“As one of the first to sample the album and write a review for Believe I am happy to report and say with confidence I anticipate that everyone will reach the same conclusion I have – Believe is a hot new release destined to be the best album ever by 2002!” ~ John P. Olsen
http://www.newagemusicworld.com/believe-by-2002-new-music-review/
Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Why is the type of music we compose called “new age” music? Many have tried to change the “new age” moniker – Target calls it “Lifescapes.” Muzak calls it “Moodscapes.” Music Choice calls it “Soundscapes.” I think Borders Books & Music tried calling it “Lifestyles.” I have also heard “neo-classical” and “contemporary instrumental” among others.
Why do I bring this up? A woman recently commented to me how sad it was that we were not Christians. This surprised me greatly. I asked her why she would say that. She said well obviously since you compose “new age” music you are not Christians. Wow!! On the contrary – we are. I was curious if this lady’s viewpoint was a common one, and if so, how this happened? Why is this type of music being thought of as Unchristian?
I doubt the classification “new age” will be going away any time soon. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences still calls it “new age” and there is even a Grammy Award for new age music. iTunes calls it “new age”. Amazon still lists a “new age” genre.
But what exactly does “new age” mean? Wikipedia has an exhaustive and interesting page on the origins of new age music at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age_music. But I still did not find the answer to my question until I looked at the “new age SPIRITUALITY” page on Wikipedia.
Although the term “new age” was first used in 1809 by William Blake, it wasn’t until the early 2000′s that the concept of “new age spirituality” was condemned by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention. Even though new age music had little to do with actual new age spirituality practices, it had apparently been condemned as well.
Sadly, it was brick and mortar music stores that lumped dozens of genres of music under the “new age” moniker simply because they did not want to deal with them. Think about it – Enya and Vangelis were originally in the “Pop” bins – not new age. But then along came Celtic music and Native American music and ambient, electronica, world, chillout, space music and jazz crossover (among many others). What’s a little old record store to do? And so the “new age” bin became the melting pot – the catch-all to avoid having to keep all of these genres clearly separate. And I totally empathize! Truly there are dozens of “sub-genres” of new age. There was no way to keep track of it all. But you know what? The brick and mortar stores are gone and we now have computers. Why not embrace all the micro-genres of music?
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology to build the world’s first bionic music store. 
2002 is performing in Richardson, Texas October 2, 2011. The show starts early – 9:45 am. This is a lovely time slot. Imagine a lazy Sunday morning, early fall, hot coffee in hand, surrounded by lovely original artwork and neo-classical music, Ahhh… http://www.cottonwoodartfestival.com/aboutfestival.htm
Set list:
1. Bliss
2. Summer of 300 years
3. Dance With A Princess
4. Sunny Day
5. Starwalkers
6. Rays of Light
7. Land of Forever
8. Spirit Moves
9. Stella Maris
10. Cycle of Time
11. Flight of the Swan
12. Deep Still Blue
13. Mirage
14. Free To Fly
A review written by the very talented Michael Diamond.
Tune in to CKUW “Shades of Classics” on August 7 from 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. (CDT) to hear 23 minutes of music from 2002. We’ll also talk a little about the inspiration behind each song. http://ckuw.ca/
Does it ever end? During the production of this album, so many bizarre things happened. The heart of the studio (Sony DMX R100) blew up, losing us months and lots of $$$$. My father passed away… nuf said. Then we were finally back on track and some guy severed the fiber optic trunk to our area on THE DAY we were to download the mastered files. And then there’s yesterday – yep, the day I was to at long last after over a year of hard work, pick up the CDs from the plant, and… you guessed it. Something weird happened. Something that had NEVER happened in the 18 years we have done business with this duplicator. The delivery truck DISAPPEARED for 24 hours and no one knew why. It showed up today and we shipped out over 400 CDs to people that we hope are not annoyed. But Randy still had a happy birthday today. So did Damayanti.
After an arduous year, the new album is finally finished. Of course, it did not go to the finish line easily. Right as the mastering engineer had the files ready, SOMEONE severed the fiber optic trunk for this area. No internet. No FTP. No master. Unwilling to accept this fate (after all we have been through this year), I shoved my laptop into its case and hunted for an open network. After several failed attempts, I found a WiFi at a local Starbucks. After 2 agonizingly slow hours at about 30 kbps, the masters were safe on my laptop. Off to the plant in the morning and Heaven help us the CDs will be ready mid-April.
I have often been asked which album is my favorite. I have always responded that choosing one would be like favoring one child over another – impossible. But truly I have to say I am extremely happy with this new album. It’s special. I’ll never tire of listening to it and remembering how much fun we had making it happen (against so many odds). Plus for the first time our little girl was part of it. She is only 7 and has such an angelic voice. You’ll be hearing more from her in the future for sure!
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