Taxi
Your music is melodically solid and memorable and the keyboard work---particularly the piano---is superb. You play and write with great feeling and that feeling comes through and is contagious.
Solo Piano Publications
Second Steps is pianist/composer Rada Neal’s second CD, and is made up of original compositions played as piano solos with and without synth and accordion. The music is beautiful, with strong classical influences, and Ms Neal’s playing is strong and expressive. The piano sound on some of the tracks is the CD’s only weakness. I always feel a little disappointed when there is a gorgeous concert grand on the CD cover and then the piano sounds electronic. I know I’m a purist in that regard, and the untrained ear might not be able to tell the difference, but music of this high quality deserves a good acoustic piano.
The CD opens with “We’re Free,” an anthem that conveys feelings of relief and triumph. The melody line is so well-defined that lyrics could suit it well, although they aren’t at all needed. “A Solemn Beauty” has a lovely, gentle flow and a lighthearted mood. “An Irish Lass” is a charming dance-like piece that is carefree and swirling. “Remembering When” is much darker and more somber. The piece is almost conversational with a poignant theme in the upper treble and a repeated theme in the bass that alternate. Beautiful! “Tomorrow’s Dream” opens with synth and piano playing a lovely melancholy melody. The accordion comes in for a couple of stanzas, giving the piece an interesting French flavor. “Taken Away” has a feeling of tragic loss. This piece is incredible in its emotional depth - electronic strings are unnecessary when the pianist is this expressive. “Mystique” is another favorite. Bittersweet and haunting, it reminds me of waltzes from the Romantic period - perhaps some of Schubert’s poignant minor key pieces. “A Brave Journey” becomes determined and intense and clearly demonstrates Ms Neal’s considerable playing chops. “Summer Breeze” is as gentle as its title implies - warm and refreshing. “Another Place, Another Time” has a sense of sadness and regret. Deeply emotional and evocative, it goes right to the heart. “Lamenting” is despair set to music. Moments of hope are interspersed, but a feeling of tragedy prevails - a knockout of a piece. “Little Things” concludes the album on a much lighter note.
Rada Neal’s music is exceptional if you like piano music with a strong classical influence.
-Kathy Parsons
Evolution of Media Entertainment
The latest discovery that I personally would like to expose all of you music Lovers who come to visit us here at E.O.M. to, is a wonderful new age/classical pianist by the name of Rada Neal located in the Colorado area, this unsigned treasure is sure to catch the ear of a record executive and win them over in the same fashion Rada has won us over here at the E.O. M. office.
Rada’s second release of original compositions, Second Steps is an enchanting and serene quest into the world of romance. Full of passionate and heartfelt melodies, the tone from the very first note just instantly sets the atmosphere, that will unquestionably fulfill any intimate moment.
There are three pianists that come to my mind when I think of simplicity and intensity combined together. Bill Evans, Bob James and Henry Mancini. Rada has mastered these attributes, but without a doubt has established her own voice with the piano.
Since romance is the focus of Second Steps, Rada records most of the song selections with just solo piano, and the occasional lite touches of synthesizers. Second Steps opens with a warm, Enya-ish “We’re Free”, which brings back the essence of Enya’s very first recording Enya then renamed The Celts. Even though there aren’t any vocals, you can vividly hear lyrics of love, passion and remembrance throughout songs like “A Solemn Beauty”, “Remembering When”, “Another Place, Another Time”, “Tomorrow’s Dream”, and “Summer Breeze”.
Second Steps is a sheer beauty, intoxicating and classic.
4. 0 stars reviewed by Maurice
The Pagosa Springs Sun
There’s a famous adage that states: if you do what you love the money will follow. Pagosa Springs pianist Rada Neal is counting on that every day as she sits at her piano, writes music and sends off a few more CD’s to radio stations from Texas to Singapore.
Rada Neal is a one-woman marketing team for her original solo piano work. She currently has 24 radio stations playing her songs and is on the verge of publishing her third CD of what she calls “new-age/classical piano.”
Upon hearing the term “new-age” it’s tempting to think of Rada Neal’s music as something accompanied by triangles or maybe chanting, but that’s not it. Rada Neals’ sound is far more Henry Mancini than Yanni. Deeply influenced by Mancini [ think “Moon River”] Rada says she can’t write a song without melody. Her work might be loosely compared to that of George Winston, and while she doesn’t bristle at the comparison, she doesn’t think it really fits.
“It might seem similar to what I am doing” she said “ But I am more cinematic than George Winston.”
Rada Neal was born in a Yugoslavian refugee camp in Germany in 1950. When she was seven weeks old her parents moved the family to America. A few years ago, Rada and her sisters uncovered a diary her mother kept from that time, written entirely in Serbian. They had the document translated and discovered that on the flight from Germany to Scotland to Canada and finally to the United States, her mother was ill and could not feed her. She fed her hungry child water on the planes to keep her quiet.
Rada is understandably proud of her immigrant parents who owned three properties free and clear in their lives and put four children through college without kin or English to help.
“My mother was an amazing woman,” said Rada, who said her mother was her greatest inspiration. “She spoke seven languages. She left home at 17 and never saw her family again.”
Rada Neal’s love of music was obvious early, but she claims it was a talent gifted by her mother. She was studying violin by age 7, but when some neighbors, who were moving overseas, left a giant piano behind, Neal got her start at piano. Her mother encouraged her.
