“Music is not the most important thing in our lives,” NATHANIEL WALKER once told a journalist from the German daily, Görlitzer Zeitung. “But for us, it is the place where everything that is important comes together—-the point where everything meets.” This idea is central to Amphora’s artistic world, incorporating both the tension and resolution present as they lend themselves completely to music. Their audiences have been both astonished and comforted in the face of Amphora’s quest to use music as a tool, as a medium by which higher things can be made real. As words are to speaking, prayers are to connecting, food is to nourishing, and learning is to experiencing-—so music is to living, for Amphora. The songs incorporate this, but never for their own sake-—rather, they are the avenues through which life can strive to extend itself into every aspect of existence. It is, of course, a little strange to hear professional musicians admit that their passion for music is not based upon a pure desire to play instruments or make records. But for this band, music is like a jar, a box, a cargo plane, or a Greek amphora—-and the vessel is not nearly as important as the quality of its contents, where they came from, and where they are going.
