One of the founding partners of theartsdesk back in the day, author of the immersive Manu Chao biography, Clandestino, roving world music journalist, composer and "nomad pianist" Peter Culshaw released his previous set, Music from the Temple of Light, in 2023.
Surrender to Love is spun from the same threads that were woven through that Temple of Light – mixing an ambient piano as a grounding for the music, with a range of Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments and voices, and a ruling spirit and approach that’s drawn from the Sufi wing of spirituality – a music and practice associated with Islam, but one that perhaps predates it, stretching away into older, even prehistoric means of devotion and surrender.
The authority in these Sufi-inflected pieces is in their quality of stillness, in how they converse with silence, and how stay close to their secret centres – a simple piano phrase or melodic line, while expanding the music’s orbit around that centre. There’s space here, inner space rather than the space up there. It opens with the title track, a rumble of bass joining a staccato flurry of piano notes before a flute and percussion ease in through the spaces, a vocal chorale intoning the word "surrender". Further in, “Durga Piano” feasts on tanbur and limpid piano, while “Pastor Robson” features Culshaw’s keys paired with Aura Rascon’s bansuri on flute.
There are many transporting moments, and the set is, in part, a soundtrack, too, for Sama: To Listen, a feature-length movie by Darek Mazzone, filmed over three years in Morocco, Turkey and Malaysia, and premiering at the end of January in Seattle. The recording of Surrender to Love was also nomadic in nature, with sessions in London, Mumbai, Odessa, Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul and Brazil. This may suggest a sprawling, unboundaried epic of a set, but it’s a disciplined, compact collection of musical miniatures with a long reach, its 11 pieces spanning barely more than 35 minutes, transporting listeners to an inner space where no one will hear you scream, but they will hear your joy. We need a tumbler or two of that spirit to start off 2026.
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