An Evening with Ravenna Michalsen

Date ~ Tue, 24 June 2008

Place ~ BGF Centre

Time ~ 8.30pm

Ravenna, graduated from Yale University with B.A. and M.A. degrees, and was trained as a classical cellist for 14 years, before turning to voice and song writing in college. But it was at a retreat with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in Colorado in 2002 that she combined dharma and music.

Mipham Rinpoche wrote a song-like poem, “Just A Seed Waiting to Grow”, for Ravenna to set to music, which appears on her first album Bloom. Dharmasong is her second album. Both albums are essentially devotional albums: sadness, joy and anger are combined with utter openness and acceptance. The songs range from supplications to praise; from requests to questions; from statements to apologies. They feature prominent figures from Indian and Tibetan Buddhism - Yeshe Tsogyal, Machig Labdrön, Padmasambhava, Marpa, and Milarepa.

With these albums Ravenna hopes to jumpstart the American Buddhist music movement. American Buddhist-inspired music will have to walk the line between unabashed content and accessible music very carefully. Both Bloom and Dharmasong were carefully crafted in English in a musical style that is neither West nor East, but simply Ravenna ’s own.