TRAVELING IN RAIN incorporates a variety of guitars played with other instruments including violin, steel drum, accordion, percussion and the verrophone, Sascha Reckert's modern version of the glass armonica. Eister is joined on this album by violinist Brynn Albanese, steel drummer Patty Dee, and verrophonist Philipp-Alexander Marguerre. Eister's guitars on this album include standard classical guitar, requinto, terserola, electric guitar, electric bass, baroque guitar, resonator guitar in just intonation, lap steel guitar and standard acoustic guitar. The album includes the guitar ensemble music from Eister's music theater piece, SLEEP. While the ensemble is made of instruments more often found in popular music ensembles, Eister's compositional method is thoroughly classical, using percussion decoratively and having the pitched instruments carry the rhythms of the music. Eister's melodic and harmonic world is a blend of both classical and world music traditions. LINDA RONSTADT said this about Eister's music: "I love it. I don't get tired of it." •in an interivew aired on KCBX radio on 9/30/03 ALBERT SIMON writes of " ... the subtleties of his music- the sudden stops, the whispers, the joy of soaring to the light." •in UHF MAGAZINE, September, 2006 MARISA WADDELL found it "... twisted just enough to float the listener into a 21st Century orbit." •in the KCBX program guide, AIRTIMES, May/June, 2002. RICHARD AMES describes Eister's music as "...full of energy and drive, bold yet subtle, a unified center expressed in terms of constant variety..." •in the SANTA BARBARA NEWS PRESS, Summer 1979. Garry Eister’s music has been performed and/or recorded by the Emerson String Quartet, conductor Kent Nagano, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Sinfonia di Vetro, the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, flautist Fred Lau, percussionist Doug Ovens, glass armonicist Dennis James, guitarists Lily Afshar, John Schneider, James Edwards, Peter Yates and Jesus Saiz-Huedo, singers John Duykers, Jackie Kreitzer, Jonathan Mack and Hector Vasquez and many others. His work has been heard at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Kennedy Center, the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Symphony Space in NY, LA’s Microfest, the 2005 La Guitarra California Festival and at concerts in San Francisco, Paris, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Oslo, Stockholm, Tehran, a number of cities in Holland and other cities around the world. Eister's recorded works can be heard on his own Eister Music label as well as on SONY Classical and Archer Records. Violinist Brynn Albanese has played with some of the world’s greatest orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony. Presently, she is co-concertmaster of the Monterey Symphony and principal second violinist of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. Patty Dee has played the steel drums at Carnegie Hall, the Live Oak Music Festival and with the San Luis Obispo Symphony with her steel drum band, the Sizzling Pandoliers. Since 2002, pianist Philipp-Alexander Marguerre has devoted himself to playing music on instruments made of glass. In this capacity he has been a guest performer in some of the world’s great opera houses including Sydney Opera, the San Francisco Opera, La Scala di Milano and Semper Opera Dresden. He is frequently heard in Europe, playing chamber concerts with the Sinfonia di Vetro. Composer DANIEL LENTZ writes this personal endorsement: "I first met Garry in, I believe, 1973. Soon afterwards we began working together in the ensemble The San Andreas Fault, a group that performed extensively in California and in Great Britain, Scandanavia, and Western Europe. Garry also toured with me in my ensemble The Daniel Lentz Group. In about 1980 or '81 Garry went off on his own and has enjoyed considerable success, especially as a composer of rich harmonic musics. His recent work continues in this vein... it is beautiful, even when it is not necessarily pretty. It has a strong historical foundation, and often a spiritual one as well. A passing phrase might intuitively show a glimpse of Machaut while sitting in a sonic field of lush 9th chords/harmonies. Always a skilled and knowledgeable performer, Garry's compositions are always "performer friendly," even when he asks performers to do things that are wildly different from what performers are usually asked to do. Most importantly, his music sounds like it is made in California.... as Debussy's sounds Parisian, or Webern's sounds Viennese. And because his music reflects the whole of Western music from the medieval to the present, it is perhaps safe to call him a "postmodern reconstructionist" composer, certainly one of the most important of his generation."