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Gandharva Loka Shop Hours Into 2012

Dec 27th, 2011
by Vajin.
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Happy New Year!We are very happy to be open again at our new location on St Asaph Street – it is delightful to be nestled in with The Lotus-Heart vegetarian restaurant. Thanks so much to our friends and customers who have called us or come by over the past three weeks to wish us well – your kindness and good wishes have been most encouraging.

Just a short note to let everyone know our hours over the New Years break. Gandharva Loka Christchurch will be closed from Thursday 29th December until January 2nd. We will be reopening on the 3rd of January and will then continue with our regular hours.

Prasasta and I would like to wish everyone a peaceful, happy and safe New Year and we look forward to serving your musical needs at Gandharva Loka in the new year.

Vajin Armstrong
Gandharva Loka, Christchurch

Music is an indispensable thing. We don’t have to know what it looks like or what it does. Its very existence keeps us alive. Music means Self-expansion and oneness. The Self expands through music. The Self that expands is not the individual self but the unlimited Self. Music is the expansion of unlimited Reality. When the Unlimited expands, that is music. – Sri Chinmoy.

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Posted in: Christchurch, Gandharva Loka, Store Hours.
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Gandharva Loka Christchurch to re-open on December 6!

Dec 3rd, 2011
by Admin.
2 comments

We are delighted to announce that Gandharva Loka, Christchurch will be re-opening at 11am on Tuesday the 6th of December!

Our new location is:
363 St Asaph Street,
(Between Fitzgerald Avenue and Barbadoes Street)
Christchurch.

We have a lovely space that is accessed from the St Asaph Street entrance of The Lotus-Heart restaurant and tea house – a new location for the popular vegetarian restaurant that is also home to a lovely gift shop. At present a new facade is being installed so the building is shrouded in scaffolding. But prepare to be amazed when you step inside – the interior is enchanting!

We now have in stock the best range of instruments we have ever had and we are expecting that more instruments will be arriving in the next few days.

Our hours are:
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-3pm.
Friday evening 5pm-9pm.
We are happy to accommodate customers outside these hours by appointment if our regular store hours do not suit.

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Posted in: Christchurch, Gandharva Loka, Musical Instruments, New Instruments, News.
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Vajin Armstrong Selected For Commonwealth Trail Race

Aug 1st, 2011
by Prasasta.
1 comment

Since the earthquake that closed central Christchurch in February, the managers of Gandharva Loka Christchurch, Vajin and Prasasta Armstrong, have taken the opportunity to travel and find more sources for interesting and unique world instruments. They also attended the opening of the latest Gandharva Loka store on Granville Island in Vancouver and, for the first time, participated in the annual Gandharva Loka conference that brings together all of the members of the global Gandharva Loka family of stores. This years conference was held in Berlin and by all reports, it was a memorable occasion for all with workshops, concerts and plenty of joy!

Keen athletes both, Vajin and Prasasta have maintained their training schedules throughout their travels and have some wonderful news regarding Vajin’s running career. Prasasta reports from a running camp high in the Italian Alps…

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Posted in: Inspiration, News, Prasasta Armstrong, Vajin Armstrong.
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The Lotus-Heart is reopening!

Jul 24th, 2011
by Shardul.
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Along with hundreds of other businesses in central Christchurch, Gandharva Loka remains closed and somewhat homeless for now. Our world music store will reopen in Christchurch at some stage – we are just not sure when or where. It is a shared experience for many small businesses in Christchurch and one that can only be met with hope, optimism and determination. The spirit that makes Christchurch such a special place is the same spirit that will help us to accomplish the task of rebuilding this beautiful city.

The Lotus-Heart vegetarian restaurant and tea houseThere is always some good news though and we are very happy to be able to announce that The Lotus-Heart vegetarian restaurant is reopening this coming Wednesday (July 27) at a new location in St Asaph Street. The managers of Gandharva Loka in Christchurch, Vajin and Prasasta Armstrong, are also a part of The Lotus-Heart team and worked part-time at the restaurant in Cathedral Square. The original Lotus-Heart café, which was in the same block and two doors from Gandharva Loka, was also destroyed during the February 22nd earthquake. The building that The Lotus-Heart restaurant was in, the original Chief Post Office building in Cathedral Square, is still standing but, as with the entire central business district of Christchurch, remains unusable and closed for now.

Like Gandharva Loka, The Lotus-Heart is owned, managed and staffed by members of the Christchurch Sri Chinmoy Centre. Since April The Lotus-Heart team has been working very hard to convert and make ready an area within premises on St Asaph Street just outside the Christchurch CBD. This from The Lotus-Heart website:

The Lotus-Heart Restaurant & Tea House

We are delighted to advise that The Lotus-Heart will be open in a new location from Wednesday 27 July 2011, initially by reservation only. Kindly phone or send a text message to 021 256 6702 to make a reservation or online at Online Reservations.

