Concert review: The totally unexpected discovery of Romanian composer and piano player Bogdan Ota's heavenly music

I didn't know for sure what to expect when I entered the hall where Bogdan Ota was about to start his second concert in a row in Romania last weekend. The fact that I had my mind and heart open and had only some limited information about the artist, but not about his music probably helped. I always knew there are so many talented Romanians out there, we also write about them all the time – and we wrote about Bogdan too – but watching one of them live, and slowly understanding who they are as people and having their work 'speak' to you, that does not happen very often. At least, not to me- I don't listen to the kind of music that gives you goose bumps that often. In the beginning of the concert, which was a mix of music, light and video, I was a bit wary about what I was watching – it was an almost religious message - reminding us what has been given to us and how we, in our quest for development, left those good, primordial things aside, and turned our backs on God and on Nature. But then came the music, and it somehow all made sense. This guy not only plays piano very well, but everything that was performed during the evening was composed by him. He was accompanied by an orchestra he also founded, and until you hear the piano mixing with the trumpets and the electric guitar, violin and the choir background, you'll probably not know how I must have felt. If I say 'divine', it will probably sound like a overstatement, but believe me, it was not. What impressed me even more beyond the music was that Bogdan Ota the artist had a message, and he also said it in words; he seems to have a positive approach to life and shares it with the audience in a way that brings him closer to them. He told the story of each song and invited the audience not to buy into his message, but instead to learn something about themselves through his music. In between songs, he spoke about his life and about what led him to compose the songs he was about the perform. I felt included, and the music was even more personal. Bogdan is from Botosani in Northern Romania, but achieved success in Norway, where he reached the final in the competition 'Norway has talent' in 2011. The 35-year old musician has a history of studying music and learned to love it from his family - he remembers falling in love with the piano sound from when he was 7. He also helped me fall in love with music again during the concert, and touching the hearts of people during a concert is probably what it is all about. The talented, yet always modest man I saw on stage never ceased to mention the team of Romanians who join him for concerts all throughout the world- the Nordic Sonata Orchestra, under the baton of another Botosani artist, Bogdan Chirosca, and the thrash metal band Masked Toys. And the public loved it, they asked for two encores, and it was the second such show – the first had been the evening before. Afterwards, a lot of people commented on how the concert and the music made them feel heavenly, and I felt it was probably luck and more of an accident that I discovered this talented Romanian's music. Ota's next concert is in Melbourne, and then in two other Australian cities. This makes me genuinely happy. I hope to hear his music soon on the soundtrack of well known movies, because I think he can easily compete and even exceed the likes of the soundtrack guru Hans Zimmer. And since this is a case of music speaking more than words, listen below to a selection of my favorite songs composed by Bogdan Ota, from the album