Awakened Heart by Saggio & Barbara Ruth

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Saggio walked away from his former career as a high school English teacher to devote full time to performing and recording. He has appeared at Borders Books & Music, The Thunderbird Balloon Classic, Scottsdale Fiesta Bowl Art Walk, Mesa Arts Center, Chandler Center for the Arts, the West Valley Art Museum, and the University of San Diego. Currently, he and his wife, Barbara Ruth, are conducting Sacred Sound Healing Meditations with crystal singing bowls and native flutes at their dome home in Apache Junction, Arizona.

His debut album, "The Thunder of Silence," is a magical blend of plaintive, haunting flute improvisations, accented with the grace and elegance of Riki Newell's classical guitar.

Saggio's second CD, "When Daydreams Whisper," is a collaboration with Mike Gulino, a celebration of flute and guitar, offering a wide range of richly orchestrated, romantic, contemporary melodies.

A third album, "Courting the Heart of the World," consisting of one-take improvisations with pianist Alex Grant, returns to the trance music of his first album and for the first time identifies this gifted flute player as a healing artist who sees himself as a flute pray-er offering musical sacraments to a spiritually hungry planet.

His fourth CD, "Awakened Heart," is a harmonic unification of the haunting sounds of native flute with the vibrational radiance of crystal singing bowls. Saggio's wife, Barbara Ruth, is on the crystal bowls, and Boyd Sibley is on keyboard. This album is offered as a chakra balancing body of music and lends itself very well to meditation and body work.

Saggio's newest album, "Hollow Bone," springs from the spiritual pathway of Fools Crow, a holy man of the Teton Sioux who when asked by his people how he could perform such miracles of healing, answered, "I make myself a hollow bone." This CD features many native flutes, the hang drum, tongue drum, udu drum, angel wing freenote, kalimba, zither-harp, baritone dulcimer, jews harps of the world, crystal singing bowls and Boyd Sibley on the keyboard.

Over the years this healing artist has struck up friendships and acquired flutes from some of the most gifted flutemakers across the country. His collection includes a wide variety of Native American style wood flutes in cedar, walnut, spruce, mahogony, cherry, maple, mesquite, bamboo, rivercane, and kwila.

This self-taught artist describes his music as "...an ideal accompaniment for wellness programs, bodywork, and journeys within."

But it's even more. It's an inspiring, healing, triumphant sound painting with which to journey into the new millennium.

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