CD Reviews - What They Say About Miriam's Music (HOME)
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photo by Ryan Aaron Emhoff |
Nine-Star Rating!
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“…Inspired by spiritual forces… Aches with the blinding radiance of a choir of angels… Both lovely and eerie… It will bring shivers down your spine….”
-- 9-Star Rating by Adam Harrington in Whisperin and Hollerin (UK)
“…Able to take what could only be appealing to a specific crowd and make it attractive to a far larger audience. …Dreamlike, otherworldly textures …Will draw inevitable comparisons to Enya; however, [Miriam’s] music digs deeper than that. …Vocals are as ethereal as the evening stars; they will enchant you, dazzle you. ‘Great Mother’ has punch drums with a straightforward dance rhythm a-la Haza and Peter Gabriel. This is music that not only soothes the ears but the soul as well.”
-- Julian Wilson in Trans Europe Express
“Last night during my evening meditation and prayer I put on your CD [“Call from the Narrows”]. What a divine and special treat. I wish I had words to explain it; there was something pure and open about the experience. Your voice really acted as a guide for a quite nice experience. Your guidance to say the least was welcomed and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. I have been meditating for decades, have experienced music and visits all over the planet, but ... this was simply way up there with the most meaningful. After I finished the meditation, I just started laughing out loud. It was so funny that the experience had touched me like that”
-- Dr. Douglas Lawrence, Ph.D.
Chair, Communication Arts Department
Marywood University
“I love sharing
Miriam's unique gifts with my audience. She transcends music as entertainment
and lifts us into the realm where healing of body and spirit take place.”
-- Gail Wartell, host of "Sunday Simcha", WMPG-Radio, Portland,
Maine
"Miriam sings
from the center of the experience of the Jewish soul with her God. The
texts she chose to embody in authentic traditional melodies are brought
to the heart of the listener. A good antidote to 'Yeshivah Rock'."
-- Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Reviewing "Light Out of Darkness")
“[Your concert
was a] wonderful, inspiring and great program! Everyone present was very
moved and uplifted.”
-- Cantor Daniel Green
Congregation B’nai Israel
Toms River, New Jersey
“Your CD
(Wings of Light) moved each and every one of us: soldiers, contractors
and locals, in Scania, Iraq.”
-- Roohi Mir,
U.S. Department of Defense
"I have Miriam's healing music playing in my study every single day. It transforms my office into a sacred space of healing, nurturing and spiritual grace as its beauty and power touch the soul of everyone who enters."
-- Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Rabbi of Kehillat Israel
President of Board of Rabbis of Southern California
"Miriam has produced a beautiful, soothing CD of healing melodies that evoke a sense of warmth and peace".
-- Rabbi Nancy Flam Co-Founder of the
Jewish Healing Center and the National Center for Jewish Healing
"Music from the heart, that goes straight to your soul".
-- Craig Taubman
"Wings of Light", is a beautiful and blessed contribution to the continuing history of Jewish spiritual music. Miriam has a profoundly rich, soothing voice, a voice of someone who can make sounds that heal. All the selections are well chosen. Each is strong on it's own, and yet the whole album has an impact greater than the sum of its parts. In all, I think the album is superb".
-- Arthur Kurzweil
"Miriam invites us into her healing hut with gentle timbres, strums our taut strings into release, invokes a distant star to radiate here and ease our ever-aching hearts. Her voice is like dusk, gathering under the half moon of a country evening, that invites us to a warm place by the fire and soothes us with its singing; a loving balm for a hurting world".
-- Cantor Robert Esformes
"Wings of Light", ·turns the sore to the soaring! Thank God for heavenly voices"
-- Rabbi Marc Gafni
"I have been playing your CD daily in my car since I got it at the Circle of Caring Retreat Day. Your gift to me in that CD is profound... your music is truly healing".
"Thank you for the gift of you!"
-- Reverend Sandee Yarlott (Director-UCLA Spiritual Care Department)
"Oh, how I am enjoying your CD that Betty gave to me! Two gifts; your beautiful soothing voice and the fact that it was a present from my friend. It is a blessing beyond words...it comforts and heals my soul".
