A ballerina dances across a stream on a bridge in an autumn forest. Good friends and family, who have passed on, leave warm memories. In the early morning a neighborhood wakes and the city begins to bustle with activity.
An old German town in Central Texas is surrounded by orchards, vineyards and wildflowers. An old house on an abandoned road, the late-night rain on a city's downtown warehouse district, and the view from the top of a dam that separates two picturesque lakes. These are the varied feelings and imagery that inspired A Face In The Clouds, Styler's new CD of contemporary instrumental music that is perfect for relaxation, healing, spiritual meditations, yoga, massage and other new age lifestyle activities.
Styler's CDs can be purchased at his website (marshallstyler.com), in many record stores and specialty shops across the United States, through major online outlets (amazon.com or cdbaby.
com), and at many web digital download locations (including iTunes and Rhapsody). Unlike many synth-players who are always searching for the very latest technology, Styler feels he creates a unique sound by using a combination of piano, modern digital keyboards and older classic analog-based synthesizers. 'I love the warmth and feel that some of the early synths create, and some of those sounds are only available on that original equipment,' explains Styler.
After saying goodbye to a successful rock'n'roll career where he sold hundreds of thousands of albums and concert tickets with his band Duke Jupiter, Marshall Styler moved to the other end of the musical spectrum and began creating his best-selling soft solo recordings. While his earlier music was inspired first by traditional jazz and then by jam-bands and progressive-rock groups, his current instrumental albums owe a debt to his childhood love of classical music and more recent inspirational new age acts such as Andreas Vollenweider and Deep Forest. Styler's earliest musical memories include his grandfather playing ragtime (he was a piano player in vaudeville and movie houses) and his mother listening to classical music all the time when Marshall was growing up in his hometown of Rochester, New York.
'I gravitated toward the piano concertos by Beethoven, Bach and Mozart.' In grade school he played tuba and saxophone, but when he was 12, his father purchased a piano. Marshall took a few lessons, and also immediately began making up his own songs.
He also was drawn to jazz Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, Erroll Garner and Thelonius Monk. Marshall put his first band together when he was 15 and on weekends they played at the high school or at a downtown coffee shop until 4 a.m.
When the musical 'British Invasion' hit in the mid-Sixties, Styler bought an electric piano and switched to playing rock'n'roll. He formed Lincoln Zephyr in 1967, Rochester's first psychedelic band, and they opened a concert for Jimi Hendrix. 'We played a lot of original material that I wrote, did a lot of blues jamming and covered a few things by the Grateful Dead, Cream, Ray Charles and Steve Winwood.
' After a stint in Southern California, Styler headed back east to start the band Duke Jupiter which had strong major-label national success, but Marshall believes they were ultimately hampered by being too musically eclectic. They began as an instrumental band blending jazz and blues-rock, eventually added vocals, and often jammed improvisationally onstage. Throughout their career, Styler wrote approximately 80 percent of their material and shared the lead vocals.
Duke Jupiter got a major label deal with Mercury Records for their first three albums. The first recording, Sweet Cheeks, was produced by Chuck Leavell (who had played with the Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones), and he steered the band in the direction of Southern Rock. Recorded in Macon, Georgia, at Capricorn Studios, the album included special guest percussionist Jaimoe (Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels).
For the second album, Taste The Night, the band re-explored its jazz roots a bit more, this time using famed producer Glen Kolotkin (Jimi Hendrix, Joan Jett, Santana, Electric Flag).
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