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Put your hands on the remote! browse music »Love Comes Quietly by Leni Stern
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fave it World Fusion | with Live-band Production
13 tracks | 58 minutes
Released Apr 2006
on Leni Stern Recordings
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- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:01 Cheyenne lyrics FREE 05:01 Cheyenne lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:01 Cheyenne
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:01 Have Faith in Me lyrics BUY MP3 04:01 Have Faith in Me lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:01 Have Faith in Me
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:13 Beauty Queen lyrics BUY MP3 04:13 Beauty Queen lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:13 Beauty Queen
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:04 Love Comes Quietly lyrics BUY MP3 04:04 Love Comes Quietly lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:04 Love Comes Quietly
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 05:01 Inshaallah lyrics BUY MP3 05:01 Inshaallah lyrics "GIFT MP3" 05:01 Inshaallah
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:52 Reseke Bare Tore Nain lyrics BUY MP3 03:52 Reseke Bare Tore Nain lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:52 Reseke Bare Tore Nain
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 06:16 10,000 Butterflies lyrics BUY MP3 06:16 10,000 Butterflies lyrics "GIFT MP3" 06:16 10,000 Butterflies
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:30 Indigo lyrics BUY MP3 03:30 Indigo lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:30 Indigo
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 06:29 The Road to Hell lyrics BUY MP3 06:29 The Road to Hell lyrics "GIFT MP3" 06:29 The Road to Hell
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:50 Angelina lyrics BUY MP3 04:50 Angelina lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:50 Angelina
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:30 Sahara lyrics BUY MP3 02:30 Sahara lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:30 Sahara
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:47 Watch Over Me lyrics BUY MP3 04:47 Watch Over Me lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:47 Watch Over Me
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:24 Carolina lyrics BUY MP3 04:24 Carolina lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:24 Carolina
Down-to-date guitarist/singer/songwriter with a serious groove.
Editorial review
Love Comes Quietly, issued on Leni Stern's own LSR imprint -- thank God she was smart and got off the label-chasing bandwagon years ago to do exactly what she wanted to do -- is her 15th album proper. The debate has simmered down about her choice to sing and write songs outside the genre, and whether or not she can actually sing. How pitiful. Stern is an artist. Pure and simple. Love Comes Quietly is a collection of very poetic songs about tenderness. It is gentle, open, and therefore vulnerable. Think about it: tenderness. There are four instrumentals here, out of 13 tracks. She collaborates with musicians such as bassist James Genus, drummer Keith Carlock, slide guitarist Stephen Bruton (associated with everyone from Bonnie Raitt to the two Bobs, Dylan and Neuwirth), Alejandro Escovedo, violinist Ernesto Villa Lobos, and many others. Stern thanks the late poet Robert Creeley in her acknowledgements; Creeley is a pointer for these songs. His poetry was cut to the bone, it dissected the marrow of subject, emotion, and impulse and wove that essence into something charged with a quiet, insistent energy that was a kind of ethereal force. You entered his world if you encountered his words at all. These songs do the same. For the most part, they are stripped-down, skeletal almost, translucent. Production is far from studio-perfect-standard. These songs have energy, a roughewn grace, and above all, they are emotion itself. There isn't an insincere moment here. Stern opens the record with "Cheyenne," an acoustic ballad rooted in the English-cum-Appalachian folk tradition. She extrapolates it to include her own muted electric guitar solo, Villa Lobos violin, and the bansuri flute of Steve Gorn in the margins. Simply put, "Have Faith in Me" is among the more beautiful love songs to be recorded in a few years. Walking the line between Joni Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones, Stern colors the tune with impressionstic tones using her Rhodes guitar, a violin, and backing vocals. It resonates and floats all at the same time, its lyric cutting away metaphor to reach inside. She gets into the rocking blues groove on "Beauty Queen," and moves back and forth through jazz and folk in the title track, with Gorn's flute adding depth and dimension to the body of the tune. "Inshallah" is the album's strangest track in that it melds Middle Eastern mode and Gypsy-Spanish melodies. It is Villa Lobos' violin that is the force driving the cut. It's a story-song, different from anything else here. You'll either love it or hate it. Then there's her reading of the traditional Indian ballad "Rseke Bare Tore Nain," which she first heard on the soundtrack to Monsoon Wedding. The back to back cuts "The Road to Hell" and "Angelina" are beautifully crafted, adult alternative, jazzy pop with a funky backbone, though the lyrics are poignant in both tunes. The disc ends with "Carolina," an instrumental that melds, again, North African drone with traditional blues and folk elements to create a way of moving toward silence. The violin of Villa Lobos offers the balance to the bansuri and creates two different emotions simultaneously: sadness at leaving, and the quiet, nostalgic feeling of returning home. Even in her instrumentals, Stern offers a sense of humble yet mysterious adventure to the listener. Love Comes Quietly is the most poetic and realized of Stern's recordings. This would be a fine place to introduce yourself to a musician of uncommon caliber and vision. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Bio / Background
Acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitarist Leni Stern has completed her most intense and revealing collection of songs to-date. With the May 2nd release of "Love Comes Quietly," Stern showcases her uncanny ability to paint extraordinary images amid familiar and exotic backdrops alike. The album opens with 'Cheyenne', a rumination on Native American culture, and the destruction and disrepair embodied by the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Stern sings to an apparition, "all I'd ask for is water, send us water..." amid the haunting violins of Ernesto Villa-Lobos.
