Kathryn Toyama
Musician
KATHRYN TOYAMA
Musician
Hope For Harmony
By Jonathan Widran
Photos by Amy Shiotani Photography
funkyusa.com
 
 With the planet in a never ending state of chaos and people's lives so often in mere survival mode cluttered by work and distractions, we hardly have a moment in the day to take a deep breath, let alone reflect and meditate. On her graceful and sweeping, emotionally compelling debut solo recording Hope For Harmony, Los Angeles based classically influenced pianist Kathryn Toyama invites us to release our fears and worries to the universe, slow down the world and discover balance, peace and blessings in our day to day realities. Passionate yet serene, the music seduces our souls over the course of 18-tracks, bringing the listener along a spiritual journey that hopes for harmony within each individual and, in a larger sense, reaches out to universal peace through acceptance and tolerant understanding.

As an artist expressing her deepest truths, the multi-talented musician and composer felt that the depth of her reality could only be captured by recording it "in the moment" and preserving each original expression from start to end, just as a live performance would be recorded without any creative alterations or enhancements. Beyond providing joy and healing relaxation to thousands of listeners, Toyama is also a strong advocate for coalitions against domestic violence hoping to stop the vicious cycles in people's lives. She is quickly emerging as a force for positive change in the world as well as one of today's most acclaimed instrumentalists. Solo Piano Publications Reviewer Kathy Parsons wrote: "Hope for Harmony is a gorgeous debut...gentle, subtle, and very soothing... the music has the spontaneous feeling of improvisation, and much of it is more ambient than melodic, setting a mood of quiet yet intense peacefulness... so effortlessly floats on a cloud of sound...."

Composing each piece as if channeling divine inspiration, Toyama's remarkable process involves no actual commitment to notes on paper; instead, she lets the melodic structure of each piece develop intuitively. Committed to a purity of heart and a peaceful purpose, she felt that the most honest performance she could give was to keep the integrity of each composition by recording each track without digital editing. Only fade-outs were applied at the end of "Carefree" and "Floating on Dreams." She says, "In today's digital era, recording artists have the liberty to edit and change their compositions, and there is definitely a place for that, especially with film scoring for example. But it was important to me with this first album to offer the entire truth of my emotional expression."
Toyama's incredible sense of expression was kept hidden from the world for years as she shied away from playing the piano after burning out from the pressure of classical competition that defined her musical childhood. The creative dam broke, however, as it did for many in the arts, after 9/11, when she sat down at the Yamaha digital baby grand piano that a friend had gifted her and channeled her grief not only for the national tragedy of that day but for other major losses she had experienced the previous year. It wasn't until that moment of musical epiphany, that she realized she could compose music.

Toyama composed most of the songs that comprise Hope For Harmony spontaneously and purely for her own catharsis, from 2002-2006, without any original intention to create a commercial recording. Another friend had given her a gift certificate to visit a psychic, and that psychic, without ever hearing the music but liking Toyama's energy nonetheless, urged her to make a CD. The psychic eventually offered to promote it on an infomercial in
exchange for using her music on the show. The program ultimately did not broadcast, but Hope For Harmony took on a powerful life of its own and, since becoming commercially available in 2007, has became an inspirational tool for the healing of people around the world. 

Toyama, who is currently working on a new similarly styled recording project, is currently involved with a non-profit organization called Healing With Harmony, whose
philosophy, echoing Toyama's own, is that the vibratory and emotional nature of music can help heal and improve the way people feel, by comforting those struggling with chronic or serious medical conditions, life threatening diseases, or dealing with the last stages of life. She also donates her music to organizations working with autistic children and children with behavioral problems, whom studies show respond very well to the creative energy of this kind.
 
"My hope is to musically awaken the spiritual solidarity that unites us all, and to inspire positive relations through our human interconnectedness," she says. "I fear that we are running out of time, that there is great urgency in a spiritual sense. If each of us could make a personal shift from ego-based thinking to heart-based feeling, we could lift vibrations on this planet. Music is highly vibrational and the potential for positive change is enormous if the energy we send comes from the heart. That's the spiritual endeavor behind Hope For Harmony."






You are listening to Kathryn Toyama's "Prayer for Peace" on her "Hope for Harmony" cd. You can order Kathryn's cd by clicking on the image above.




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