International Charts.
Lis holds a BA in music composition, an MFA in electronic music from Mills College and has been a lifelong student of Indian Raga Singing which has been both spiritual practice and musical training for many decades. Her teachers include Pandit Pran Nath, Ali Akbar Khan and Amiya Dasgupta. Lis teaches at Expressions Digital Arts College and at the Globe Sound Healing Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area in California as well as privately to students throughout the world. She has been invited to teach Electronic Music at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, as a Fulbright Scholarship finalist.
HOW DID YOU BEGIN STUDYING RAGAS ?
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“I began my study of North Indian Classical Raga Singing as a freshman in college many decades ago. Raga has been as much a spiritual yogic practice as musical, it helps me become calm and centered.
Indian Classical music has traditionally been a vehicle for Nada Yoga (the Yoga of Sound), which includes Ragas (melodies/scales), Tala (rhythm), Mantras (language), Slokas (Sanskrit verses), chanting, kirtan and bhajans (repetitive mantric melodies). Such practice helps purify the body, mind, emotions and intellect.
My first teacher Pandit Pran Nath taught a difficult form of ear training. We sat at the feet of the teacher and repeated phrases, scales, and techniques back to him. We were to «Sing In Tune and Harmonize with All Things» remembering that «Sa (the first note of the scale) is the Sound Wave that Created the Universe.» We weren’t allowed to record or write anything in the class but had to remember all we were taught.
In later years, my teacher Ali Akbar Khan and other Indian professionals taught us a beautiful form of notation that we were able to record and notate. Ali Akbar Khan was a contemporary of Ravi Shankar with whom the Beatles studied and who introduced Indian Music to America.
I love singing Raga because I have developed an intimacy with each note and rhythm when practicing that encourages a reverence for the music. Each scale must be practiced at a specific time of day, night, dawn, dusk or season and has its own message, meaning and transmission that is inherently spiritual and healing.
The music on Seven Gifts is in Iman Kalyan, my favorite Raga. It is a 432hz remix of a piece I wrote and released in 2004 in honor of Guru Purnima for my then Guru Adi Da Samraj. The piece honors the Seven Gifts of the Sat Guru: Vani, Darshan, Bhakti, Seva, Tapas, Kripa, Moksha. I recorded a new final verse for this remix and my friend and colleague Ben Leinbach added beautiful tabla and textures to the current track. We hope you enjoy the sacredness of this beautiful Rag and tribute and receive a sense of harmony with all that is.”
– Lis Addison
