At a recent live concert in Berkeley, California, composer and songwriter Barbara Higbie told her audience, “This music is intended to silence the fight or flight impulse we all feel these days. Worry has been an Olympic sport for the past two years. Now we can let that go.” She went on to perform music from her latest album release “Murmuration,” a collection of haunting instrumental responses to the disquiet of our times.
If Higbie’s intent with this album is to soothe listeners, every song succeeds. Her melodic piano solos, often accompanied by cello and violin, serve as lullabies for the agitated. Each time I listen, I feel that mix of melancholy, comfort, and solace found in the presence of sacred beauty. I am, in Christian terms, “blessed.”
A professional musician since age 17, Barbara Higbie has 11 albums to her credit and has performed on more than 65 albums with such performers as Carlos Santana, Darol Anger, the Kronos Quartet, Holly Near, Spyro Gyra, and countless others. She composed and recorded for Windham Hill Records in the 1980s, and has toured worldwide. Her collaborative instincts radiate when she performs live; she has fun with her accompanying musicians, who rotate on and off stage like family friends at a dinner party. f “I grew up with five older siblings,” she said. “I don’t like to play solo.”
Higbie has a long history of collaboration with top notch female performers, and on this album she is joined with multi-instrumentalist Vicki Randle, the first long-term female percussionist in the Tonight Show Band; and cellist Mia Pixley, whose minor-key melodies echo Higbie’s emotional power. Jami Sieber contributes her ethereal electric cello along with San Francisco Bay Area percussionist Michaelle Goerlitz.
Many of the songs on “Murmuration” are piano solos, however, that speak to Barbara’s deep and sensitive spirit. She often composes on her piano at night, when bursts of creativity keep her from sleeping. “I wrote an entire album one night,” she said. She finds inspiration from nature, evident in the titles of her songs: “Trees Unknown,” “Inspiration Point,” and “North Fork,” to name a few. Her musical reflections evoke the beauty of mountain streams, pine forests, or, as in the case of the title track “Murmuration,” a flock of starlings.
Barbara Higbie’s onstage energy is not so obvious on this album, which focuses on quiet, hymn-like performances. If soothing is what you need, you’ll want to listen to these Murmuration tracks repeatedly, as I have. You won’t be disappointed.
Ed Aust is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Oakland, CA, and serves as poetry editor for Radix Magazine.