The Land of Nod

Shakuhachi player Bruce Huebner and harpist Kaoru Arai-Colucci are "The Land of Nod", a new duo inspired by a poem of the same title by Robert Louis Stevenson from his book "A Child's Garden of Verses." For their debut album Huebner and Arai-Colucci choose lullaby and lullaby-like songs to invite us on a trip to a musical Land of Nod where we can enjoy a reverie of nostalgia for childhood fantasies, the pleasures of deep sleep, sweet dreams, and scenes from a garden of musical poems like that evoked by Stevenson's collection. While the Japanese shakuhachi and the Western grand harp may seem to be an unlikely match, Huebner's love of the expressivity of breath through the bamboo flute, and Arai-Colucci's love of transparent harmonies enunciated by her fingers on open strings of the harp help us understand what brought the two musicians to explore the possibilities of this unique instrumentation.
Many songs on the album were also inspired by the nature and landscape of the Tohoku region in Japan. Bruce has spent decades in Tohoku, living and touring extensively in Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita and Iwate. After 3.11, Bruce played over 80 concerts to help with the rebuilding of the areas affected by the great tsunami and earthquake.---------------

THE LAND OF NOD/

From breakfast on through all the day/
At home among my friends I stay,/
But every night I go abroad/
Afar into the Land of Nod./

All by myself I have to go,/
With none to tell me what to do/
All alone beside the streams/
And up the mountain-sides of dreams./

The strangest things are there for me,/
Both things to eat and things to see,/
And many frightening sights abroad/
Till morning in the Land of Nod./

Try as I like to find the way,/
I never can get back by day,/
Nor can remember plain and clear/
The curious music that I hear./

From "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885) by Robert Louis Stevenson ---------