J. Gary Sill Music | Pianist | Composer | Ambient, Pop and Jazz, New Age | Sufi Music | Spiritual, Relaxing, Healing | Dynamic, Inspiring, Mystical Piano Improvisations

J. Gary Sill is a composer, pianist, audio engineer, and music producer based in Halfmoon Bay on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.

Ambient and Piano Music
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Welcome To My Sonic World

For over four decades, my musical experience has been defined by a deep curiosity about sound—how it moves us, how it relaxes us, and how it tells stories. My roots trace back to the active and energetic Western Canadian jazz and folk circuit of the 1980s, an era where I first began experimenting with blending acoustic piano performance and environmental field recordings. Over the years, that exploration evolved into a chart-topping presence in the minimalist instrumental and New Age markets, as well as collaborative jazz recordings with remarkable musicians.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of traditional composition and modern digital audio engineering. Most recently, I spent five years co-producing, engineering, and scoring 122 episodes for the internationally broadcast Writers Radio podcast, where I manipulated instrumental textures to construct immersive arrangements for spoken-word literature.

Whether I am scoring for audio fiction, designing ambient soundscapes, or playing a solo grand piano, my purpose remains the same: to create inspiring, deeply evocative music that provides a space for reflection.

Thank you for visiting. Please explore my catalogue on Bandzoogle to hear the evolution of my work.

About

My Catalogue and Scoring Profile

ELECTRONIC, JAZZ, AND BROADCAST SCORES (1980s–1990s)

Closer to the Shore (1982): My early independent solo piano release, which I recorded during my time touring the Western Canadian jazz and folk circuit.
Pachelbel & Satie with Nature’s Ocean Sounds (1985): A commercial relaxation album I produced for the PacificLine series, combining standard classical pieces with my own environmental field recordings.

INSTRUMENTAL AND NEW AGE RELEASES (2000–2002)

Healing Moon (2000): Subtitled "Piano Music for an Illuminated Sky," this recording marked my transition into the minimalist instrumental market.
Spring Is in the Poet (2001): A collection of my solo grand piano pieces that spent 10 weeks on the New Age Voice (NAV) charts.
Restless Hearts (2002): My follow-up instrumental release, which reached the top five on specialized New Age radio charts.

COLLABORATIVE AND RECENT WORKS (2007–PRESENT)

Stonehenge Is Burning (2007): A collaborative instrumental jazz album I recorded with Canadian flugelhorn player Bob Day.
The Golden Highway (2008) / Night Vision Live (2010): My digital releases exploring computer-assisted sound design and live ambient performance.
Calm Waters (2023): A recent minimalist digital release continuing my focus on functional relaxation music.

AUDIO FICTION AND PODCAST SCORING (2020–2026)

Writers Radio Podcast Series (122 Episodes): I engineered, edited, and scored this entire series, which featured over 200 works by Canadian and international authors. My compositions utilized digital manipulation of pre-recorded instrumental phrases, framing literary narratives with arrangements ranging from minimalist piano accompaniment to full orchestral, string quartet, and woodwind ensembles.
"Future Motion Vision (FMV) Part 1": A formal standalone composition I developed directly out of the thematic motifs, musical bridges, and backgrounds generated during my time with the podcast.

Media

Video

Occasionally I create a video to help communicate my music, reversing the usual roles in media. Here video is serving music.

Click the video image to go to the player.

"Air"
Music Video
1 of 3
solo piano

"Mother Moon"
Music Video
2 of 3
solo piano

"Ancestral"
Music Video
3 of 3
solo piano

"What Sea Lions Think"
2018 Holiday Video

"Sonnet For Hunters"
Poem and music setting

Future Motion - Part 1
Writers Radio Music

"There Should Be A Waltz With You"
Jerry DesVoignes & J. Gary Sill
performing in the
Canadian Music Centre

Fragment: A Kind Progress

darkness… light
A Poem from Carole Harmon with a Music Setting

Sufi

Visit the Hidayat Inayat-Khan website

Hidayat Inayat-Khan - Composer

Hidayat Inayat-Khan
Composer

Hidayat Inayat-Khan (August 6, 1917 - September 12, 2016), was a Murshid, or Sufi teacher, as well as a musical treasure for Western formal music. He composed a great variety of music as well as numerous musical settings for the performance of Sufi spiritual practices. For more than twenty years I had the privilege of performing and/or producing the recordings of this body of work with Hidayat.

Jelaluddin Gary Sill

with Aziza and Hidayat Inayat-Khan

Hidayat Inayat-Khan's music is a search for a combination of oriental raga systems and occidental polyphonic structures that follow as much as possible the basic principles of western music analysis while adding the enchanting flavour of oriental raga. His music is a formulation of the emotions; a ‘tuning of the heart’.

Here is an explanation of what he meant by "Raga"

Hidayat Inayat-Khan
from "Documentation of Symphonic Works and Chamber Music (2013)"

"The term Raga, which is generally translated as ‘Melodic Formula’, is much more complex than just a specific mode, as usually expressed in Western music, but the true meaning of the word Raga is really ‘Emotion’. The structure of a Raga is immutable, as opposed to western harmonic systems, which are modulative. A raga stands for a group of notes produced for the purpose of invoking a particular state of mind, which can be explained as being the ‘Tuning of the Heart’.

A Raga consists of a group of notes, which are distinguishable from each other by the way that the intervals are structures between the ascending and the descending notes, placed within the unfoldment of the melodic line.

Classical treatise describes numberless types of Ragas whereby the principles ones consist of five, six or seven notes. All notes, other than those of the scale, which are not compromised in a Raga, are called Sandavi, meaning dissonant tones, because they do not fit within the pattern of the chosen group of notes.

Within these groups of notes called Ragas, there is a dominant note and a consonant note, which are repeatedly heard during the entire performance, and the magic effect created through the enchanting intermingling of the dominant and the consonant, together with an appropriate rhythmic pattern, emphasises the characteristics of a chosen quality, creating thereby a specific meditative atmosphere."