Music for a Paradise Garden
August 5, 2019 11:28 AM   Subscribe

I am seeking music that will play in the public garden where I work. It will be played twice a day for twenty minutes each time but can consist of multiple tracks for each time. Genre: classical or sounds like it.

What we'd like it to evoke: the feeling of being in a garden paradise or celestial or peaceful. What it should avoid: imposing itself loudly on people walking in the gardens. So abrupt, high pitched vocals or percussion are not good things.
Extra credit: the garden is based on Indo-Persian garden designs so if you can think of something that sounds like classical music with Indian or Persian content, that would be amazing.
posted by sciencegeek to Media & Arts (4 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yo-Yo Ma, maybe something from the Silk Road albums? I think you want a cello/strings for a peaceful stroll in the garden.
posted by backwards compatible at 11:48 AM on August 5, 2019


Maybe something from Ghazal?
posted by Knicke at 12:10 PM on August 5, 2019


Personally, I'd go for ambient works. I am thinking of something like Mary Lattimore's Hundreds of Days. Beautiful, uplifting, easy to ignore in the background, while still being very rewarding to listen to. It doesn't really hit your indo-persian mark, though. Iran has an interesting electronic music scene complete with ambient musicians. I think Porya Hatami has the same kind of peaceful sound.

If you want something more classical then I suggest Hossein Alizadeh. One thing I'll say about traditional leaning persian music is that it is pretty rhythmic so you might have to go through a fair amount of it to build up a playlist depending on how averse to percussion or strong plucking strings you are.

Lastly, Persia has a strong tradition of poetry. It's not what you've asked for, but you might consider some recorded performances of poetry to play. A lot of it can be beautiful to listen to even if you don't speak the language. There are a lot of modern performances of the works of Rumi, for example.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 12:12 PM on August 5, 2019 [2 favorites]


Jim Brickman does some lovely piano music.
posted by kathrynm at 8:53 PM on August 5, 2019


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