Come along on a powerful musical journey inspired by the ups and downs of being a stranger in a new country.
The music explores universal human experiences: feelings of loneliness, worries about not being good enough, and the evolution we undergo as existing friendships change or fade while new connections spring to life.
This journey culminates in the realization that as we bear each other up and connect with one another, we make the world a more beautiful place for all of us.
Silver Medal Winner – Best Album – Global Music Awards
Praise for Encounters of the Beautiful Kind:
Rachel LaFond is back, and she has created a masterful collection of compositions which will literally take the listener on a musical journey, they will never wish to return from, essences of reflection, moments of empowerment and arrangements of joy, all can be found here. Encounters of the Beautiful Kind is one of the most fluent and intelligent albums to be released in the solo piano genre for ages.
As we worked with Rachel, we found her music and performance beautiful and very moving. Her latest work will bear this out!
With her second solo piano release, Encounters of the Beautiful Kind, Rachel LaFond removes any doubt that hers is a powerful new voice in contemporary music.
The Singles
Luminous
Luminous came to me on a stormy morning, scuba diving in New Zealand’s Northland after a long time away from the underwater world. Suspended effortlessly beneath the waves, gazing into the blue, I felt I could just as easily have been floating in a sea of stars. I felt connected to the mysterious, the numinous, to a greatness inside myself…and in that moment I heard music.
Luminous is a call to fill life with activities and people that inspire unbridled joy. For me scuba diving lives up to that call, but when the music of Luminous came to me I had been too long away from the water. You could say I’d been caught up in the busy-ness that makes up everyday life, an overwhelming tidal wave of “shoulds” and obligations that I realized had been keeping me from those things and people that truly bring me great joy.
It’s a reminder for me to be more luminous in and about my everyday life, or at least the parts I can choose and control. I hope it might inspire you to do the same.
Your Beauty Calls Me
I wrote Your Beauty Calls Me the day I took delivery of my new piano, a gorgeous Yamaha C7 straight from Japan. I had traveled around the world for a year before settling in New Zealand, and so had gone an entire two years without having my own piano.
For an artist who has always had a beautiful piano I could play whenever I wanted, there was a piano-shaped hole in my heart for those years. When this special piano was delivered that midwinter afternoon, it was like falling in love all over again…