What happens when there is total freedom--no restraints, no rules, no expectations, no clock to watch, no one standing over your shoulder saying, "Do it this way." What happens? Something rare. Something beautiful and childlike. Something wonderfully expressive and true. Cindy Morgan's fourth solo project, Listen, reveals a fresh artistic freedom--a return to pure passion at the piano, a step above and beyond her highly acclaimed 1995 project Under the Waterfall.
The gatekeeper this time is producer Brent Bourgeois who, along with co-producer/engineer Craig Hansen, encouraged Morgan to simply, "do what you want." The result is a delightful surprise package of powerful, playful and poignant songs. You get a little Broadway, a touch of jazz, hints of ragtime, and inventively modern pop all riding on the clean, crisp keyboard artistry of the one who penned it all to begin with.
Arranger/composer Tom Howard's nothing-short-of incredible orchestrations provide a needed depth and color without encroaching upon the purity of one woman at the piano, singing her heart for God. In Listen, we find a rare, organic, living thing.
The album opens with "Carry Me," a confidant piano-driven testament to the power of grace to deliver us daily, cushioning our fall ("If we fall/We will land 'cause His grace is a feather bed/When we're touched by the Master's hand"). This cut segues into "God is Love," which speaks to the futility and emptiness of life apart from God. "Need" and "Jamie" continue to address real life struggles in powerfully unique ways.
"They Say It's Love" is Morgan like you've never heard her, complete with banjo and horns that hearken back to Glenn Miller. (Craig Hansen's sound wizardry on this cut demands you listen at least twice, without interruption.)
The title cut is Morgan's gift to her father, a one-time aspiring songwriter who gave up his dream to be a husband and father. She has taken her father's lyric and given it a jazzy facelift as a way to thank him for the sacrifices he made.
Whenever I think of Cindy Morgan, even to this day, I think of her Dove Award-winning video "I Will Be Free." You know, the beautiful, stoic cliffs of stone, field of green, the little girl playing with the plane, the doorway to eternity. The sheer joy in anticipating a future with God was so poignantly communicated through those images-images of freedom always captivate us. So does the sound of freedom. Listen will captivate you, too. -- Melissa Riddle (c) 1996 CCM Communications, Inc.
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