Souls Colliding : In Conversation With Hannah Reimann

In this delightful conversation with new Insight Timer guide, actress, singer and musical disruptor, Hannah Reimann, what happens when soul paths intersect. Hannah also shares a sample of her new ambient track Mi Corazon which you will find on the app.

Transcript

So welcome to my first podcast stroke broadcast in ages,

You've just been listened to me car song by the wonderful honor Ryman who I'm speaking to today.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Thanks for being my first guest in sounds like a year or so.

How about that?

Very very happy to be here Tom.

What a pleasure.

Yeah.

Well listen to me.

This podcast is entitled souls colliding and our our souls Khalid that's I know it's not a word but it's and you're now I've got to say I'm so I'm really proud of you.

You are now an insight timer meditation guide.

I am.

I have to thank you for that Tom and your suggestion.

Yeah.

So how easy was that for you what what how what was that transition like from a person has been you know amazing performer you're an actress you're a musician you're we'll talk about strato pianos a bit later on and I'll have you you're innovator you're an innovator of change and and and a disruptor.

So how did the how did the transition from being an insight timer meditator to an insight timer meditation guide go.

You know I honestly didn't expect it at all.

I I love insight timer.

I tell a lot of my friends it's my favorite app right now because everyone is so friendly.

There's such a positive vibration.

I I it crossed my mind that I could have music on it because when I first started singing I was billed as a new age artist but it really didn't become conscious until you had heard my music and said you know you should be on here and I just immediately embraced it.

I did a little research listening to other people's work and just to understand exactly how this whole thing took place and I have to say that even the administration in you know becoming introduced and uploading and answering the questionnaire and all of that it was different than other experiences online.

I don't want to say it was less professional because it is professional.

It was just a little bit more friendly and personal and less mechanical and definitely involved working with other people at a back and forth exchange that I knew were human beings and not just AI you know or a program or a blank form.

So for all the millions of people who are on insight timer I my hands go off to all of you you teachers who have been around on it for years and who have created this community.

I personally find it truly inspiring and I'm really honored to be on this platform.

So for other people that might be thinking of making that same transition from being a listener to a producer and creator and it's fair to say you're not mega technical.

How did you find the upload process and all that kind of stuff?

There was quite a bit of back and forth.

Sometimes there were some there were some things that were unclear to the admin and me so we you know but it didn't bother me.

I just you know I just carried on.

It was not difficult.

It was just more steps than usual but it's not difficult and you have to have the willingness to understand the high resolution images and to purchase some if you need to because any old images from your laptop or from nature or whatever they might not meet the criteria that insight timer calls for that helps the app look really beautiful and that was what that was one little stumbling block but but I got over it.

And with your actual material itself did you have to do much to change your material so it's more insight timer friendly or were you is your output kind of ready to go on insight timer?

Well like I said when I first started writing music I was billed as a new age artist in the early 2000s.

It was a long time ago and I write many many different genres of music.

I can write to order.

I've written to order since I was in my early 20s and people just ask me to write music for them.

I get hired to do it.

So I picked the selections that I thought fitted insight timer like a progressive rock number with big drums and guitars.

I wouldn't put that on insight time but the bottom of the sea which was the first song I wrote for commercial use after my mother died which it was me overcoming the grief that I had and writing something to to help me through it.

Other people have told me that it's helped them feel better to listen to so I thought that might be a natural choice to put up there.

And I write piano music that sounds kind of new agey or it's just it's very meditative so I intend to do more of that and I put a short track of that as a free track to start as well.

Let me just ask you one more slightly technical stroke legal question which people will be fascinated by.

You also sing a lot of Joni Mitchell's music don't you live.

So I guess also there's a copyright issue about you've been able to put a Joni Mitchell track up there.

Well I haven't investigated that.

I decided to just deal all with original music on insight timer because they do on the forum for the music they do make sure that it's copyrighted material and you have permission and Joni Mitchell's music is very expensive to license for certain things.

I honestly haven't looked into it maybe maybe I should do that now for a recording.

It's different than putting it in a film like I had I have a couple of movies that are that are up online.

One is for sale and one's for both but both of them earn me some money but one is free for viewers and I wanted to license Joni Mitchell's music for one of my films My Father's House because it's really part of the story.

I started playing her music when my father got very ill but it was so expensive even back in 2012.

Now she's a mega star again.

A lot of people didn't even know her back then.

She and company you know they were quite demanding and it was just it was just out of my budget.

Yeah and your audience has found her and Kate Bush recently haven't they?

Well I'm happy she's made a comeback you know because before she had an Instagram page people under you know 35 or 40 a lot of them a lot of them still don't know who she is when I talk to kids.

Yeah and she's performing again I believe.

So this is you now.

So you're now all the things you used to be plus you're an Insight Time meditation guide.

