©2016 EchoCosmic Records
words and music composed by Christopher Pendergraft (IUSA)
and string arrangements with Thomas Brunkard (IRE)

The project is "The Torchfire Heart". it is a two act musical stage play I have been writing for a few years. It makes associations to love being the guiding torchlight that we are given, and that war, profit and vanity are the means of it's destruction.

I am releasing act 1 today as a way to incentivize the players who have given time to me for this work. And I hope to start a little buzz on the idea. The piece itself is akin to "Dark Side of the Moon" in that it works with themes and reoccurring ideas about love and hate, and the entire piece works as one larger message.

"The Torchfire Heart: A Musical Event" ACT 1 (Preview)
So for a few years I have been writing and recording some music, some got released, some not, trying to arrange a concept show, all around the ongoing battle for compassion and equality. Its a super lofty idea, but its been gestating for a few years, and after a few years of writing after thinking, I started this last year to hand out some parts and ideas and through my online family of musicians I was able to make the idea real. The original thought was the path of love. Seemed even more lofty, but when Kim and I had Jon Gabriel, I was overwhelmed with a sense, in a very realy way, of what a true connection was. The idea was, at this time, in my mind, that love had taken on a different meaning for me, as one would expect, and I made the conscience decision to change the word meaning of love to connection. Out in nature when I may say "I love this place" I began to think in my mind, I am connected to this place." This simple change of mind allowed me to look at our connection without definition or bias to ideas like love, that we all share very different definitions. Often in my youth I mistook feelings of desire to love with a true connection to something or someone. I see that now. So when we think of love as connection, to ourselves and others, to the planet, to OUR universe, we can connect that idea to scientific forces like gravity and energy. We all wake up in this dream of self-centric experience, it's through our connection to others that we truly see our place here. Not a hokey new-age idea, but like "HEY you are on a rock, spinning around a ball of fire, and you want to start a war over a conflict of ideals? Over Money?". Its not a belittling of humanity, but a real needed grounding to connect to the here and now. It's only through seeing every person as equal in love that we can make any changes to the heart and actions of humankind.
So this musical event will be made live, be a mix between video/music and live actors and showcase the above idea of connection to the now, the real need for us to get past separatism. Musicians from all over Earth have contributed and will make further contributions to this effort, and we will perform it somewhere. That is my promise.