Thank you truly, warmly and sincerely"
-- Sue Antebi
"Wings of Light", is the powerfully authentic and rarefied contribution to the genre of new-age/spiritual music for which legions of us have been yearning. Miriam's vocal alms make for a bold and uplifting change of pace. Her debut album packs a greater punch than most, by toning down mock-symphonic excess in favor of stark, haunting tracks that contain certain veiled mysteries".
"After listening to this affecting, gorgeous and frequently healing album, you will find it no longer matters who you used to be, you'll feel sheer gratitude for the sacred ways Miriam has changed you. This is something to believe! More important this is something to pass on!"
-- IreneDiMezza (Life
Strategist/Bio-Energetic Therapist)
"Miriam's music has proved to be of significant support in therapeutic sessions, especially where the client needed to be surrounded by peaceful, strengthening sounds".
"Miriam has contributed to the quality of my work with her loving presence, for which I am sincerely grateful".
-- Donna Sumerville (Massage Therapist)
"In Wings of Light Miriam Maron Emhoff gifts us with far more than song, she gifts us with deep soul connection, with wings by which we might indeed access Light. Her voice skillfully translates the inteneion, healing and love with which these ancient and medieval Hebrew chants were originally composed. Miriam is a wise-woman blessed with the gift of guiding the willing participant toward the embrace of what we so glibly call "The Divine." Not unlike her workshops on Healing Through Song and Movement, Wings of Light communicates Miriam's own personal devotion and authenticity as a teacher and healer, and is a magnificent work that is entertaining, soothing, and transforming."
--
”The concert we co-sponsored with the Walking Stick Foundation featuring Miriam and the Aliyah Band was a wonderful spiritual experience. She has an extraordinary voice that lifts the soul and gets the listener in touch with their inner spiritual self. I found the experience calming and enriching, and we’re considering bringing her back for another program later this year.”
-- Andrew J. Lipman, MSW
Executive Director
Jewish Federation of Greater Albuquerque
"Hearing Miriam sing is a deep spiritual experience, like attending a religious service. The wisdom from the tradition that she shares before each song, setting it into historical context and meaning, brings magic to the song, and her awesome voice carries the same message."
-- Robert A. Levin, Philanthropist and Former
Interim President of Antioch University
“Turns the sore into the soaring; thank God for heavenly voices.”
-- Marc Gafni, Author of Soul Prints
”[Miriam’s CD is] a refreshing change from the pile of overproduced stuff that crosses this desk. This is a very pleasing album; I’m not qualified to comment on whether it has medicinal value, but the musical worth is indisputable.”
-- Five-Star Review by George Robinson in the Jewish Week (November 21, 2002)
“With our world in such dire need of healing and embracing, Miriam Maron Emhoff’s haunting voice offers vibrational and energetic healing to all who hear it.”
-- Palisades 97202 (November 2001)
“I have been listening to your glorious new CD, "Surrender", transporting me to deep places!! Itís wonderful! ”
-- Roberta Wall, Esq.
Accord, New York
“The Surrender
CD takes me right to the source because I'm compelled to chant the mantras
along with the CD, and your voice has good devotional heart-based emotion
that inspires the soul. The mantras on the Surrender CD are nice,
powerful and ancient. The mantras on the Mystic Convergence CD
are also good. The Mystic Convergence CD is kind of esoteric
in the sense that it is mysterious in your choice of mantras including
the Vowel points which I really liked and the layered Hebrew/Aramaic mantras
with the Sanskrit mantras. I think the convergence section of the CD is
really powerful and multi-dimensional and it takes me deep. Both CDs are
high quality and spiritually elevating. I consider these CD's as my gateway
into the Jewish mystical tradition. I felt it had a lot of soul and healing
energy to it. ”
-- Justin Mindes
Santa Monica, California
“You are an amazing wise woman -- brilliant, beautiful and kind. Your great gift of heart and soul is gifted in such a melodious fashion. Hashem has blessed you, and you share this great gift for all of us who listen with the ear of our heart! May G-d hold your Neshamah (soul) ever so gently as you hold everyone's with your gentle, loving music that goes into the hearts of all who hear it. Thank you so much.”
