I was asked to create music for meditation, this is it. I chose a very simple melody over a repeating chord pattern with emphasis on an ambient/vocal sound to create a human like medatitive sound. There are subtle changes as the meditation proceeds but the emphasis is on a calm, relaxing and cyclic ambience. The idea is to generate a peaceful mood of wellness within the listener.

Kres - A Piece for Meditation

Solo piano piece written especially to calm and soothe. Chill and relax to the tone and expression of the playing. An easy arrangement sets up mellow vibes to 'Ease Your Day'!

Ease Your Day

I sit at the piano. I let my fingers be the conduit between feelings and the piano. I record the experience. The result is an improvised solo piano piece full of expression, dynamic range, melody and emotion. It's a 'one off', a unique performance captured for an audience to listen and imagination to be stimulated. It's difficult to say what artist it's similar to, it's personal to me, but possibly Ludovico Einaudi or Philip Glass.

Summer Piano Improv

The James Brothers is a live project, mainly playing covers. This track is very popular with our audience and gets them on the dance floor. We're fans of a lot of Van Morrison's work, my favourite being 'Tupelo Honey', so we try to include his songs in our sets. We decided to share our version of this song on streaming platforms in the hope others may also enjoy it.

Precious Time

0400, a Summer's morning in my garden, the 'dawn chorus'. I've taken my last release 'Summer Piano Improv', raised it an octave and added an evolving, evocative, ambient arrangement. The two compliment each other to envoke a calm, grounding start to a day. Both meditative and emotionally stimulating the piece encourages the imagination and, with a satisfying coda envokes a sense of peace and completion.

Summer Piano (Dawn Garden Ambience)

This is a bit of fun! A funky, bluesy jam to the drums of Emily Dolan Davies. 'You Got a Day' celebrates the fact that you got a day! I know for some people having to live through another day may not be a great prospect, but at the moment of recording I felt joyous that I had another day, another day free of the chains of addiction and mental health struggles. If I can do it, you can too!

You Got A Day!

This piece is a sonic yearning. A delicate piano forms a foundation for one instrument in isolation. This is a viola, its sound shaped to represent the dichotomy of pain and calm in the acceptance of never attaining one's desire, an inner wailing. The piece is one of mood rather than form, the piano arrangement ever restless in shape and dynamics, the wistful, distant, melancholic tone of the viola giving a sense of wishful longing.

Wishful Longing

I love the sound of a cello and wanted to create a piano/cello piece . My heritage is Celtic and I hadn't heard a piano/cello arrangement flavoured by this so I created one. I wanted to emphasis the beauty, melancholy and expressiveness of the cello's tone so created a minimalist piano piece for a haunting melody to compliment. The cello responds to the piano but rather than following weaves its own path, the instruments intertwining.

Sonyow Hwans with a Celtic Lilt

I teach piano. While waiting in the studio for a young student, Wesley, I doodled. Always having the DAW recording, this piece emanated. What you hear is the actual doodle. It's how I was feeling at the time, calm, relaxed, just chilling and getting my mind ready for a fun, stimulating and creative session. Mentally preparing.

Waiting for Wesley

Waiting For Wesley

InMemoriam (A Sense of Sorrow)

The Golden Hues of Eythin

Echoes Of Youth

The Wings Of A Butterfly

Rustling Dreams In Amber

Cleansing Waters

Touch

Song written and performed by Jim Ryan and James Hawken, The James Brothers. Duo based in S.E. Cornwall.

Dance With You

A story told to a son by his father about how he met his mother with the backdrop of an island on the West coast of Ireland. A footstomping country influenced song.

Achill Island

Born and raised in the clay villages of Cornwall, I first sat on a stool at a piano aged 7 and started classical training. At 12 or 13 I started teaching myself to play modern rock/pop piano and by age of 14 became a semi-pro. The main live project has been a duo called 'The James Brothers' playing covers in pubs and clubs (although we have written a couple of country songs which we also love to play). We continue to enjoy the live experience. Having performed, across Britain, Europe and Ireland for 40 years I'm now concentrating on creating and releasing piano based music to chill, soothe and relax. The inspiration for the new music emanates from artists such as Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds and Ludovico Einaudi. I've taken the sound and created music incorporating my own feeling and expression.

James Hawken

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