Conti's latest release sounds like a literal follow-up to Spheeris' most ambitious album (and my personal favorite from among his many recordings)Culture.Scheherazadehas that same culture-fusing new age/world beat music, featuring high production values, solid instrumentation, a mixture of romance, mystery, and drama, as well as the same likable accessibility that make Culture such a delight. In short, this is a great CD and if you enjoy instrumental music played on keyboards, guitar, wind instruments, and percussion, with a strong Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern influence, you need to grab onto a copy of this. --Bill Binkelman - New Age ReporterFor his third album, Al Conti takes as his theme the 'Arabian Nights' stories, as told by Scheherazade to the sultan to keep him from executing her. The theme provides Conti with a reason to investigate Middle Eastern styles and instruments. Those instruments are not detailed in the CD package, but clearly include an Indian tabla and other percussion instruments from the Middle East and Asia Minor, as well as sitar. To these, Conti overdubs Western string instruments, various keyboards, and guitar. (André Maquera plays guitar on one track, 'A Thousand Tales.') There are also wordless vocals here and there, and, on 'Palace Gardens,' nature sounds of water and birds.The effect the composer/performer gets is both rhythmic and soothing, appropriate for music to accompany those intriguing stories that kept a monarch up so many nights. Of course, the music can be enjoyed for purposes of relaxation, meditation, and background mood setting, whether one is cognizant of the inspiration behind it or not. --All Music GuideBeautiful, mystical, sensual, warm, inviting all that we would expect from the mythical Sheherazade who lends her name to this album. Given Rimsky-Korsakov s legendary and beautiful treatment of the 1,001 Arabian Night tales, I wondered at giving another musical work the same name, but Al Conti pulls it off in the way he approaches his subject. Subtlety and grace are evident in every cut, as well as seductive rhythms with which the album begins. Over the course of the album, more of a new age influence takes over, reaching its peak in the final and most serene cut, Heart Triumphant. This is the soft and wistful side of the storyteller, and a wonderful album to dream to. What amazed me in this offering was the lack of self-consciousness in the music (as well as the performance), and the quality of the language, which over the course of the album seemed to encompass all that is melodic in the various languages of our planet. I believe these songs. The shape of the tones and words are evocative and expressive without involving left brain comprehension. The back-up musicians are also excellent, and take the term world music to a new level. --Mark Abushady - Creations Magazine