Rites of Passage (2005)  
 
Playlist
    
1

Those Eyes
7
 Rite of Passage
2
 Vagrant Spirit
8
 The Spell
3
 Camino Reál
9
 Hiventä Ennen Unen Tuloa
4
 Tomorrow
10
 Narcissus
5
 Prelude to a Desert Song
11
 Playa Ventura
6
 Desert Song/Belly of the Whale
12
 Hunger

From inside the cover:

My grandfather wrote the poem, Hiventä Ennen Unen Tuloa, shortly before his death in 1938, at age 38. We recorded the church bells at the end of the song during the last night of mixing this record. The bells, which rang every half hour or so all evening, and the marching band and firecrackers that I had witnessed earlier that day in the central plaza of Tepoztlán, were all in celebration of the life of an old woman who had just died. You could find her smiling eyes every day at the market, where she made tortillas. Tomorrow is tomorrow, and the tortilla woman is already there.

¡With blessings! Jarmo

Carlos Walraven is one of Mexico’s most respected sound engineers, and has recorded or co-produced more than sixty albums. He is the sound man for Mexico’s number one rock band, Jaguares, who regularly headline in major venues in Mexico and the United States (e.g., in 2005, House of Blues in Chicago, Pantages Theater in L.A.). Carlos’s recording projects have ranged from blues (Mexico’s top blues band, Reál de Catorce) to jazz to medieval classical music. He is also the drummer with the progressive rock band, Consumatum (Sony Music).

Jimi Doney grew up in Seattle, Washington, and has been a full-time jazz and world-music percussionist in the United States and Mexico for over thirty years. He holds an M.F.A. from the School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). For the past decade, Jimi has lived in central Mexico, where he can be found performing jazz, blues, Hindustani and African percussion, and producing and recording a variety of Latin American artists. With his jazz ensemble he has toured in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Islands, Panama, Seattle and Alaska. One of Jimi’s current projects is Tibwa, a sizzling, infectiously-danceable Afro-Cuban drumming quartet.

Laura Alysia grew up in a small town in Nebraska and has been playing cello since she was nine years old. She also sings, plays viola da gamba, banjo and ukulele, and has performed with various jazz, classical, folk and a capella groups in the United States. An accomplished singer-songwriter with an angelic soprano voice, Laura moved from Tepoztlan to Nashville.

Alison Wearing grew up in a home textured with music. After brief studies and many travels, she returned to her hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, where she sang with the Peterborough Singers choir, directed by Sydney Birrell. She now lives in Tepoztlan, Mexico, where she improvises in music, dance, literature, living room theatre and everyday life. Alison is author of the best-selling travel memoir, Honeymoon in Purdah, as well as a number of award-winning shorter non-fiction and fiction works.

Jarmo Jalava was born to Finnish parents in Toronto, Canada. In 2001 Jarmo completed his debut cd, Hole in the Sky, with the support of Peterborough, Ontario, music icons Curtis Driedger, J.P. Hovercraft, James McKenty and others. This led to invitations to perform in the Festival of Lights in Peterborough, the Finnish – Canadian Grand Festival in Calgary, the Tapsan Tahdit Music Festival in Tampere, Finland, and the Parque Nacional Desierto de Los Leones concert series in Mexico City. Jarmo’s second album, Rites of Passage, was recorded spring 2005 in Tepoztlan, Mexico, where he lives for part of the year with Alison Wearing, their son, Noah. Their Canadian home is an isolated tent on the shore of Manitoulin Island, Lake Huron.

Javier Carasusan is Mexico’s master of the Mongolian harmonic chant, which he teaches along with yoga at workshops throughout the country. Javier is also a fixture in the jazz music scene in the Tepoztlan area, where he performs regularly on trumpet and keyboards. Javier has lived in Mexico since emigrating twenty years ago from Basque country in northern Spain.

Juan Cristóbal Pérez Grobet is a full-time musician based in Mexico City. Juan was the bassist with Mexico’s premier blues band, Real de Catorce, in the 1990s, and today works on a broad range of projects, from award-winning movie soundtracks (e.g., Ladies Night Disney 2003) to jazz and commercial recordings.

Eve Rose studied opera in Vermont for fifteen years and improvises in many different vocal styles. She is a visual artist and dancer, as well as a plant spirit medicine practitioner at the Blue Deer Centre in Margaretville, New York. She currently divides her time between Tepoztlan, Mexico and The Catskills, New York.

Magi Díaz del Castillo was born in Mexico City where at age six she began music studies at the National Conservatory of Music. She later studied at Mexico’s National School of Music (composition), at the Conservatory of Music in Shanghai, China (Gu-Qin and transverse flute), and at the Ali Akbar College of Music in California (sitar and Hindustani singing). She has contributed to a great diversity of musical projects of varied genres, from progressive and alternative rock to reggae, jazz fusion and world music. She has recently performed or done sessions with Jarris Margalli, Moksha-cuarteto, Danza Dharma, Las Mentirosas and Asiima Mystic Lounge, among others.

Noah Wearing Jalava began playing the harmonica at the age of eighteen months. His musical influences include Laura Love, Mike Stevens, Bandula and Ella Fitzgerald. Prior to the recording of Rites of Passage, he sang the roles of Mr. Bumble and The Artful Dodger in the Tonatico musical production of Oliver! He is part of the Comunidad Educativa Xinemi in Tepoztlan, Mexico, where he attends kindergarten. Later in life, he intends to be an astronaut, and the first human on Mars.