Through It All By Lisa Swerdlow

Through It All

By

Lisa Swerdlow

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

Through loss and grief we can grow, we can understand the preciousness of the life we have, and just how delicate and breakable it is, through music we can heal wounds at first thought unhealable, and by the very act of creating music we can transcend the pain, understand the ache of a lost love and finally move onward again, this new album is the most cathartic of all journeys for the artist and perhaps for the listener too, illustrating that it is possible to hope once again, when all around is darkness.

On Through It All we have eight incredibly powerful, moving and emotive arrangements, from the shadowed halls of the opening piece itself, as A Rhapsody Lives in You almost cries in its tone and timbre, but also musically a piece that has one of the most beautiful melody lines contained within, this is indeed one of the most sublime tracks I have heard for quite some time.

Song for Lucie is a charming and dream like composition that seems to drift across a romantic horizon; it is a song created in love, for love and by love. The performance builds and progresses to a level of reflective passion that simply cannot be matched, and of course the title track Through It All, which is a remarkable reflective, heartfelt arrangement.

The healing power of music reverberates through pieces like Til We Meet Again, a track with such a calming vibe, and offerings like Finding My Way, that illustrate the contemplation of moving a piece on the chess board of life once more, but within the performance lays the hesitancy of doing so.

This is an album that is truly personal to the performer, but it is a subject that may well have touched most of us during our lifetimes, so it could well be an opportunity to go on a cathartic journey with her too.

Pieces like the beautiful November Moon and the concluding composition Spring Equinox Persephone Returns offer us all that sense of hope, for me, I live in the country that the legend of Persephone came from, and the daughter of Zeus and Demeter is always a powerful aspect of a future that is going to be that much brighter, and may I say what a superb and honourable way with which to conclude the album.

Through It All by Lisa Swerdlow is one of the most honest and heart felt albums in this genre I have listened to for many a year, born from loss, created by a hand that has loved and understood it, and manifested by such a respectful compassionate creator in Lisa Swerdlow, one can only stand back, take a deep breath and acknowledge the body of work she has shaped here, a story, a tale through the narrow avenues of sorrow and grief, and to once again hopefully stand in the sunlight of a new day, a wondrous wish for us all, and simply an emotional charged collection of solo piano compositions that everyone should have.