On 'Inshaallah', arguably the album's centerpiece, Brahim Fribgane's Oud performance augments Stern's richly layered song, written about and for the people of the desert in Essakane, Africa. Stern recently performed at Mali's Festival in the Desert, and a photo journal of her experiences is to appear in the May issue of Guitar Player Magazine.
On 'Have Faith In Me', Stern talks of "walking the line between reason and insanity.
↓ more ↓" With backing vocals by Audrey Martell and a guitar solo by Stern, this new track is one of many which highlight Stern's evolution as a songwriter and guitarist.
The 13-song CD draws upon influences as far-ranging as Africa and India, and its combination of instrumental and vocal tracks reveal Stern's growing World Music influences. On "Reseke Bare Tore Nain", for example, she features the haunting vocals of Dhanashree Pandit Rai. Much of the album was recorded on vintage analog equipment at Matt Wells' Studio in New York, giving the songs a thick, dense quality (eerily absent on much of today's all-digital music.) Stern's rock and blues guitar solos permeate throughout, providing a soulful, assertive backdrop to her fascinating lyrics. The songs feature the contributions of a community of brilliant musicians. In addition to Stern's current working band of James Genus, bass (SNL, Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane,) Keith Carlock, drums (Sting, Steely Dan,) and Etienne Stadwijk, keyboards (Richard Bona, Nona Hendrix, Morley Kamen), the album features the artistry of vocalists Keith Fluitt, Audrey Martell, Cariad Harmon, Morley Kamen and Nhumi Threadgill; Flugelhorn: Michael Leonhart; Keyboards: Tom Canning; Drums: Brannen Temple; Sax: George Brooks; Slide Guitar: Stephen Bruton; Keyboards: Tom Canning; Bass: Paul Socolow; Percussion: Adam Rudolph; Bansuri Flute & Soprano Sax: Steve Gorn, and more.
"Love Comes Quietly" follows Stern's breakthrough CD, "When Evening Falls". National, regional, jazz and rock writers alike weighed in on the 2004 album and rewarded it with the best reviews of Stern's 19-year music career. THE WASHINGTON POST described it as "Inspired" and infused "With a Surprising Array of Colors, Textures and Rhythms". "Graceful," praised the BOSTON PHOENIX. JAZZTIMES called it "Exotic and Solemnly Beautiful." "Joni Mitchell-Meets-Marianne Faithfull,” buzzed THE ALBANY TIMES UNION. A “Fleet and Lyrical guitarist”, praised THE NEW YORKER. “Rickie Lee Jones-like...”; “A Gifted Singer-Songwriter with a Wide-Ranging Sensibility and Sophisticated Guitar and Harmonic Chops” buzzed THE BOSTON GLOBE; “A Mature and Worldly Composer” “Leading the Charge in…the New 'Folk Jazz'" declared THE BOSTON HERALD.
Stern, an accomplished Blues and Jazz guitarist, was chosen as Gibson's Female Guitarist of the Year five consecutive times. She was included, among such Stratocaster icons as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, in Tom Wheeler's The Stratocaster Chronicles, a coffee-table book released by Fender.
↑ less ↑Average Customer Review: 5
Love comes quietly reviewruchthuk wrote on June 03, 2008
excellent album. inshahallah is the best of all.