How did our souls collide?

How did you find because there's about 19,

000 20,

000 teachers.

How did you find this bloke in England called Tom Evans?

What was the first meditation you heard of mine?

Oh my god Tom I can't remember.

I've listened to so many of your tracks.

It might have been the one of your top tracks that pops up about like the perfect way to get to sleep at night because I've had such I've had such problems sleeping like so much of the planet and there's just thousands and thousands of sleep tracks on Insight Timer.

But if I go to sleep preparation talks you know your perfect way to get to sleep is right up there 1.

2 million plays.

Isn't that incredible?

Isn't that incredible?

And I think I honestly can't remember but I know that I've taken several of your courses and I would send you reviews and I just found you fascinating and delightful.

I mean I'm looking at this there was one about time and timefulness.

You were extremely insightful and I felt an affinity for your work.

So I could not resist writing reviews which I don't always do.

I really don't have time to do that most of the time but I was struck.

And then you wrote to me and then we decided to have a chat like this and I was really happy that you wanted to hear my music.

Wow and it's been three or four months hasn't it since you know your transition has been that quick really.

Yeah I think you and I met back in August and then it was like around October that the process of me getting my tracks up was moving along.

It does take a bit of time you know.

So let me talk about another amazing aspect of your work and I think the thing that really drew me to you and this is your role in life as a disruptor.

And this whole thing about pianos and the width of the keys and making them a little bit narrower so more people can play them more brilliantly.

Stretto being an Italian word for is it thinner or shorter?

Narrow.

It has a musical meaning too for executing things but it physically means narrow.

So yes I was a rabble rouser back in the 1990s when I was still a student.

One of my teachers told me you can play anything now you're playing great I've taught you everything I know but your hands are a little small.

Why don't you try to find a Joseph Hoffman keyboard for your piano or a piano with Joseph Hoffman keys and I had no idea what he was talking about.

I think I knew vaguely who Joseph Hoffman was but I didn't know that this composer and friend of Rachmaninoff's back in the 20s,

30s,

40s had several pianos made by the Steinway and Sons Piano Company for him that had narrow keys because he was diminutive.

Rachmaninoff was six foot six and could reach a 13th and Hoffman probably could reach well definitely an octave and maybe a ninth and he was diminutive.

So Steinway made these small keys for him.

So I searched high and low and it was very frustrating.

I couldn't find any of these old Steinway pianos so I had my own Steinway piano rebuilt to have smaller keys and suddenly I was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and millions of people all over the world knew about me and everybody was writing me letters and calling me up back in those days when you know we didn't email we had telephones that you talked and we had papers and you know pens people sent me handwritten letters.

It was really one of the most exciting times that I can remember from that period of my life because I thought wow everybody's responding to this there's a demand for this and in short I've made it my mission to help this global community have pianos that fit them to give people everywhere in the world to have a choice of piano key size so they can play whatever they want to play and not just Mozart and Bach if they're classical musicians with small hands they can play bigger pieces they can reach larger intervals and there's less of a limitation.

Wow and you run a series of concerts is that annual now?

We're in our fourth year of the International Stretto Piano Festival and I created something called Stretto Piano Concert so that we could have year-round events but we've had a global festival since 2021 and like the height of the pandemic so all of the concerts were online the first year and then the second and third year I started producing live events in New York and this fourth year we're going to have events all over the world in person and it's the most challenging and demanding and uplifting time for our community.

I should call say for this movement because it's not really a community it's a global movement it's an invention that's been suppressed by about a hundred for about a hundred years and we are influencing manufacturers to create new instruments it's very very exciting.

And are they coming on board?

Are manufacturers coming on board and actually going stretto?

There are three manufacturers one is in Germany they're called Steingraber,

One is in Latvia they're called Klavins Piano and then there's a big Chinese company called Heilun Piano and they're all offering pianos with narrow keys now.

Wow and Stretto for anybody that's listening to this on audio is s-t-r-e-t-t-o is that right?

That's right and the website is strettopianoconcerts.

Org.

You can see our teaser video you can see dozens of artists from the 80 concerts or more than 80 concerts I've produced over these past three plus years and pretty soon we're going to have some images of what's coming up soon.

Wow so let me ask you how can you do all of these things?

I mean just doing that alone is like a life's mission but also you know you go on stage and you sing Gionee Mitchell one of my favorite artists.

I think that's another thing that drew me to you and made our souls collide.

How do you fit it all in?

It is too much.

I mean my goal is to raise enough money for Stretto Piano Concerts that I can stop teaching.

I mean I love my students I don't want to stop teaching but I think I need to devote myself to the global movement.

I can't stop playing or recording because my identity as an artist is really important but I think that's going to make my life a little bit more manageable if I have like maybe four jobs instead of five.

