David Darling
// cellist & composerDAVID DARLING is a Grammy-nominated cellist and composer from Goshen, Connecticut. “Epigraphs” (2000), with Ketil Bjørnstad, “96 Years” (2000), with Patrick Leonard, “Musical Massage – Balance” (2000), with the Adagio Ensemble, “Musical Massage – In Tune” (2001), with the Adagio Ensemble and John Marshall, “Cello Blue” (2001), “River Notes” (2002), with Barry Lopez, “Refuge” (2002), with Terry Tempest Williams, “The Tao Of Cello” (2003), “Open Window” (2003), with John Marshall, “The Darling Conversations, Volume 1 [3CD]” (2007), with Julie Weber, “Tao Of Poetry” (2008), with Chungliang Al Huang, and “The Return Of Desire: Improvisations” (2008), with Eve Kodiak, are all available from DavidDarling.com. David Darling is also co-founder of Music For People, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to promote music-making as a means of self-expression through improvisation workshops.
Websites: www.daviddarling.com, www.darlingconversations.com, and www.musicforpeople.org
Photo: David Darling / DavidDarling.com
Interview:
I believe that the spiritual significance of music is an intelligence, and consciousness that we are all given by our life. Babies in the womb respond to music and as our ears are emptied of the water; music begins their profound influence on our life. Music is the highest spiritual entity that I know about in my life. Music transforms our daily life moment by moment. We walk, run, dance, sing, chant, whistle, hum, and groove to music our entire life. We are moved to tears by music and, of course, music is the key element in all rituals of the human experience. We are born into musical sound, and we pass to the next dimension with music as our friend and guide.
One of the sadness things I feel about modern civilization is that the birth right to be musical has been taken away from many humans who have suffered from very narrow minded and uninformed teachers of music, as well as society in general, when there is criticism of any human failing to sing or groove to some artificial standard. What we know about music is that it comes to each individual in a personal way, and when our outpouring of singing or grooving is approved of and encouraged, great things happen for each individual. All of us succeed when we are surrounded by love rather than negative action.
“We are born into musical sound, and we pass to the next dimension with music as our friend and guide.”
– David Darling, cellist and composer
