Janet Dunbar's 'Spirit Journey' started in childhood and led to a recording studio at Stanford University




Photograph by Kathy De La Torre







Vision Quest

Saratoga musician finds peace in the journey of life

By Shari Kaplan

In calling her first CD Spirit Journey, Saratoga musician, singer, composer and recording artist Janet Dunbar did more than name a compilation of intriguing music, song and spoken poetry; she titled the collective experiences that culminated in November with the release of the album and the spiritual energy contained within it.

In keeping with the idea that life is a journey and not a destination, Dunbar hopped on her creative path early. She says she remembers loving music and singing when she was as young as 3 years old. As a girl, the native of Tenafly, N.J., used up her allowance not on candy or toys, but on singles--vinyl 45s--of her favorite songs to play on her record player. "One of my favorites was 'Red River Valley.' I played that thing until it was gray!" she recalls.

Another fond memory involves her first transistor radio, which she acquired when she was 5 or 6. Dunbar and that radio became inseparable. "I couldn't go to sleep without my transistor. As long as I had my music, I was fine," she says, adding that she liked to close the door and enjoy her tunes in the privacy of a quiet, dark room.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

Janet Dunbar works in the recording studio at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University.




"My younger sister, who I shared the bedroom with, used to get upset about that because she was afraid of the bogeyman. She wanted to keep the door open," she adds, laughing.

By the time she was a teenager, Dunbar could play piano, guitar and flute--thanks to professional lessons and self-teaching--and had been singing and performing in choirs, school glee clubs and talent shows for many years.

Dunbar also played with small bands and classical ensembles, in which she developed an interest in composing based on her skills in improvising pop, folk and jazz tunes. After earning a bachelor's degree in psychology from Duke University in Durham, N.C., she moved to Berkeley and was influenced by the myriad musical styles from around the world that came together in that community. She took a job at the Fiat Music Co. in Pinole, where gave a variety of singing and musical instrument lessons through the store; every time her employers discovered another instrument Dunbar played, they asked her to teach it, she says.

The job at Fiat helped pay for her master's degree in instrumental music at San Jose State University, although she also worked as a medical secretary and transcriptionist, too. The Fiat job, however, was the most profitable in ways other than financial. It led to her acquaintance with Richard Holmes, a drummer, guitarist and poet who worked with Fiat and with whom Dunbar found herself discussing various work-related details over the phone. A friendship developed, which led to a mutual desire to meet in person. Dunbar remembers how they both toted their guitars on their "first date" so each could recognize the other.

Holmes later became Dunbar's husband, the father of their two sons (now 6 and 10) and manager of their independent recording label, Amberlight Productions.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

April Eiler (left), who contributed poems and lyrics to Dunbar's CD, works with Dunbar in the recording studio at Stanford University.




Dunbar, in addition to studying instrumental music at SJSU, took classes in voice, musical composition and electronic music. In 1994, she continued her education--on a full scholarship and teaching stipend--by pursuing a doctoral degree at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. In the process of earning a doctorate in composition and computer music, Dunbar spent many hours in the recording studio and at the computer, experimenting with audio software, digital signal processing plug-ins and algorithmic composition computing programs.

The Stanford center's users pronounce its name as "Karma," based on its initials CCRMA, Dunbar says. It did provide some good karma for Dunbar several years ago, when Bay Area poet April Eiler and visual artist Nina Koepcke found Dunbar through their affiliation with the South Bay Women's Caucus for Art. They teamed up in a collaborative project for Visual Cymbals, a multimedia exhibition at an SJSU art gallery: Koepcke created an installation of a mystically arranged circle of trees; Eiler wrote her Life on Earth poems; and Dunbar composed instrumental music. Although the three women brainstormed together, Eiler says she had no idea what Dunbar was composing until she shared it with Eiler, who then recited her poetry over the music. The outcome was a soundtrack gallery visitors could listen to on headphones inside the tree installation.

"I was thrilled because I really felt it was a wonderful match for what I was writing and Nina was making. It wasn't what I thought I'd normally listen to when I first heard it, but after listening to it, I felt it was wonderful," Eiler recalls. The recording she made back then now appears on Spirit Journey.

"I love the way Janet works; she's unquestionably honest and true to her own vision and her own ear. She has a very pure style," Eiler adds.

Janet Dunbar practices the guitar




Photograph by Kathy De La Torre







The Visual Cymbals installation caught the eye--and ear--of another Bay Area poet and artist, Jacqueline Thurston, who teaches at SJSU. She liked the music she heard, inquired about its composer and contacted Dunbar. These connections led to Thurston reciting her own evocative poetry on many of Spirit Journey's 22 tracks. On some tracks, Dunbar sings the lyrics as well.

"Janet sings melodies that keep coming back into your ears long after the music has stopped. There is also a magical quality in the timbral collages that envelope the interludes of dramatic poetry recitation," Holmes says.

Some of Thurston's poetry, excerpted from her Song of the Shaman, Song of the Sea and Song of the Bear, may strike a familiar chord with local listeners; they were featured in Thurston's multimedia exhibit Cycle of Songs at the Gallery at Villa Montalvo in January and February 1999.

Dunbar's music is equally evocative and runs the gamut from meditative environmental sound collages to world music-inspired melodies to sounds that defy common adjectives. Although she does most of her work at CCRMA, she also has a mini studio in her home, complete with recording equipment such as a mixer, headphones, a compressor, a digital sound module, a digital sampler, a keyboard and a CD-ROM drive on her computer that lets her record "rough draft" CDs.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

Although she appreciates and uses high-tech equipment, Dunbar also enjoys...




"Electronics is fast becoming its own type of instrument," says Dunbar, who despite this still plays her favorite low-tech instruments, including the piano and guitar that greet anyone walking through the house.

Walking through her front door was diffficult for Dunbar earlier this year, when she underwent knee-replacement surgery to "once and for all" fix the joint that had troubled her with injuries and discomfort for years. Although her CD is not specifically about this episode in her life, Dunbar says it nonetheless has given the CD even more meaning for her.

"Going through the surgery, I relate very much to people who are confined in some way and not able to get around physically. For some people, their journeys have to be in their mind's eye or in a spiritual way," she says.


Photograph by Kathy De La Torre

...the pure simplicity of a piano, a guitar or a flute.




With Spirit Journey, Dunbar says she hopes to bring peace and healing to her listeners and to help create a balance between the masculine and feminine sides of the psyche--appealing to both the warrior and the nurturer, as it were, in everyone.

"I've always needed music; it's like the air that I breathe. Creating music is a spiritual experience for me. You could call it Muse, God, Goddess--I feel a spirit that moves me," she says, smiling. "I have confidence that whatever I'm allowing to come through me is right and will help me come out with something beautiful. It heals that part of me that has a yearning to express itself."

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Copies of Spirit Journey may be obtained from Dunbar's website, www.amberlight.com, from Amazon.com and at selected Tower Records stores. For more information, call 408.378.9313.

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