Album Review: Evensong by Kevin Keller

Review by Candice Michelle

New York-based composer Kevin Keller continues to dazzle and amaze with his ever-evolving yet uniquely signature style of award-winning music that combines ambient and electronica with cinematic and classical styles. Comprised of eight enchantingly beautiful pieces all named (and numbered 1-8) after the album’s title, Evensong, Keller’s latest masterpiece is no exception in his nearly three-decade recording career. What makes Evensong especially remarkable among this prolific artist’s repertoire is Keller’s thematic inspiration for this album – the transcendent and timeless music of Hildegard of Bingen. Born circa 1908, Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, herbalist, mystic, and philosopher whose divine musical works and writings have inspired countless artists, composers and creative thinkers across centuries.

On Evensong, Keller enlists four soprano singers (Danya Katok, Elisa Singer Strom, Katherine Wessinger, and Wendy Baker) who provide mesmerizing chants composed by Bingen on tracks 1, 3, 4, and 7 in addition to ethereal vocal textures throughout the album. Classical strings by Sarah Zun (violin), Angela Pickett (viola) and Laura Metcalf (cello) are also woven into Keller’s ambient neoclassical soundscapes, which seemingly transcend place and time with their flawless fusion of medieval and modern musical motifs. Illuminated by floating, shimmering and lightly pulsating electronic sequences that are variably accented by stringed instruments, bell tones, and encircling pipe organ figures throughout, the album’s haunting yet heavenly atmospheres evoke sacred and cosmic imagery, like that of a vaulted cathedral ceiling opening to reveal the majestic milky way.

Joining the ranks among other top-notch Bingen-inspired ambient/neoclassical albums like Vision by Richard Souther and Lux Vivens by Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch, Kevin Keller’s Evensong is one of the most magnificent albums I’ve heard in recent years and an absolute must-have for fans of this genre!  

~Candice Michelle for Journeyscapes 

For more information please visit the artist's website. Evensong is also available at Bandcamp and more!

Album Review: The Front Porch of Heaven by Kevin Keller

Kevin Keller is an award-winning pianist and electronic music composer who has released numerous albums over the years. Having composed music for film and television, Kevin’s work has been featured in documentaries for the History Channel and received airplay on nationally syndicated radio programs. With musical roots inspired by innovative musical legends like Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, Brian Eno and Harold Budd, Kevin’s own work is often described as ambient chamber music that blends minimalist classical and ambient-electronic styles.

Inspired by the existential and often-asked question, “When we die, where do we go?”, Kevin Keller’s latest album, The Front Porch of Heaven, came to fruition after he underwent open heart surgery. Having the foreknowledge that he’d be close to death – unconscious and without a heartbeat while placed on life support – Kevin returned from the edge of the unknown with the inspiration to compose what is easily his most beautiful set of compositions to date.

Comprised of six instrumental passages spanning just under forty minutes, The Front Porch of Heaven boasts hauntingly affecting soundscapes featuring melodic ambient sequencing, sparse piano notes, shoegaze electric guitar and subtly cinematic strings throughout. Right from the opening piece, we’re gently led through what feels like an endless mirrored corridor, wherein beautiful dreams and sacred memories are projected everywhere by surrounding incandescent light. Warm, organic and flowing, the pieces are mostly propelled along by gently pulsating rhythms, all while evoking feelings throughout of longing, nostalgia and subtle emotional tension.

As a near-death survivor myself, The Front Porch of Heaven not only explores a subject close to home that I can personally relate to, but does so with inexplicably beautiful perfection. While I highly enjoyed Kevin Keller’s previous two albums, Ice Worlds and La Strada, this album goes even deeper emotionally and gets to the heart – both figuratively and literally – of the composer behind the sonic splendor.

Enthusiastically recommended to fans of artists like Tangerine Dream, Patrick O’Hearn, Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie, The Front Porch of Heaven is a beautifully brilliant work that lingers on long after the journey has ended! ~Candice Michelle

Available at Amazon, Bandcamp & iTunes. For more information, please visit the artist's website.