Rada’s mother owned a small store and her father worked in a steel mill. Every Saturday her mother would pull $3.30 out of the register and give it to her to take a but to her piano teacher’s house.
“The going rate for piano teachers at that time was a dollar-fifty, so I had an expensive teacher,” Rada said, marveling at her mother’s commitment to helping her learn to play. “She knew I lover it. She had a passion for music too and I think she knew I could teach it to her.”
When her mother was 40 years old, Rada taught her to play the piano.
Rada graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music and taught music to elementary school children for 20 years in San Diego. Two years ago, Rada and her husband moved to Pagosa Springs. Her home and studio are situated in just the right place to guarantee unfettered, permanent views of Pagosa Peak and her attendants. Out of her kitchen window Chimney Rock stands in the distance. Her two Shi-Tzus, Romeo and Chico, are her constant companions in the tidy downstairs studio, which is home to a second grand piano, her keyboard, a computer and notes of encouragement from the radio station managers who have heard and played her music. Rada happily points out the utter silence in her studio.
“It’s just so beautiful and peaceful here, I just love it,” she said.
Like most artists in Pagosa Springs, Rada Neal is awed by the natural world just out the front door. She recalls heading out to cut down a Christmas tree one winter and the astonishment she felt at the total silence. Paraphrasing a friend she said “the snow was so heavy it muffled everything.”
Rada began expressing that wonder a few years ago by writing her own music. As a younger woman, she wrote very little as she believed there was so much good music already written. Now she feels the opposite.
“I didn’t know I’d be writing so much, “ said Rada who loves to find a good poem and set it to music. “The more I write the more I want to write. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to do this.”
As a result, her music is getting more complex and the emotion she feels from good poetry, found either on paper or out her front window, translate well. One piece entitled “At Nightfall” is alternately melancholy and sprightly. It bursts out of her piano like a soundtrack for little lovesick forest creatures who dart through dark rich ferns and dripping trees chasing one another.
One song, entitled “Mirror Set Me Free,” was based on a poem written by her sister, Sonja. It chronicles the struggle we face reconciling our inner lives to our outer ones. The song indeed sounds heavy with that conflict.
Rada has a log on her desk that lists all the radio stations she has contacted trying to get some airtime for her music. She spend s lot of time researching her market on the Internet. Like many local artists she has found that creating music is one thing and selling it is quite another. However, Rada is happy with her choices and assiduously works to expose her music.
“I just have faith I am going to do something,” she said. “Something in me tells me I have to do this.”
-Erin K.Quirk
Wind and Wire
Born in a Yugoslavian refugee camp in Germany in the years after World War II and immigrating to America with her parents in 1951, Radmila Jandrich (now Rada Neal) came to playing piano almost by accident. Neighbors of the Jandrich family in northern Indiana left them an upright model when they (the neighbors) moved away. Young Radmilla was fascinated with the instrument and her mother wisely found her a teacher. As the saying goes, "the rest is history." In this case, it's the history of a woman who developed her love of the piano into a career teaching students and passing on her love of the piano, as well as playing it professionally. The results of the latter, so far at least, are two recordings from Rada Neal of which this is her latest. Influenced by classical music, as well as the more romantically-themed new age pianists, Neal plays with heart-on-her-sleeve feeling and her softer pieces exhibit a warmth and flow that is easy to enjoy. Almost all of her compositions maintain a strong sense of structured melodic sensibility, sometimes quite stately in fact, hence the comparison to classical piano.
Second Steps contains thirteen instrumental tracks, some solo pieces and others featuring various electronic keyboard embellishments (strings and more new age-like textures). When Neal uses electronic accompaniment, it is usually sparsely applied and with discretion, such as the opening strings at the start of "We're Free" which serve more as a prelude to the main thrust of the muted but still powerful piano. The album's mood and tone varies from reflective and somewhat somber, such as on "Remembering When," to almost childlike and joyful ("An Irish Lass") to darker emotions, yet played out in faster than usual tempo (the haunting "Taken Away," which is another selection flavored with synth strings). I prefer the more optimistic tracks, purely from a standpoint of personal taste, such as the lively "My Mother's Garden" although some of the softer ones caught my fancy as well ("Summer Breeze" has a nice nostalgic glow to it, much like Jim Chappell's work on releases like Acadia and Living the Northern Summer). Neal even has a few tricks up her sleeve, as when she drops in some sampled accordion on "Tomorrow's Dream" which, for me, conjures up the image of walking down a small street in Paris, hand in hand with my wife, Kathryn. This track also features some of her better synth work with flowing new age style sounds offering the perfect amount of support.
It's always hard to come up with something to say about yet another new age piano recording so as to differentiate it from the many others out there without grasping for some obscurity. Obviously, after hearing as many CDs as I have, there are similarities between many of them. Rada Neal doesn't offer anything so revolutionary or original that I can state "You have never heard this before" However, she does play with solid technique and obvious feeling and her compositions are never trite or run of the mill, although her music is accessible and inviting. If your tastes run toward a blend of classical and traditional melodic new age styles in piano music, sometimes adorned with sparse keyboard accompaniment, Second Steps is going to please you and find a place on your shelf. It's perfect sunny afternoon or evening meal music, but also stands up to direct listening well enough.
