New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Gearing up for the highly-anticipated May 2017 release of FLOW - the self-titled debut album from a super group featuring the legendary guitarist Will Ackerman and award-winning Flugelhorn player Jeff Oster - new age music veterans Fiona Joy and Lawrence Blatt (the other half of FLOW) are celebrating the recent announcement of inspiring Zone
Music Reporter (ZMR) Awards Nominations for their current albums.
Fiona Joy, an award-winning pianist/composer from Australia who has become a true global sensation, is up for ZMR's most prestigious prize, Album of the Year, and Best Piano Album w/Instrumentation for her hit recording Signature-Synchronicity, which spent two months in the global airplay chart's #1 spot. At last year's awards ceremony, she won Best Piano Album - Solo for Signature-Solo, the previously-released solo piano version of the album released by Tiny Island Music. The two albums were released back-to-back, and are referred to as The Signature Series. They explored audiophile innovations as well as concepts surrounding the modern life of a song; for instance, "
Grace" has been shared, licensed and re-recorded at least six times in just a few years, including on a 2014 Grammy®-winning album. Fiona is joined in the Album of the Year Category by Jeff Pearce (Follow the River Home), Erik Scott (In the Company of Clouds), Al Conti (Mystic) and White Sun (White Sun II).
Blatt, a San Francisco Bay Area composer and guitarist renowned for combining classical guitar and modern steel-string acoustic techniques - as well as his talent for uniting music, math and harmonics - is up for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for Longitudes & Latitudes, a musical travelogue produced by Will Ackerman at Imaginary Road. The album garnered the #1 spot on the ZMR chart in
September 2016, remained in the Top 20 throughout the year, and led to coveted radio interviews on ECHOES/PRI and The Travel Angel. Blatt is also a passionate supporter of programs to keep music alive in public schools, which is where his own love of music began. The other nominees in this category are Erik Scott (In the Company of Clouds), Jill Haley (National Park Soundscapes),
David Arkenstone (The Fairy Garden) and Al Jewer & Andy Mitran (Transmigration…A
Journey with Friends).
FLOW, an anagram that represents the combined talents and passions of Fiona, Lawrence, Oster and Will, had its origins in early 2015, when Blatt invited Fiona Joy and Jeff Oster to join him at Will Ackerman's famed Imaginary Road Studios in Windham County, Vermont, to create an album inspired by the iconic Windham Hill ensembles.
Once they began recording, it became clear that Ackerman could be an essential part of this group as an artist as well as producer. FLOW officially launched as a four-piece group when the Windham Hill Records co-founder accepted their invitation for him to take a more foundational role. Capturing the essence of today's updated new age music, FLOW's debut is co-produced by Ackerman and longtime studio partner Tom Eaton, who collectively contributed to over a dozen of this year's ZMR Award-nominated projects. The ensemble plans a series of live concerts in the coming years.
ZoneMusicReporter will host the 13th Annual ZMR
Music Awards live in New Orleans on Saturday, May 13, 2017 at Roussel Hall on the campus of Loyola University. In addition to The ZMR
Music Award Concert featuring performances by various luminaries and nominees, the organizers will again host a "Meet and Greet" dinner at The Vacherie in the heart of the French Quarter on Friday, May 12. The event is open to the public.
For more information and tickets, visit Zone
Music Reporter at https://zonemusicreporter.com/admin/Awards_show.asp
