Piano Improvisations On Lullabies and Other Love Songs

Sleep Like a Baby is a new Colors in Motion “Touchstone“ - a half hour video combining images from fine art, floating in a wash of piano improvisations. It’s a peaceful experience, I think, and you can access it free any time you need one of those!

Sleep Like a Baby is also an hour-long album of lullabies and other love songs, and you can listen to parts of it – or buy  it – by clicking on the album cover on this page.

The Touchstone is part of a library of video experiences of music combined with fine art – and sometimes dance, sometimes poetry, sometimes clowning. It is the brainchild of visual artist Linda DeHart and computer graphics artist Christopher Graefe, who started a little company called Colors in Motion to change people’s moods in public – and also private – spaces.

You’ve seen those huge screens in corporations, hospitals, airports, on billboards – and they usually have some form of advertising on them. But what if, instead of that, you walked by one of them, and it was filled with gently shifting colors, and the quiet vibrations of music? Or if, in your hospital room, you could choose to relax into that kind of peaceful energy?

The Touchstone visuals are created from the water color abstracts of Linda DeHart and the computer graphics of Christopher Graefe. I discovered a few years ago, via NPR, that I had a condition called “synethesia.”  (You mean that not everyone sees particular colors that correlate to music and tones and numbers?) It has been lovely to see what Linda and Christopher have created, combining “their colors” with my music. The Touchstone takes those colors out of the mind’s eye and places them on a screen that can be shared with you, and everyone.

The idea for an album of “lullabies and other love songs” came to me in 2010, when I began working extensively with babies and mothers in my healing practice. The album – and the Touchstone – begin with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” because that seemed to be the one song every mother knew – and if they felt safe singing only one song, that was usually the one. I went on from there, looking for familiar tunes that create feelings of being held and nurtured – and improvising new ones as they arrived.

 Sleep Like a Baby came to life on one July day in 2012 in an old church in Jaffrey New Hampshire. My own mother was ill at that time, and I didn’t know whether I would see her again – so on the piano, I put pictures of her as a grandmother with my son, and as a young mother with me. I played the music to my mother, to myself as a mother, to every mother in the world and all of their children. The entire album was recorded in one day, because that is all the time we had.

As it turned out, my mom got better, and still loves to play the album. Honestly, I do too – I’ll put it on when I need some peace.

The Return of Desire: Improvisations
David Darling, cello & Eve Kodiak, piano

Reflections on Christmas, Chanukah, & the Solstice Season: Improvisatory piano solos by Eve Kodiak
This interfaith, multicultural CD evokes the spirit of the holidays.