Calming Music to Help You Focus: Part II

Fall can be stressful. Our schedules change, the weather changes and we begin to plan for the end-of-the-year holidays. We also map out plans for the year ahead. But everyone knows there's something magical about fall too. It carries with it a potential energy asking to be provoked. Does your idea of fall call for some deeply soothing music to help you determine what's important? If so, my recommendations include these five albums. 

Glassworks A master of minimalism, Philip Glass's spellbinding compositions may spur your concentration with delicate and repetitive, yet elegant and ethereal broken chord progressions featuring piano, keyboard and symphonic sounds. 

The Ship Think spaceship. Brian Eno's abstract notes and intriguing narrative - spoken and sung - will encourage you to feel pensive. Maybe you'll imagine you're drifting out into the ether. Here on Earth, we kind of are. Aren't we? 

Sunrise of the planetary dream collector Avant-garde musician Terry Riley adds dissonance and tension to his work by mixing in unlikely juxtapositions of vocalists, strings and other lush orchestral instruments within richly marked soundscapes. 

Three worlds, the score to the Royal Ballet's Woolf Works, fuses classical and ambient melodies for a production dedicated to the writer Virginia Woolf. The album is composed by Max Richter

The very best of Arvo P?art A sense of reverence and awe for the world we inhabit comes through in all of Arvo Part's music, which has been influenced by Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony. If churches stood without walls, it might sound like this. 

If you're interested in more music that may help you focus, check out my previous post.