Harpist Brings His Easy-Listening Style to L.A.

Andreas Vollenweider has always been tough to categorize. The Swiss harpist’s recordings have managed to appear, at various times, on the pop, jazz and classical sales charts.

In fact, when the New Age label began to emerge a few years ago, it seemed tailor-made for the easy, floating instrumental sounds of his harp-based compositions.

Vollenweider, who performs at the Universal Amphitheatre tonight and Wednesday, doesn’t object to the labeling, despite its narrow descriptive value. “I do find it a bit discouraging,” he said during a phone interview last week, “that, because of this New Age movement, there’s so much vague positivity.

“It’s easy for me to be positive because that’s the way I’m built. But it’s also important to stimulate--to provoke and make people ask questions.”

Vollenweider’s current tour is a delayed follow-up to the March release of a new album, “Dancing With the Lion.” Unable to tour at that time because of a broken finger, he is now dealing with the album--his first in three years--as a new piece of product.

“Yes, we’re a little late with the tour, but we’ll make up for lost time by continuing for 10 months and covering most of the world. Hopefully, people will have heard the album and will welcome the chance to hear some of the songs performed live.”

Like much of his past work, the pieces from “Dancing With the Lion”--which will dominate most of his programs--are filled with images that have been triggered by Vollenweider’s continuing fascination with mythology, religion and spirituality. “I hope,” he said, “that my curiousity about these things will emerge in my music. And if it can make my listeners ask questions for themselves, then it can be a real learning experience.”

The juxtaposition of darkness and light so common to mythic material has always been a part of Vollenweider’s music. But his newest work finds a way to integrate the two as a duality, rather than by emphasizing their opposing polarities.

“I think there are both positivity and negativity,” he said, “and they both shape you. When I got started, my question for myself was, how do I communicate this? What kinds of ideas do I really want to support?

“And so, for many years, my music reflected much more my hopes than myself. But now I realize that these things can come together, that you can express sadness with a love song.

“My goal is not to shock people or to frighten them. I want to help them let go of their fears for an hour or two. And if you have fearful things in your music that represent only the dark side, then people start to close up and can’t let go of those fears. They begin to admire you for your ability and technique instead of opening themselves up to the process of healing that music can give.”

Vollenweider’s belief in the power of music to heal and change is directly balanced by his belief in the importance of an artist’s commitment to humanity. An active supporter of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, he believes that the inner, personal changes that can be triggered by healing forms of music represent the only real hopes for improvement in a growingly dangerous world.

“I have to feel that way,” he said. “If I didn’t, I’d just go back to my house, close the door, pull down the curtains and never make music again.”