AL CONTI- Ambient, new age music

On September 9, 2007, Shadowside Music released Al Conti’s second album, POETA.
While Al's debut album 'Shadows' took us on a journey searching within one's own deepest self, POETA invites the listener on a different journey, exploring a landscape of emotions woven by the poetry of music through eleven magical tracks.
Travel through musical valleys and peaks to discover Orpheus and his unrelenting quest to retrieve his lost love in the haunting opening track 'Quest for Orpheus.' Dream along with the tales of Homer's 'Iliad.' Find yourself wishing for 'Evangeline,' the young Victorian maiden, to find true love as she sits by the sea, day after day with her book of poems. And then find that true love in the movement of 'Danzante' and the power of 'Abstract Desire.' Feel the quill of 'Poeta' inspire the world through a tapestry of enchantment. And, as every book must end, feel yourself transported with the final rendering 'Epilogos' and its timeless prayer.
From the first note to the last, Al Conti's album features ethnic instruments such as the hurdy gurdy, udu, sitar and tablas as well as classical violins and cellos, haunting ambient vocals and beautiful guitar solos. Listeners who loved Al's debut CD are eagerly awaiting his second release and reviewers have praised Al's work as "individual," "intricate," and expressing a "lovely humanity and positive spirit."
The concept of poetry in music came to Al unexpectedly, inspired by Spain's late poet Ramón Sampedro, who lived as a quadriplegic and fought for the right to end his own life. During his life he wrote using only his mouth and a pencil attached to a stick. Al's reaction to the poet's journey was intense: "Ramón's words touched me so much that they catapulted what has now become an entire work on its own. It has always amazed me how music has its own poetry and I want to express that in my work."