Category: Lucette Bourdin

On a bitter cold winter’s evening, warm ambient music and chatting with friends is the perfect activity.  Tonight we celebrated the life of Lucette Bourdin, one of the great ambient artists of all time.  Her life was cut short but she left behind a magnificent body of work, including the three albums we listened to end to end.

As always, there was a fun crowd in the chatroom, where we discussed Lucette’s art as well as Emerald Adrift’s upcoming live concert on January 19th, the Voyager probe, chocolate gelato, and the merits of various soft synths.  A great time – if you tuned in but didn’t stop by the chat, you literally missed out on half the fun.

Anyway, here’s to Lucette, her life, and her music.  Hope to see you next week …

Lucette Bourdin – Silver Moon – Earth Mantra (2009)
Now the Moon
Walks the Night
She Peers, and Sees
Silver Trees
From Their Shadowy Cote
With Silver Claws
Moveless Fish
In a Silver Stream

Lucette Bourdin – Radiant Stars – Earth Mantra (2009)
Calm Lamps
Look Up to Outer Vastness
The Stars Which Sang

Lucette Bourdin – Horse Heaven – Earth Mantra (2010)
Inner Vastness
Torrent of Nectar
Fearless Light
The Luminous Ocean
Dweller in the Infinite
The Unnumbered Stars
Celestial Winds
Mystic Horse

One of the highlights of my experience in ambient music has been meeting and working with other artists, especially those whose work inspires me.  Of these artists, one of the most inspirational and accomplished is Lucette Bourdin, whose music I will be presenting in-depth on the next Blue Water Drift Dive, this Friday January 5th 2018.

The late Lucette Bourdin was a visual and music artist who was a native of France, having grown up in the villages and towns near the Doubs River in the eastern part of the country. The childhood phase of scribbling and coloring never ended for Lucette nor could several years of law school diminish her desire to become an artist. So, when she married an American and moved to the United States she felt her life was going to start over and her art would begin. Always an independent and self-disciplined individual, and feeling that the art programs available would only limit her expression, Lucette embarked upon a rigorous study of artists, color and design which eventually resulted in her own unique style.

Using watercolor/gouache as her media, Lucette developed a painting style which both expresses and evokes the subtlety of the soul. The outer landscape is a metaphor for the spirit that seeks expression as the light of transformation and redemption.

As accomplished at visual art as she was, Lucette was also a master of the ambient music genre, producing a wide ranging collection of albums that can only be described as masterworks. Lucette saw an interesting duality between the two forms of art, where the practice of one reinforces the practice of the other.

Lucette passed away in February of 2011, but her unique perspective on music and art lives on.  It will be my great privilege to bring you more than three hours of her intelligent and delicate ambient music, as we celebrate the life and art of a wonderful human being.

The show starts at 7 PM US Pacific time / 10 PM US Eastern time on Friday January 5th (3 AM UTC January 6th) and will last at least three hours.  I hope to see you there!

Listen at https://www.radiospiral.net/listen

Join us in chat: https://mrspiral.slack.com