'Take this love' is sung by Asha Elijah (aka Asha & Asher Quinn), and is written with Oliver Riz. It appears on Asha's album "Knights & Angels." CD & download available here ~ http://ashaquinn.com/knightsandangels.htm.
Female vocals & vocal arrangement by Székely Ilus (Yloush).
Oliver and I are both pianists and composers, and he recently invited me to collaborate on a song. We both play from the heart, intuitively. Oliver is an instrumentalist, which is how I started out myself some thirty years ago, and I've gone on to focus more on writing lyrics and singing; Oliver continues to create beautiful instrumental pieces, and is also now working on film-scores. We are also both inspired to create music that aspires to, and is derived from, a sense of the spiritual world beyond our ordinary reality.
Music has the unique power to heal, elevate and uplift, more than any other art form. For myself I begin by needing to heal my own heart through song, and then I offer that song up to the world, so it can fly free. I suspect Oliver does pretty much the same thing. We inspire each other, and whilst we both have struggled manfully to create a basic commercial infrastructure each in our own way, we actually make music because we love it so much, and I think I can also speak for him when I say that we both feel guided to compose, perhaps even 'commanded!'
I first heard Oliver play the piano when he was about 22, and I was giving a concert at a spiritual festival in his native Budapest, with his Mum, Laura Riz, providing vocal accompaniment on stage. We were rehearsing, chatting and drinking tea, and he just glided in and began to play spontaneously. I instantly found his flowing, heart-felt style deeply moving. I thought: "Okay, this guy plays music from another world. Actually, I recognise that world! It's where I'M from!!"
The music that we know and understand best is from the plane of beauty, harmony and peace; it is an angelic plane of existence.
Oliver has also been actively involved in developing music for healing (if the emotional heart receives healing, mind and body can follow suit), and I make album after album of spiritually-themed love songs, and film-clips to accompany the songs.
I have a sweet history with the Riz family! Laura sang on an album of mine some ten years ago. She originally came to meet me in London one day, to see if I could help her place her own music in the UK (which I did) and she then sang on the album I was recording at the time ("High Planes Music") and later sang with me at that festival.
And now I live in her brother's flat in Budapest, my adopted city. I rent from Oliver's uncle Adam! And Oliver and I have this year created the collaboration you hear in this film.
Budapest is a marvellously inspiring city spiritually and artistically, and I have migrated there. My soul feels very at home in mystical, magical Hungary! I filmed for 'Take this love' up in the sacred Pilis Mountains, just north of the city. The Danube winds its way through these mysterious, ancient hills, and where the river (known as 'The Mother') bends away towards the Slovak border, there is this elementally warm and welcoming place called Dömös. I go there often now, and it felt like the perfect spot to make this film.
Oliver was inspired by the transcendent, healing beauty of Christ when he composed this music, as I was when I wrote the words. The final sparkling addition to the song came when friend, neighbour and colleague Székely Ilus (Yloush) arranged and sang female accompanying vocals, that took the whole thing even higher. So this song is an offering to the higher worlds, created in gratitude for the love and blessings we receive from on high. And it's also an invitation, an invocation, even. The message is clear and bright: Take this love!
