A magic carpet ride with Paul Avgerinos through the splendorous cradle of civilization, featuring guest artist Omar Faruk Tekbilek.

Best World Album
2007 New Age Reporter LifeStyle Music Award Winner

Track Listing

1 Rose of Heaven 6:00
2 Bird of Paradise 5:01
3 Stargazer 6:15
4 River of Life 6:29
5 Passion Flower 4:14
6 Garden of Delight 4:51
7 Lily of the Valley 4:16
8 Tree of Life 5:41
9 Jasmine 5:32
10 Night Blooms 5:54
11 Queen of the Night 5:28

Reviews

Echoes CD of the Month – January 2008
Echoes 25 Essential CDs for 2007
Echoes Top 25 CDs – November 2007

"It's a journey into eastern exotica on Garden of Delight, the latest album from Paul Avgerinos. Avgerinos is a veteran musician and multi-instrumentalist who was trained at the Peabody Conservatory and worked as an orchestral bassist. That was before he heard Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach and decided to plug in.

He's still wired, but now he uses his Connecticut studio as mission control for a world fusion sound that employs musicians from Turkey and the middle east as well as western players on instruments as technologically polarized as the Indian Bansuri flute and Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI). The flute is played by Steve Gorn, who weaves his soul-drenched melodies like wisps of smoke curving off a candle.

Listeners of New Age records in the 1980s might recall Kevin Braheny, who played synthesizers and EWI. He's changed his name to Kevin Braheny Fortune, but that distinctive EWI sound, part flute, part violin, returns here on tracks like "Night Blooms" and "Bird of Paradise," effecting middle eastern slides and arcs.

Avgerinos creates an attractive, smooth surface that can actually detract somewhat from the subtle changes going on underneath. He uses Christine Yandell and Malika Zarra as ethereal choirs and sensual sirens, and plants gentle synthesizer pads across his compositions. Tracks like "Jasmine" could be a seductive walk into a harem while the opening "Rose of Heaven," featuring Avgerinos on nylon-string guitar, creates the perfumed aura of a temple. Turkish Ney flute master Omar Faruk Tekbilek blows his serene, Sufi-inspired melodies across several tracks. He's joined by several other Arabic musicians on Oud, violin and percussion, who lend some gravitas to the proceedings. Garden of Delight is an enchanting vision that reveals more each time you travel down its paths. "

© 2008 John Diliberto -Echoes Radio

"Garden of Delight is completely seductive and captivating from beginning to end. In fact, I had been contemplating a show of such a "sound" of distant enchantment and dreaminess. And it showed up!!!! Very few albums come along with every track perfectly interesting and pleasing."

Carla -WDVR FM

"The masterly musical painter of sensual delights has done it again! This time, we're taken on a magic carpet ride of Eastern delights. Light a scented candle & dig your ears into this garden. Paul Avgerinos is an aural genie granting us immeasurable pleasures..."

Captain Christopher - WTUL