Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal And Jesse Paris Smith

★★★ Songs From The Bardo SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS. CD/DL/LP Tantric meditation for spoken word, cello, piano and Tibetan instruments. Long-time Buddhist Laurie Anderson, Australiabased Tibetan singer-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal and activist-composer Jesse Paris Smith (daughter of Patti) convened through mutual involvement in New York’s annual Tibetan House Trust benefit concerts. Songs From

The Bardo is described as a “guided journey through the Tibetan Book of the Dead”, its 14 ‘tracks’, with titles like Natural Form Of Emptiness, Awakened One and Gong, effectively melting into one long, Eastern meditation. For Buddhists, ‘Bardo’ designates the liminal state between death and rebirth, and the music here, hallmarked by exotic flutes and Choegyal’s elevated chants, interspersed with dolorous prayer bowls, lute-like plucks on a Tibetan dranyen and Rubin Kodheli’s brooding cello lines, navigates a suitably introspective-yetevanescent terrain. Anderson’s typically soothing, if uncharacteristically earnest, readings of Buddhist sutras punctuate proceedings, and a pervading transcendence lingers long after the music has ceased. David Sheppard