Constance Mary Demby (née Eggers; May 9, 1939 – March 20, 2021) was an American musician, composer, painter, sculptor, and multimedia producer. Her music fell into several categories, most notably new age, ambient and space music. She is best known for her 1986 album Novus Magnificat and her two experimental musical instruments, the sonic steel space bass and the whale sail.
Demby was born in Oakland, California. After the family moved to Connecticut, Demby began classical piano lessons at age 8, and soon became confident enough to perform solo and in a group. She continued with her music studies, during which Demby also took to painting and sculpture and received an Excellence in Art award for her work from Pine Manor College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Demby studied sculpture and painting at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where in 1960, she received a Highby Award for excellence in art.
In 1967 Demby used these sculptures in a series of happening-style events at the Charles Street Gallery named A Fly Can't Bird But a Bird Can Fly, owned by Robert Rutman. In one piece called "The Thing", Rutman wore a white cardboard box and banged on Demby's sheet metal creation with "a rock in a sock." Demby conceived a multimedia environmental experience called Space Mass, which featured a 24-foot altar, temples, and sculptures that acted as moving screens to project abstract films. As an innovator in the world of sound, Demby learned a number of ethnic instruments and found ways to use them inventively.
She co-founded a unique multimedia group, Central Maine Power Sound & Light, which toured the East Coast from 1971 to 1976 with their "Space Mass" program and other groundbreaking light/sound and planetarium shows. In the late '70s, Demby began to investigate the spiritual life by following a discipline that was focused on the inner light and the inner sound, or Surat Shabd Yoga. She found a special affinity for the hammered dulcimer and discovered that her "prayers would turn into song." These devotional songs formed the basis of her first album, Skies Above Skies.
Here's "Sanctus" taken from above compilation album.
In 1980, Demby, a fifth generation Californian, returned to Marin County north of San Francisco, where she received a warm reception and played concerts to overflow audiences. Here, she founded her own record company, Sound Currents, and released Sunborne, an ambitious five-part tone poem that featured her Sonic Steel instruments, world percussion, synthesizers, hammered dulcimer, and vocals. The mid-'80s brought changes in recording technology with the advent of digital sampled sounds; Demby embraced this electronic revolution to compose contemporary space music using a full range of symphonic instruments, pipe organ, and choral voices.
Tapping into her spiritual guidance, she brought through, track by track, Novus Magnificat, the album that many call the most important New Age recording of all time. This album, released in 1986, was one of the first releases on the Hearts of Space record label. Her other albums with Hearts of Space include the devotional Sacred Space Music, the celebratory Set Free, and Aeterna, the emotionally cathartic sequel to Novus Magnificat.
Demby says of the artistry and spiritual impact of her music: "Novus Magnificat reached 'up and out' to catch a galactic beam through space. Aeterna is down and into the heart, here and now. Now our society is in the thick of it, and if people do not handle their feelings, we are in trouble. My music is emotional, but it is always redemptive. If my music stirs things up and takes you down into your feelings, it will then transmute, take you up and out again and redeem. If the listener approaches music with 'active listening,' or with full absorption, and if the music has spiritual commitment and depth, then music can blow your mind. It will make you weep. And you will wonder breathlessly, 'God, what was that? It did something to me!'"
In 2000, after release of a few private label albums, Demby moved from Southern California to Barcelona, Spain, relishing the openness of its people for music and the arts. Demby returned to the US in 2004, touring the West Coast presenting concerts and healing workshops. . Her Sound Currents label subsequently released Sonic Immersion (2004), a vibrational sound healing attunement through use of the Space Bass. She produced three more studio albums which included Ambrosial Waves – Healing Waters (2011), Ambrosial Waves – Tidal Pools (2013) and Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate – 30th Anniversary Edition (2017)
In 1961, Eggers married David Demby and they had one son, Joshua. The marriage ended in divorce in 1974. Demby died from complications of a heart attack in Pasadena, California, on March 20, 2021, at age 81. (Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)