Maybe three instead of four but I feel as if I'm the only person in the northeast with one of these pianos in a public space.

I have a seven foot four Steinway that I've offered to the public.

I've lived without that piano since 2018.

This is a different piano.

This is a piano I inherited from my father.

It's a Humberg Steinway with normal size keys but my Stretto Piano is in a recording studio now.

So yeah my goal is really to devote myself and raise enough money for us for my assistant and I to have full-time jobs within the next year or two and to be serving people all over the world building a venue in New York City where people can come from all over the world to play this piano and other pianos.

Lately I've decided I'd like to create this piano museum by day and concert hall by night because that might be even more practical you know.

Nice,

Nice and there's a lovely program in the UK called Piano where people have piano in a railway station and people just turn up and play it and they find rising stars which is just a wonderful thing.

Maybe we need Stretto Pianos in British railway stations.

We do,

We do and we do have some British collaborators you know in Cheetham School,

I think it's in Manchester.

Yeah that's where I come from,

Manchester yeah.

I'll find out the exact location but we had some wonderful young artists last year and we'll see what's going on for this year.

Yeah now you mentioned your father in passing there and I've got to say that you shared with me early on after our souls collided because you took my soul path course.

I think that was the thing that really threw you into my consciousness and what have you.

It's happened with lots of people as well.

I wrote that course to bring like-minded souls together and it's done exactly that.

That was it.

And the confluence of soul waves because it came from my novel Soul Waves.

We'll talk about that in a separate podcast later on.

But you shared with me the video of your father's house.

I mean it's so,

So moving.

Obviously you were,

It wasn't just you there on camera,

There was the music,

There was the narration,

There was the script and obviously a very personal story about you and your father.

Well thank you Tom.

Yeah I was pretty devastated when my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

I was his only local relative for many years.

So it's a love story,

This short film.

It's about my mother and father and how we lost her early on and how my father's life progressed in a way,

The relationship between trauma and memory loss.

It was also my way to cope because my own health and happiness was faltering being his caretaker and watching him deteriorate.

So I need to make things when life gets rough for me.

I don't know,

Going through life,

If you're a creator,

That's what you do,

You make things.

So I needed to make something and I had made about 20 films as an actor and I thought,

Well,

You know,

I could do it with these students,

I could do it with these small groups and I think I can make this film.

I'm just going to start hiring some cinematographers and sound people and eventually I had to get my own camera because my father just really wouldn't tolerate other people in the house after a certain stage of his illness.

But I yeah,

Love him madly.

He was such a special person and both of my parents,

They stay with me.

So Ashley,

Do they still guide you from the other side?

Definitely.

I talk to them all the time.

And how do they guide you down the career path?

You can't call what you do a career anyway,

It's a calling really.

How did they drive you before that?

So we got the person we see in front of us now,

This amazing polymath and disruptor.

How did they guide me when I talked to them?

When they were alive,

When they were in the earth plane.

They were both physicians and they were both crazy about classical music,

Very devoted to the arts.

I think they were a little worried about me because,

You know,

It's kind of typical for an Asian parent like my mom.

I'm half Korean and all Korean women have to play piano,

Violin or flute or one of those things and,

You know,

Get to a pretty high level.

I think my mother was a bit scared that I wasn't going to be able to take care of myself if I became a musician.

But my father,

I mean,

Eventually she accepted it.

Longer story I can elaborate on,

But she was a wonderful person.

She was a psychoanalyst and even though she was very feet on the ground and scientific,

There was a part of her spiritually that had a lot of faith and a lot of goodness in her.

But she challenged me.

My father,

On the other hand,

Was just thrilled that I was a piano teacher.

I mean,

He's written a little plaque for me that says,

You know,

Without culture,

There is no civilization.

People like me are responsible for that.

I'm still trying to find the right frame for that little typewritten piece that he wrote to me,

You know,

How much he loves me.

So my father's faith in me and my music and how much he cared about what I did and that I have students and that I have my own music.

He was an amateur musician and he wrote music and he taught me my first Beethoven and Bach.

So we had a really strong link as musicians.

So obviously,

We are the sort of synthesis of our parents' DNA,

And it sounds like that synthesis has produced the amazing soul that we've got in front of us right now.

Thank you.

What's the plan going forward?

We spoke just before this chat that we'd do this interview going backwards in time,

Which is the first one I've ever done.

I normally start like,

How did it all start and how did you get here?

But it's been intriguing to go slightly backwards in time.

What's the near future holding for you?

Well,

The near future,

I've got a little gig next week where I'll be singing a couple of songs from my upcoming EP.

For Insight Timer and this interview,

You know,

I'm offering this ambient remix of a song called Mi Corazon.

