Loreena McKennitt, The Gates Of Istanbul

I don’t know about you all, but I need a politics break this morning.  In fact, I’ve needed one all week long.  Things are heating up in the primaries, the squabbling over very little squawks onward, and it is all I can do to remain civil.

So I know it’s time for a break.  And I get the feeling that everyone else could use one, too, in the worst way.

Thought I’d share some of my favorite escape music this morning, in the hopes that all of you will share some of yours.  My latest escape project has been to try and arrange my iPod into folders, including an "Escape" one.  

The YouTube at left is a serious escape tune, The Gates of Istanbul, from Loreena McKennitt’s An Ancient Muse.  Her music is always good for a travel from home feel, tugging at some ancient rhythm in my soul.  Another good one?  Beneath a Phrygian Sky (YouTube) — light some candles, pour a warm cuppa tea, sit back and feel yourself drift back in time a bit.  Wonderful stuff.

And this one is a video montage put together of some woodlands areas to McKennitt’s Between The Shadows (YouTube), and makes for a nice visual and audio break.  Along those same lines, here’s a similar one, this set to La Serinissima (YouTube).

Or how about some Rachmaninoff playing Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 (YouTube)?  Or David Oistrakh playing Debussy’s Clair de Lune (YouTube)?   Or — and this truly is a miraculous find – Debussy: L’après-midi d’une faune conducted by Leopold Stowkowski (YouTube)?  (Part II is here.)  Or Maria Callas singing Puccini’s O Mio Babbino Caro (YouTube)?  

So, what have you been listening to lately?  What is the song you turn to — or movie, or book, whatever — for escape lately?  Do share.  Pull up a chair…


Related posts:

  1. Pull Up A Chair…
  2. Pull Up A Chair…
  3. Pull Up A Chair…
  4. Pull Up A Chair…
  5. Pull Up A Chair…