'ON THE BRINK' RADIO #19: EARTH DAY PIANO IMPROVISATION INSPIRED BY DOUBTFUL SOUND & DEEP COVE, FIORDLAND NEW ZEALAND

 HEADED TO SEA ON FIORDLAND NAVIGATOR

 WAITAHAS OF THE WATERS

 STARBOARD AFT OF NAVIGATOR

 BOUNDLESS ENERGY

 JUMPING FOR JOY

 PERFORMING FOR FUN!

 MT. TITIROA

 VIEW FROM CIRCLE TRACK OUTLOOK

 THE MONUMENT, HOPE ARM

 MT. TITIROA

 VIEW FROM CIRCLE TRACK LOOKOUT

 HOPE ARM AND LAKE MANAPOURI

 MT. TITIROA

 HUGE TREE, AUTUMN FOLIAGE

 SUNRISE LEAVING PEARL HARBOUR

 MT. TITIROA WITH 'ANIWANIWA' OR RAINBOW

 DEEP COVE FIORD AS IT OFTEN LOOKS

 RAIN 200 DAYS PER YEAR

 3 METER TIDAL VARIATION DAILY

 TEMPERATE ZONE RAIN FOREST VEGETATION

 REFLECTIONS OF TRANQUILITY

 GRANDFATHER OF THE FOREST

 MIST OVER HELENA FALLS

 MANDALIC GROUND COVER

 MOSS-COVERED TREE LIMB

 FERNY UNDERGROWTH

 HELENA FALLS FROM BRIDGE

 DENSE MOSS AND LICHENS

 TOP OF HELENA FALLS WITH SPRAY

 BOTTOM OF HELENA

 HANGING VALLEY FROM BASE OF HELENA

 A FAMILY OF TREE FERNS

 ON THE WAY UP HANGING VALLEY

 WEE STREAM

 ROOT-COVERED PATH

 GONDWANALAND

 ASCENDING HANGING VALLEY

 THE POWER OF WATER

HANGING VALLEY FALLS

'ON THE BRINK' RADIO #19 

EARTH DAY PIANO IMPROVISATIONS INSPIRED BY DOUBTFUL SOUND/DEEP COVE in FIORDLAND NEW ZEALAND

TUESDAY @9PM EST-USA / WEDNESDAY 12PM NOON MELBOURNE TIME AUSTRALIA / 2PM NEW ZEALAND TIME

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http://ucy.tv/Default.aspx?PID=113&T=On%20the%20Brink 

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ARCHIVED LINK TO LISTEN ANY TIME (and down-load)

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This show, recorded at Pines Beach, near Kaiapoi on the south island of New Zealand, is 58 minutes of piano improvisations in honour of Earth Day every day and inspired by my recent visits to Doubtful Sound and Deep Cove in Fiordland of New Zealand. In the background you may hear the sound of wind, surf and rain, as I had the door open while I was recording. This music comes closer than any words to expressing and conveying how I felt when I was there and how I still feel now after having been there. Dramatic landscapes, towering mountains, deep fiords, water in massive amounts, torrential rain, gushing falls, dense vegetation, hanging valleys, huge trees and tree-ferns, playful dolphins, very nice people, deep peace, serenity, tranquility and solitude...yet a sense of urgency, a sense of the unknown, a sense of the beauty and power of being here now on Mothership Earth. Elements of sadness and sorrow for all the destruction, pain and suffering being wrought on our fellow beings, our planet, by our industrial civilization running out of control. Ultimately, a sense of transcendence and of gratitude, of love for all of life, mitakuye oyasin, and for our own tiny drop of Star-maker. Respect for the unknown and the unknowable.

You will hear traces of the 'Close Encounters' theme, hints of the 'Tubular Bells' theme, some raga-esque minimalism and some beautiful humpback whales singing along with me. I have listened to this a few times already, and the counter-point and harmonious interactions of the whales and piano are quite nice, even though I recorded the piano first then added the whales later. Enjoy, and be inspired to create realities of your own! Remember...YOU are the 'ultimate technology'!   Jeff back in Fiordland

Included in these photos are images of Mt. Titiroa, a very special and powerful mountain in this part of Fiordland. We have visited her three times, and every time have come away with extremely amazing, even mind-blowing experiences and feelings.  The second time we went, in February of 2011, we returned to Manapouri and both Liesbet and I felt these strange feelings of discomfort or almost physical illness centred in our solar plexus chakra areas. We attributed this to our having communicated directly with the feelings of Mother Earth from being in such a powerful place, an alpine environment that is totally diamagnetic (meaning that it doesn't conduct electricity and shields against magnetic fields) due to being made exclusively of granite and quartzite. Read more about what we experienced and how the big Christchurch quake happened the very next day:

http://synthaissance.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/visiting-sacred-mountain-message-from.html

(Thanks to my wonderful friends Jack and Jenny Oldridge for their support and hospitality and nice piano!)

