William Ackerman
Conferring With the Moon

Liberation of the Mind.

A small room, walls entirely made of wood. Outside it is deep winter, night. The moon shines in the darkness. Next to me, a chair. Not too comfortable, not a chair for dozing off. A burning fireplace warms the interior, the heat cradles the senses. And the mind frees itself, opens up, travels, sets sail, disentangling through candid and reassuring paths, some already seen, others unknown, pervaded by that touch of strange melancholy that instead of saddening, seems to reassure.

And the soundtrack to this watercolor, to this sketch of rare and pure tranquility, is offered to us like this, out of nowhere, by a musician known almost exclusively to that niche of fans of a genre too often simply classified under the cold definition of "new age." Will Ackerman is the one who sketched, developed, polished, and then gifted this genre to all those who, after him, rode the wave using it and turning it into a true phenomenon. Published in 1986 by Windham Hill, the ultimate label for the musicians of that movement, this is his sixth studio work. But now, in that room, with the moon shining, it's little use knowing all this. What matters is that his music is gently cradling us, like a mother would cradle her newborn, with the same love, the same care, the same attention. "Conferring With The Moon" is this: the ideal soundtrack to the most intimate and quiet moments of our minds.

Play. Silence. Slowly and with sublime sweetness, here begins a guitar arpeggio. The title track is the first summary of the album, as well as its masterpiece, and perhaps of all of Ackerman's production, and it is the true portrait of that room: the fire in the fireplace, slowly coming alive in the form of that guitar; when the warmth pervades body and soul, here comes the sweet melody of a lyricon, a sound that guides the mind through its most hidden and particular parts. The film of life begins to flow in front of the eyes, projected on the face of that full moon shining at night, joyous and melancholic at the same time. Memories, satisfactions, regrets, happy moments, others less so, satisfactions, disappointments: it's all in that melody, everything that our mind contains. And all this is finally free to express itself without being conditioned by the restrictions that reasoning imposes: it's pure thought, devoid of concepts, but saturated with personality. Midway through the song, the melody reaches its peak, marked, clear, yet still cradling: the fire burns, the stream of thoughts reaches its maximum expression, then slowly reverses course and returns from where it came, along with the guitar, fading again into silence. The fire is now low again, burning slowly and continuing to cradle. An improvised guitar arpeggio leads us for a moment into a fantastic world, a world of ambitions, desires, hopes, then suddenly, it stops. In the third track, it's the wind instruments that stir the waves; the title itself, Mountain Lake, suggests the setting where the pan flute and bagpipes guide our inner eyes: a scene of sensory peace, a mountain lake where everything is silent, only the rustle of the water against the rocks composing the sonic universe.

It's now the moment of blue. The blue of the sky, of nothing and everything, the blue where anything positive can be reflected. And so the guitar arpeggios in Big Thing In The Sky sound like little white clouds, then leave space for the "big thing": the sun, represented by the English horn that makes its entrance midway through the track. A dim, pale, winter sun: but no less evocative in representing the "great force" in the sky. The final sunset then makes room for a 7-minute corner where memories rise again to the eyes: this time, those of the more radical actions, more crucial, perhaps not always the most correct. Climbing In Geometry is the most analytical of the album's tracks, a retrospective of our being, a look at past events with the critical eye of the present, and, at the same time, imagining what the future will be. The following 7 minutes of Last Day At The Beach instead dwell on regrets: the most melancholic and subdued of the tracks, now the wrong choices are what present themselves to our eyes, what we would have liked to do and did not do, but also the reassuring knowledge that making mistakes has only strengthened us. The moon seems to slightly darken, then shines even brighter. A brief blast of cold hits the body, only to be replaced by the sound of wood burning more and more, and by the embrace, even stronger, of the warm wave and the smell of burning wood.

The dreamlike element reappears in Singing Crocodile: a short track for solo guitar, a moment of pause for the mental flow, pure rest, peace of the senses. The arpeggio then echoes in the following Processional: the endpoint of the meditative element, similar in structure to the overture, this time the lyricon leads to the summit and the fusion of the two coexisting elements in the album: one finds oneself on the summit of a mountain in front of a mirror, looking at oneself and one's memories, our mind in depth. It reaches the maximum libertarian expansion, peace pervades everything, for those 4 minutes there are no thoughts crossing us, but there is something even more intense: the material vision of one's ego, taking shape accompanied by the melody. Then it all stops suddenly, though not abruptly: one finds oneself on the chair, moving toward the conclusion of the album. About forty minutes have passed since the beginning of the journey.

Shape of the Land offers one last vision: memories of the homeland, of the environments we have grown up and lived in, quick images flowing and mixing with others, guided by the pseudo-fantastic element, of those lands where we have always dreamed of living, those environments where we would like to suddenly find ourselves. The last image brings us back into the room, only to focus once again on the moon. Garage Planet is the ideal conclusion: no memories, no thoughts. Just the melancholy slowly giving way to serenity. The finale is entrusted to a reprise for solo guitar of the title track's theme: the fire, as it started to burn, slowly begins to fade, the moon has descended during this short hour, and is now hidden by the tree branches. The temperature drops: the warmth's embrace loosens, the mind returns to reasoning on its usual tracks, thinking about how the wood in the fireplace has now burnt out, and it is time to change it.

The music finishes, fading away. Of all that came before, almost forgotten: an hour has passed. One will not notice or remember in everyday life, but that hour was essential to recharge and prepare to face what awaits shortly: everyday life, as is its usual conception, a succession of events and actions, images and thoughts, the same ones we have reviewed, mixed with their fantastic counterparts, in our moment of mental intimacy; in the rewind of our life.

Recommended not to fans of the genre, not to fans of any genre, but only to those who periodically find it necessary to recharge their mind with serenity, and equally to those who, although not usually doing so, still dream of eventually finding a moment to experience such an emotion.

RATING OUT OF TEN: 9/10

ADDENDUM: Brief Musical Description

Since I did not dwell much on the purely musical aspect of the album, but preferred to highlight the sensations evoked by listening, I specify here that it is an album of music that many would define, trivializing it, as "New Age." Ackerman's guitar is a constant backdrop for the entrances of various guest musicians, which I do not list due to their large number; the melody is always dictated by wind instruments, blending wonderfully with the atmospheric guitar background. Classical influences are numerous: particularly from some works for classical guitar by major mid-19th century composers, with particular reference to Paganini and Mertz. Ackerman's technique, by his own admission, is heavily influenced by the work of Andrés Segovia, although it differs from the line of classical guitarists following the Spanish Master due to the particular delicacy of touch and sound that makes it not particularly suitable for entirely solo performances (in fact, there are only two, plus the reprise of Conferring With The Moon), but more inclined to paint a harmonious sonic canvas on which to leave performance to other instruments. In some tracks (Conferring With The Moon, Climbing In Geometry, The Last Day At The Beach, Shape of The Land, Garage Planet), cello and violin interventions complete the sound texture. In The Last Day At The Beach, finally, there is also the contribution (albeit not particularly significant) of a piano.

The compositions of the entire album were conceived and composed using a purely classical method, to the extent that they are classified through the categories of "solo," "duo," and "trio." This element contributes to the differentiation between Ackermanian music, primarily of classical derivation, and many products of subsequent musicians classified as New Age.