A few days ago I was looking for a CD to play while I was doing some not-very-demanding software work--something more or less in the ambient vein, not too insistent on attention. I noticed this one, which I hadn't heard for quite some time, put it on, and very quickly wondered why I even had it. The first couple of tracks are a sort of slick rock-jazz-new-age-world-music hybrid and I started thinking that I should get rid of it. Toward the end it got better, and finally with this track I remembered why I had bought it in the first place.

The album is called Bridge, and it's by Øystein Sevåg. The jacket describes it as a "fusion of jazz, ambient, and world music elements with a classical dimension." It was released in 1997 on the Hearts of Space label, and I remember now that I bought it specifically because I had heard this track on the Hearts of Space radio show, which I used to tape faithfully every Sunday night (remember tape?). I recall even leaving my wife and/or children instructions about how to do it once when I was going to be out of town.

Much of the album is not to my taste and I wouldn't recommend it as a whole, but there are several tracks almost as good as this one, also featuring the violinist, who is the composer's wife, Maria Sevåg.