I talked to my producer in Los Angeles,

Peter Rafelson,

Who's a wonderful person.

He and we decided it would be good to make a remix that was unique for Insight Timer that would really fit in with this platform and that would be timed together with the release of the EP.

The EP will have three songs on it that's coming out on February 29th.

Then I'll probably be performing my music and Joni's music at the International Stretto Piano Festival,

May 25th through June 2nd.

So,

You know,

Like March and May are important times and I'm just going to be working my tush off with all the artists and the venues and,

You know,

Publicity and all.

I mean,

It's very,

Very short time from now to May in the entertainment industry.

So I pretty much have my plate full with that.

But then,

You know,

Things like the gig I have next week,

Which is really just going to be like fashion and champagne and some love songs a few days before Valentine's Day and the night before the Chinese Lunar New Year.

The Year of the Dragon is this year.

It'll just be a fun party.

So I do things like that.

And I'll actually be singing some operatic literature for a memorial service on the following Sunday,

Which I'm really excited about because I don't focus on classical repertoire as a concertizer.

But I was asked to sing the song by Vivaldi,

Which I really love.

When you're when you're putting out pop records,

You don't think about singing opera as often.

But it's time for me to kind of come out of the closet as a multi-genre artist in 2024 and just do whatever I do,

However I do it.

So,

You know,

We're fortunate on Insight Timer.

It's not just an app where people can listen to stuff or listen to the original timer that where it all came from,

But also it's a community.

So if anyone's listening to this conversation on Insight Timer,

We'll put it out on YouTube as well so they can see our faces.

What would you like from the community?

What would you like them to do to help you?

Oh,

I would love to share as much music with the community as I can.

Please listen to our new ambient remix.

This is the only place you'll find it for now.

Oh,

If you'd like to donate to Stretto Piano Concerts and come and try my piano in New York City,

I invite everybody to that.

It's a really worthwhile charity.

If anyone wants to make a tax-deductible donation,

We got $6,

000 this past week.

We'll go to producing all the live events in May.

Oh,

I mean,

I could think of lots of things we could do,

But it would also just be nice to meditate together.

I love my friends on Insight Timer who say,

Thank you for meditating with me.

Let's make friends and let's meditate together.

If you're in New York City,

Reach out to me.

You can reach me at strettopianoconcerts.

Org.

Hopefully,

My website will be up and running soon.

I'm also on Instagram at Hannah Ryman Music.

You can reach me there or Hannah Ryman Music and Film on Facebook.

Write to me.

Reach out to me.

Tell me who you are and what you do.

Let me know what I can do as well.

Fabulous.

Well,

Listen,

It's been really,

Really good to chat to you today and just do a little temporal exploration back in time and a little bit forwards as well.

I hope this is the first of many conversations we'll have over the coming months and years.

Shall we just put a sneak preview there of your new ambient?

Do you want to just explain a little bit about the meaning behind it and what you want it to convey apart from just being a series of wonderful notes?

All right.

Well,

I wrote this song a long time ago.

It's been on the airwaves since the early 2020s.

It's been on XM Satellite Sirius Radio for a long time.

I get royalty checks,

But I've never promoted it.

I was very shy about my music.

It's a love song to a person who isn't present.

It's about being alone and being in love and feeling the presence of someone who isn't physically there.

It's about missing someone and loving them peacefully and joyfully and sensually without any worry or doubt.

Mi Corazon means my heart.

It was very much inspired by the music of Astor Piazzolla,

Who is an Argentinian composer that I was obsessed with at the time that this song came to me.

I was married to a famous classical musician who was on the road all the time.

He played 80 to 100 concerts all over the world.

We were separate.

We had a two-week rule that if he was gone for more than two weeks,

I would get on a plane and go to wherever he would be.

I think that's probably where the song came from,

Although you never really know consciously when you write a song because it just comes out.

You write a song.

It's not a premeditated or calculated thing.

It's an inspired,

More spiritual thing.

At least that's my experience.

So that's Mi Corazon.

This is one of many mixes we'll have.

It's got more instruments on it.

It's got Peter's genius production and knowledge of this kind of ambient music.

I'm very excited about it.

I hope you'll enjoy it very much.

Wow.

Well,

Thank you.

From my heart to yours,

Thank you for sharing that.

Thanks for sharing the backstory too.

It's always very important when we hear something else.

Let's listen to a snippet of it.

We want people to go to Insight Time and listen to the full song on there and the full music.

Thank you so much.

It's been a lovely conversation with you.

Thanks for exploring and sharing your wisdom and your journey.

You're welcome.

Thank you,

Tom.

It's always wonderful to be with you.

Mi Corazon Phantoms of you are here to remind me Touching me as I lay in my repose I feel I'm in chains Please don't deny me your sweet return My sweet Corazon Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah Oh