Naamleela Free Jones
Born in 1980, Naamleela has lived most of her life on a sacred island in Fiji. Since the age of five, she was privately schooled as a sacred musician, concentrating in depth in both Western and Indian classical traditions. Her training and disposition was always to create music that drew people out of themselves into communion with a greater divine reality, rather than to perform music to draw attention to herself. In this unique setting, her own ideas of musical form and sound developed, without the influence of the modern world.
As a teenager, she began to travel, and continued to receive training from numerous sources and teachers throughout California, New York, Europe, and Hawaii. Most notably she was a student of Indian Master Ali Akbar Khan and his College of Music. Urged on by the need to grow out of her classical training, to not only repeat the music she was taught, but find her own expression, she began to hear and compose her own music. This process came to fruit in her first entirely original album in 2005, "Eyes in Other Worlds", made in collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Damian Taylor (Bjork/ Frou Frou/ The Prodigy).
At the age of 10, she had set up her first beginner's music studio under the tutelage of a friend, platinum-selling composer Ray Lynch (Deep Breakfast, Sky of Mind). Since then she has been self-producing her own CD's, and is now a certified music producer through the Berklee College of Music Online. She currently lives in Fiji and is producing her music from there, looking to collaborate long-distance with other musicians and friends. Her albums to date cover a wide range of styles and talent, from classical piano, to jazz, to traditional chant, while all reflecting the focus and setting of her life which has always been that of feeling contemplation and communion with the Divine. Her music is inspired and dedicated to her Guru, the Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj.
Her albums to date include:
Hers To Me 2: New Devotional and Meditative Renditions of Western Piano Classics - Naamleela Free Jones (2007)
Eyes In Other Worlds: Songs of Poetry and Devotion - Naamleela Free Jones (2005)
Da Naama Mantra: The Eighty Variant Forms of the Ruchira Avatara Naama Mantra - Chanting by Naamleela Free Jones and Felix Woldenberg (2006)
Ishta Da: Original Devotional Chants - Singing by Naamleela Free Jones and Tamarind Free Jones (2004)
Ruchira Avatara Gita: The Way of the Divine Heart Master - Devotional Chanting by Naamleela Free Jones (2001)
Bach In Time: Improvisations on the Preludes of J.S. Bach - Naamleela Free Jones and the John Mackay Trio (2000)
Hers To Me: Devotional and Meditative Renditions of Western Piano Classics - Naamleela Free Jones (1997)