We are eager to resume service and therefore will open with further renovations yet to come, so kindly bear with us as we fully develop our new location. Read more >>

Congratulations to all those involved in the rebuilding and reopening of The Lotus-Heart!

( By the way, its snowing in Christchurch … )

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Posted in: Cenral Businesses, Christchurch, News.
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National Interfaith Vigil for Christchurch

Jul 17th, 2011
by Shardul.
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Last night members of the New Zealand Sri Chinmoy Centre participated in a nation vigil for Christchurch organised by the New Zealand Interfaith Group. The event was held simultaneously in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin with various faith, spiritual and interfaith communities participating through video presentation, prayer, song, meditation and reflection. The members of our Christchurch Sri Chinmoy Centre sang two songs dedicated to New Zealand and Christchurch that were written by our meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy – and recited two of his prayers. Members of the Auckland Sri Chinmoy Centre recited a selection of Sri Chinmoy’s poems and sang one of his songs – all in the theme of ‘hope’. They also offered a short flute recital featuring two of Sri Chinmoy’s melodies.

Christchurch Vigil
Members of the Christchurch Sri Chinmoy Centre singing at the National Interfaith
vigil for Christchurch at St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in Christchurch.

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Posted in: Christchurch, Inspiration, Music.
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An Interview With Brendyn Montgomery

Jul 10th, 2011
by Shardul.
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Brendyn MontgomeryBrendyn Montgomery is a New Zealand born Irish traditional musician who plays and teaches the wooden flute, whistle and fiddle. In 2003, Brendyn earned an M.A. in Traditional Irish Music Performance with first class honours from the University of Limerick – the first person in Australasia to do so. His debut album Mountain Air collected the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand’s 2004 Tui Music Award for Best Folk Album. Brendyn records, travels and performs regularly, and is involved with Ceol Aneas in Nelson. Brendyn also designs websites and offers music courses online.

In this interview Brendyn offers his thoughts on growing up around the folk music scene, his development as a traditional Irish flute player and teacher, and shares with us his view of Irish music in New Zealand. This interview was recorded on Thursday July 15 – 2004. Our thanks to Brendyn Montgomery for kindly giving his time to record this inspiring and informative interview.

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Shardul: You were born in Dunedin and now live in Castle Hill. What do you like about living in Castle Hill? [Since the time of this interview, Brendyn has moved to Nelson.]

Brendyn Montgomery: For me really it’s the stillness. Castle Hill is not even really a village – there are no shops, no petrol station – nothing! There’s a little collection of houses and about ten of us live there permanently – the rest are all holiday homes. So in that sense, it’s still as there are not a lot of people around. But in a greater sense for me there is tranquillity about the place that I haven’t really encountered anywhere else, and because I do so much travelling, it’s really nice to be able to come home to Castle Hill and relax.

S: Is the proximity of the Southern Alps a factor? I hear you’re a big fan of the mountains.

BM: I just love the stillness. If I could, I would live in a place by the sea where I could see the mountains, but living amongst them is the next best thing. I love the cold and the effort of having to stay warm. Keeping the fires going is very vital; it’s very raw. Most of these experiences have been removed in the society that we live in now.

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Posted in: Inspiration, Interview, Music, Musicians, The Value of Music.
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Cultural Biodiversity: finding a sense of place

Jul 10th, 2011
by Admin.
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This article was written by Brendyn Montgomery in 2004 for the quarterly Flute Focus magazine (now an online publication) and is reproduced here with the permission of Flute Focus and Brendyn Montgomery.

Cultural Biodiversity: finding a sense of place

I sometimes wonder what led me to this place. I am an Irish flute player with a BSc in Zoology and an M.A. in traditional Irish music performance (1st class honours) and I have lived in Ireland. Yet I am a New Zealander. Brendyn MontgomeryI was born here, my parents were born here, and in fact, five generations of my relatives proceed me in this land…

My music does not come directly from my extended family as a neatly handed-down package as it so often does in Ireland. Irish has such a strong oral tradition in its homeland, where people live and breathe the music everyday. I live in a country where the society has evolved hugely from the societies that my ancestors left. The demise of the family unit and the freedom to choose your own path that has been slower to change in Ireland and Scotland, the countries of my ancestry. I am not against this change by any means; it simply means that many of the threads of the oral tradition have been broken.

Yet I am certain that the immigrants brought their music with them. My mother’s mother talks of how they played for dances from an early age, tunes that were handed down from the wider family. But that was lost as the family moved away to different parts of the country. I was bought up with both recorded and live music and was dragged to folk festivals from the age of six weeks. It is something I have grown to appreciate with time. This was not family music, but folk music of the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by technology and recordings from other parts of the world.

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Posted in: Article, Inspiration, Music, Musical Instruments, Musicians.
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