Welcome to episode #44, A Séance for Strings, featuring Iowa-born child prodigy, psychic violinist, composer, music educator, and author, Florizel von Reuter (1890-1985). Following an immensely successful career touring American and Europe as a child violinist, Reuter and his mother became devout séance practitioners during the 1920s. Through his mother, the medium, Reuter communicated with diverse composers and musicians using a unique séance device called the Hesperus-Additor. Through these spirit messages Reuter’s violin performance was psychically enhanced. He also wrote several books on medial communications and music, as well as fiction and a memoire of his experiences in Hitler-era Germany, where he helped German Jews evade the Nazis. Eventually walking away from his psychic interests, Reuter would focus on composing, teaching, and performing well into his 90s. This episode looks into the history of the planchette and ouija board, the “odic force,” and a truly inspired violinist. Welcome to the voice of the Od...

Welcome to episode 43, "The Prayerful Organist," featuring radio celebrity, virtuoso organist, Religious Science minister, and early pioneer of "new age" music, Irma Glen (1908-1982). After successful vaudeville music tours in her adolescence, Glen found a passion for the organ and became a renowned presence on radio and in the silent film theatres of Chicago. She would then become a household name through her role in diverse programs on NBC radio. Having studied comparative religion since childhood, Glen took to the new thought philosophy of Earnest Holmes' Religious Science during the 1950s. She soon became a minister and founded her own churches in California. But she would leave formal ministry in her later years to pioneer her unique "Prayer-Music." This episode explores Glen's life, the philosophy of Religious Science, and the incredible organ and spoken word music she recorded in the 1960s and 70s. Welcome to the Golden Melody...

Welcome to episode 42, "The Coloratura of Celestial Choice," featuring Spanish-Italian American opera singer, Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963). Through her opera career she accrued international renown and fortune, but this was cut short by a vocal injury in the 1930s. While her opera recordings have remained a touchstone in the genre up to the present, less remembered is her public embrace of Swedenborgian theology and Kriya Yoga, for both of which she served as a significant representative and devoted instrument. Welcome to the singing heart...