-- Dorry Korn
Toronto, Canada
“I listen
to your music every day. It brings me straight into my heart.”
-- Jacke Schroeder
Portland, Oregon
Article co-written by Ravi Miriam Maron that appeared in Ask the Rabbis,
a monthly column in Moment Magazine (February 2007 issue, page 27)
The Question: "What Healing Alternatives to Modern Medicine Does Judaism Offer?"
Judaism, like many aboriginal cultures, has a rich Shamanic tradition around healing. Healing is more about restoring to someone that which they have lost, than it is about fixing what has gone wrong. The second-century Rabbi Akiva traced the Torah’s injunction around healing to its injunction around restoring to someone what has been lost to them (Deuteronomy 22:1-2). When we are ill, we lose some piece of our life flow, some part of our passion and commitment to being here, and that is what needs to be restored (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kama 82b and Sanhedrin 73a).
In many cases, we get too entangled in the ailment that conventional attempts at restoration are frustrated. We would then employ a sh’ofar, believed to wield the power of shattering resistance (Likutei HaMaHaRaN 22:5-7). The sho’far is also used as a conduit for empowering the incense of medicinal plants and herbs (Midrash Te’hilim 22:14). Such rites are intended to stir us out of whatever stupor might be keeping us tangled in our crisis, and then to empower us with a fresh sense of life-commitment. The less the life-commitment, the less the soul manifests in the body, and the more vulnerable the body then becomes to death, toward which illness is believed to be a momentum (Likutei HaMaHaRaN, No. 268).
The most potent remedies are to be found in the earth, whether in plants or in stones (Likutei HaMaHaRaN, No. 277, para. 2, and Tanina 1:9). Plants wield great wisdom and powers that are imbued with divine energies (Zohar, Vol. 2, folio 80b). Stones, too, wield important healing powers. The Talmud recounts that “a stone hung from the neck of Abraham our Father, and all who gazed upon it were healed” (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bat’ra 16b). A large portion of Shamanic healing rites were preserved thro ugh the teachings of a highly regarded Jewish medicine woman we know as Eyma D'Abbaya (Babylonian Talmud, Shabat 66b and 134a; Yoma 75a; Mo'ed Katan 12a; Eruvin 29b; Ketuvot 10b and 50a; Gitin 67b and 70a). Much of these alternative healing rites involve mantric chanting and incantations (Sefer S’gulat Yisra’el; Tol’do’t Ha’Adam; Ma’aseh Ro’ke’ach, Sefer Rozi’el HaMal’ach, etc. etc. etc.). Some involve rituals with fire and dance (K’nesset Yisro’el 12a). Drumming, too, is a powerful implement for channeling the divine flux for healing and other sacred purposes (Maimonides: Mishnah Torah, Hil’chot Yesodei HaTorah 7:4). The wide variety of healing modalities in Judaism also include more conventional down-to-earth remedies such as a good night's sleep (Midrash Pirkei D'rebbe Eliezer, Ch. 12) and sexual intercourse (18th-century Rabbi Yaakov of Emden in Mor Uk'tsiyah, No. 240). Faith and prayer, too, are important medicines. With faith, taught the 18th-century Rebbe Nachmon of Breslav, you can heal with anything – “even bread and water” -- since faith reminds us that all is rooted in the Singular Power behind all powers (Likutei HaMaHaRaN Tanina 1: 9).
The most fundamental remedy for illness, however, is joy. In Hebrew, both “affliction” and “dance” share the same word: ma’cho’l. "When there is a defect in one's quality of joy,” taught Rebbe Nachmon of Breslav, “it leads to illness...and it is through rejoicing that all illnesses are cured... This is why dancing and rejoicing are called [by the same name as] illness" (Likutei HaMaHaRaN Tanina 24:1).
Ravi Miriam Maron, R.N., M.A.
and Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Walking Stick Foundation