MY 'RADIO-ACTIVITY' PAGE (archived links to all previous shows)

http://renavigating-the-human-process.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/on-brink-jeffs-radio-page.html

'LIVE SIMPLY SO THAT OTHERS MAY SIMPLY LIVE'

'SHOOTING THE STARS' with FRASER GUNN, LAKE TEKAPO, NEW ZEALAND :)

TIME-LAPSE VIDEO, LAKE TEKAPO & AURORA AUSTRALIS

SUNSPOTS, 2 APRIL 2013

SUNSPOTS

HORSEHEAD NEBULA

SUNSPOT

LAGOON &  TRIFID NEBULA

MILKY WAY

BARNARD'S STAR (our closest stellar neighbour)

OMEGA CENTAURI (globular cluster)

LUNAR TERMINATOR

RHO OPHIUCHI

NGC 6193

REFLECTED NEBULA

SOUTHERN PLEIADES

SETTING UP FOR A TIME-LAPSE OF CLOUDS

WITH THE 1.0 METER AT MT. JOHN

1.0 METER APPARATUS

SPECTROGRAHIC DISPLAY IN CONTROL ROOM

WITH 1.8 METER DOME IN BACKGROUND

MOUNT JOHN OBSERVATORY

SHOOTING THE SUN

SOLAR IMAGE PROCESSING

FRASER'S MAIN SITE
http://frasergunn.co.nz/

ON FACEBOOK
Fraser Gunn Astrophotography

YOUTUBE CHANNEL
http://www.youtube.com/user/FraserTK

"100 Billion Planets, say NZ Astronomers"
http://earthsky.org/space/100-billion-planets-and-we-can-help-find-them-say-new-zealand-astronomers

I have recently become friends with a very special person, Fraser Gunn, who is an avid and talented astro-photographer and lover of all things astronomical and photographic (even though he cut off my feet when taking pictures of me next to the Mt. John observatory dome :) I must thank my wonderful film-maker friend Kathleen Gallagher in Christchurch for putting me onto Fraser. He lives at Lake Tekapo on the south island (Te Wai Pounamu) of New Zealand and is an even bigger freak than me (if you can believe it!) in the sense of how much gear he has and the extremes he goes to to get awesome photos all hours of the night. 

When I first went to college I wanted to be an astronomer, until I learned that in general they don't look at the stars but sit at desks and computers crunching numbers and calculating. My earliest photographic adventures were celestial in nature, and Fraser has progressed light-years beyond anything I have ever been able to do in this domain.

It goes without saying that you have to be awake at night to see the stars and to photograph celestial objects. In addition to being an astro-photographer, Fraser conducts 'guided tours' of the heavens from his back yard, where people can come and for a nominal fee of $40 have an hour or more of photographing the heavens themselves, if they have an slr camera.  In the past couple of nights I've seen photos taken 'by' two different people, with Fraser's assistance of course, that look as nice as anything you would see in an astronomy magazine. He also works part-time at Mt. John observatory, home of the largest telescopes in New Zealand, including 1.0 and 1.8 meter Cassegrain reflectors. He is currently assisting with a program that is performing spectrographic analyses of individual stars to determine if they might have planetary systems.  He is a technological master of many kinds of devices, including computer-controlled equatorial mounts that allow telescopes and cameras to track celestial objects closely for long periods, as well as computer programs that 'stack' and process sequences of still images in order to create time-lapse animations. These are what really blow me away...on his youtube channel you can see dozens of these, some with the aurora australis flickering and glowing.  He likes my music and we are going to combine forces as it were creatively on some various projects, and I am going to use some of his celestial time-lapse footage in my 'beyond film' about the whales and dolphins. I would like to thank Fraser, his lovely Japanese partner Yuriko, and their four kitty-cats for having me for three days and nights of wonderful sharing and good company.  Please check out his web-site, Facebook page, and Youtube channel for some mind-blowing and highly inspiring imagery!

An astronomical orientation is to me an extremely valuable gift...it provides us with a sense of how truly insignificant we are...and how blessed to live on such a miraculous planet in such a beautiful and improbable universe!

JEFF PHILLIPS
LAKE TEKAPO
SOUTH ISLAND NZ
4 APRIL 2013