Twenty eight year old jazz guitar and mandolin wunderkind Blake Moses may not be well known yet in the progressive and jazz related scenes, but he is destined to become a household name among enlightened listeners seeking virtuosity, yet with little self-indulgence, a real sense of wonderment, breath, beauty, and mysticism in their music. Inspiring, unselfconscious and shy, I found Blake Moses to be a serious young man with an even more serious musical-artistic agenda: To share inspiring and healing music, to inspire inner personal feelings and visions in anyone who takes the time to really listen to the music of his almost-mythic Mythos Ensemble. To uplift hearts and minds.

Dropping out of the Berklee College Of Music in 2007, after having “underwhelmed” both the faculty and student-body alike with his “non-descript, not-really-there, anti-personality” and general malaise, American born Blake Moses did as any young and disillusioned upper-middle class young man would have done several generations ago. He went on a pilgrimage to India.

For a year he went seeking enlightenment and a hot meal, both he points out, in vain. He made a comeback to music and guitar work after having discovered what he was looking for -in, of all places, on the Internet- in the form of a little known online guru, known only to a handful of acolytes as “Brother (or Master) Avatar”. I caught up with Moses after a day of gruelling recording in the chapel of the famous Castle de Haar in the Netherlands a few months back. The following is an excerpt from the transcripts of our conversation:

RoseThorn: It’s almost humorous to witness what happened in there…

BlakeMoses: (haha) yeah, I know, what with all the musicians suddenly showing up in the middle of the recording like that. It happens alot with this “band”. We are all busy people, heavy schedules, different time zones, making a commitment to this project  and everyone is making sacrifices to get it done, you know? We have had to make new music arrangements on the spot sometimes when one of us, or a few of us, can’t make it for the recording.

(Indeed, even as we were speaking, Ensemble members were flying in and out, some leaving already, jetting off to gigs elsewhere on the continent of Europe)

RT: Tell me about how all this came about.

BM: Well, we came to know one another first as seekers, not musicians. There was a mailing list that I joined in 2008. while I was in India, where the ashram I was attending meditation classes actually was rich and modern enough to have its own internet access and several computers in its office! I wasn’t getting much from India, in general, I think the days of the great white hippy going away to the East to look for himself is long over-

RT:…Pray, Eat, Love notwithstanding!

BM: Right! And right there on the Internet was this spiritual teacher of the highest calibre handing out little bits of real wisdom. I didn’t even know if it was one person or a group of people, I didn’t care. It was helping me through my crisis, which started when I was studying jazz guitar performance at Berklee, and the reason why I had to drop out and go find myself.

Berklee, and I’m sure, many other arts institutions I found was a place of fierce materialism and competition. All very good in that old American spirit of “war=peace” and all that, but I soon realised it was not the kind of place for me. To me, music is an expression of an inner truth that lives in everyone and everything, a core of ourselves we rarely, if ever, come face to face with. Music schools in general are training grounds for athletes and business men, DJs and performers, marketeers and acrobats. I was not a very good student, and I rebelled quietly for a few semesters, and then I just left. I doubt anyone there even remembers me!

RT: I have heard parts of this recording, Doors Are Opening, and it is very beautiful, indeed. But fewer and shorter “improvised jazz solos” overall. Is there a reason why the ME chose to do it that way?

BM: Absolutely. We are for the most part, either jazz or classically trained musicians and composers. And one of the things we totally agree upon is what music is for: to tell a(n abstract) story, an inner tale, a focus for the heart of the listener to be shocked into restful alertness. If jazz solos can take you there, we are all for it. We have more than a few moments of sheer egoic indulgence in this record! (Haha) But we try our best to sweep our egos aside, and try to let the music speak for itself.

(Pt II to come shortly…)