The Land of Nod

The Land of Nod

Shakuhachi player Bruce Huebner and harpist Kaoru Arai-Colucci are "The Land of Nod", a new duo inspired by a poem of the same title by Robert Louis Stevenson from his book "A Child's Garden of Verses." For their debut album Huebner and Arai-Colucci choose lullaby and lullaby-like songs to invite us on a trip to a musical Land of Nod where we can enjoy a reverie of nostalgia for childhood fantasies, the pleasures of deep sleep, sweet dreams, and scenes from a garden of musical poems like that evoked by Stevenson's collection. While the Japanese shakuhachi and the Western grand harp may seem to be an unlikely match, Huebner's love of the expressivity of breath through the bamboo flute, and Arai-Colucci's love of transparent harmonies enunciated by her fingers on open strings of the harp help us understand what brought the two musicians to explore the possibilities of this unique instrumentation.