Sweet Rain 

This 12-song collection by Bill Douglas represents an extension from his first two Hearts of Space recordings. While his trademark lyricism remains, he’s blended in an array of gleaming highlights from Celtic, North African, West African, Indian, and South American music and instruments.

The album includes more prominent piano work as well the use of electric bass throughout by Dean Peer (who literally wrote the book on bass harmonics), and solid, sensitive kit drumming by Larry Thompson on several tunes. Returning musicians include classical symphony players Bil Jackson on clarinet, David Lockington on cello and Anne Stackpole on flute. Geoff Johns also returns to anchor the hand drum section, along with the addition of Ty Burhoe on tabla and additional frame drums.

Former Windham Hill and Celestial Harmonies vocalist Therese Shroeder-Sheker contributes vocals on an angelic arrangement of W.B.Yeats’s famous poem “Song of the Wandering Aengus,” here titled “Golden Apples of the Sun.”