This once in a lifetime event gathered musicians from wildly different backgrounds in a benefit for Richard Gere's Healing The Divide Foundation. Recorded live at Lincoln Center in NY, this CD features transcendental performances from Tibet's Gyuto Choir, India's Anoushka Shankar, genre-bending duets from Tibetan avant-garde musician Nawang Kechong with Native American master R. Carlos Nakai, and maverick composer Philip Glass with Gambian virtuoso Foday Musa Suso. The concert closer is a unique collaboration between musicians who personify the spirit of adventure in contemporary music, as Tom Waits performs four of his classic songs accompanied by Grammy winners the Kronos Quartet. Add a moving opening address by the Dalai Lama and you have the perfect musical embodiment of the Foundation's mission: to bridge cultural gaps and forge revolutionary new bonds between people around the world. Proceeds from sales will be directly applied to projects benefiting the peoples of Tibet and the Himalayan region.
Recorded Live - The Lincoln Center 9-21-2003
Review by Thom Jurek
Healing the Divide is a non-profit foundation founded by actor, humanitarian, and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner Richard Gere. The foundation, according to the liner notes, is "...dedicated to collaborative solutions to humanitarian crises that threaten the development and welfare of marginalized communities throughout the world." Fair enough. In the case of this CD, proceeds are dedicated to providing health insurance for Tibetan nuns and monks living in exile. The concert was held at Avery Fisher Hall in 2003. Performers on this disc include the Gyuto Tantric Choir from the from oldest monastery in Tibet (now exiled in India) since the Chinese occupation, Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi, playing Indian classical music, Nawang Ketchog (a former Tibetan Monk) in collaboration with Native American historian, teacher, and traditional musician R. Carlos Nakai; Philip Glass with Foday Musa Suso, reprising their great partnership from the last century; and Tom Waits with bassist Greg Cohen and the Kronos Quartet. After some introductory remarks by Gere and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, each performer gets a single selection, which provides an interesting array of world music. But the real treat is Waits with his collaborators, who perform four selections over nearly 18 minutes, including "Way Down in the Hole," "God's Away on Business," "Lost in the Harbor," and the album's true treasure, a saloon song called "Diamond in Your Mind." The rest of the music here is nothing short of compelling and interesting. The Waits set walks the line between Brechtian theater, beatnik vulgarity, and the twisted humor of Lenny Bruce and creepy glee of Rod Serling. The textures added by Cohen and the Kronos add so much and bring Waits back to true basics sonically. His requisite jokes -- which really are hilarious -- pepper the introduction to each song. The cause is a good one, and the Waits' tunes make it worth the purchase to be sure, but there's another possible benefit besides good karma: being able to discover in a unique context music by the other artists here who may intrigue you enough to seek out more lengthy efforts by each of them.
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