Reviews

Garden of Delight is completely seductive and captivating from beginning to end. In fact, I had been contemplating a show of such a "sound" of distant enchantment and dreaminess. And it showed up!!!! Very few albums come along with every track perfectly interesting and pleasing. Thank you,
Carla Van Dyk WDVR fm

The masterly musical painter of sensual delights has done it again! This time, we're taken on a magic carpet ride of Eastern delights. Light a scented candle & dig your ears into this garden. Paul Avgerinos is an aural genie granting us immeasurable pleasures...
Captain Christopher WTUL fm

It's a journey into eastern exotica on Garden of Delight, the latest album from Paul Avgerinos. Avgerinos is a veteran musician and multi-instrumentalist who was trained at the Peabody Conservatory and worked as an orchestral bassist. That was before he heard Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach and decided to plug in.

He's still wired, but now he uses his Connecticut studio as mission control for a world fusion sound that employs musicians from Turkey and the middle east as well as western players on instruments as technologically polarized as the Indian Bansuri flute and Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI). The flute is played by Steve Gorn, who weaves his soul-drenched melodies like wisps of smoke curving off a candle.

Listeners of New Age records in the 1980s might recall Kevin Braheny, who played synthesizers and EWI. He's changed his name to Kevin Braheny Fortune, but that distinctive EWI sound, part flute, part violin, returns here on tracks like "Night Blooms" and "Bird of Paradise," effecting middle eastern slides and arcs.
Avgerinos uses Christine Yandell and Malika Zarra as ethereal choirs and sensual sirens, and plants gentle synthesizer pads across his compositions. Tracks like "Jasmine" could be a seductive walk into a harem while the opening "Rose of Heaven," featuring Avgerinos on nylon-string guitar, creates the perfumed aura of a temple. Turkish Ney flute master Omar Faruk Tekbilek blows his serene, Sufi-inspired melodies across several tracks. He's joined by several other Arabic musicians on Oud, Violin and Percussion, who lend some gravitas to the proceedings. Garden of Delight is an enchanting vision that reveals more each time you travel down its paths.
John Diliberto - ECHOES

Accomplished producer and musician Paul Avgerinos recently made his Real Music debut with Gratitude Joy, which he created with Anand Anugrah. Garden of Delight marks his first solo album for the label, and is different from the previous effort in that his gaze has shifted to the enchanting rhythms of the Middle East and the Mediterranean coast. Featuring guest instrumentation from Omar Faruk Tekbilek, the album is sensual and silky, with smooth dumbek beats wrapped in a blanket of exotic strings, guitar, light vocal sounds and stark ney flute harmonies. In the backdrop is soft and sometimes shimmering synth ambience, making this garden a place that makes you want to chill as well as be stimulated. Think of it as Middle East meets west, with a laid back twist.

Music Design