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ALL THINGS MUSIC
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021 • THE BULLETIN
album review: ‘Where the Ocean Meets the Sky,’ Heart Dance Records
Bend’s Julie Hanney brings emotional weight to third album
Julie Hanney wrote “Ocean Song,” one of the
pieces found on her third solo, instrumental piano
album, “Where the Ocean Meets the Sky,” when
she was 19 years old.
Inspired by George Winston’s new
age solo piano explorations, the
song provides a good encapsula-
tion of the album as a whole: an
emotional journey that, while
fitting for peaceful meditation
or introspection, holds more be-
neath its surface.
The record is Hanney’s first for
Phoenix, Arizona, label Heart Dance
Records, and follows 2019’s “Painting
in Sound” and “A Peace-Filled Christmas.”
Hanney is known for directing the Gospel Choir
of the Cascades for 10 years. She also hosted a
Peace Through Music concert at Bend Church in
early 2020 (planned as a series until the pandemic
struck).
“I’ve been wanting to do a CD for a while, and I
just didn’t have the recording technology to make
it happen,” Hanney said. “The idea of going into
a studio and paying for time just always stressed
me out, because every mistake you made, there’s
another hour of time. That always was a little
intimidating financially and just pressure-wise.
Once I got the ability to record at home, that’s
really what opened up this ability to finally
get these songs recorded.”
Produced by Hanney and mixed
and mastered by Louis Ramsey
in Los Angeles, the album fea-
tures 14 tracks that run a gamut
of styles, including jazz, gospel,
classical and pop.
Standout tracks include
“Echo of a Seashell,” a yearning,
minor-key ballad; the aforemen-
tioned “Ocean Song” and the waltz-y
“Reverie.”
While “meditative piano music” certainly con-
jures up a mental image (or sound), “Where the
Ocean Meets the Sky” bucks many of the stereo-
types. Rather than rest on lilting piano arpeggios,
Hanney composes strong melodies with emo-
tional heft that dig under the skin.
There’s a good reason for this. “Where the
Ocean Meets the Sky” is dedicated to Hanney’s
mother, who died of natural causes in January
2020. The album’s title track and its closing song,
Pianist
Julie
Hanney
released
“Where
the Ocean
Meets the
Sky,” her
first album
for Heart
Dance Re-
cords, in
January.
Submitted
photo
“Small Things with Great Love,” were both directly
inspired by her mother.
“The song ‘Where the Ocean Meets the Sky,’
that was the title of a poem that I wrote for her
memorial service,” Hanney said. “(The poem was)
basically about how — I don’t know how and
I don’t know where, but I know that she is not
gone; I know that she exists somewhere. She
loved the ocean so much, and that idea of where
the ocean meets the sky — that great beyond —
I know her spirit survived somehow. That’s really
what was the focus of the album, was that idea of
hope and that idea of love not dying.”
— Brian McElhiney, The Bulletin