Music ~ Healing ~ Devotion
A little over a year ago, on a rainy night on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, I woke at 3am to a sound bath of coqui frogs and a song singing itself to me that was already fully formed — melody, chorus, opening verses, all of it. Just weeks before, I’d been sitting bedside with one of my best friends, as he prepared to leave his body. I don’t know how these things work, but I wonder if that song was a parting gift after a lifetime of connection.
That song, “I Am Dying,” became the anchor for an album I’ve been creating over the last few years — written and recorded in India and the USA, living at the intersection of two domains I’ve spent my life close to: devotional music, and the work not only of living well, but of dying well. Seven songs, sung in Sanskrit and English, in their own ways exploring and reflecting on the same sacred ground: Life + Death.
The coqui frogs singing in the background of that pre-dawn moment aren’t an AI sound effect imagined afterward: several rainy nights later I recorded that nightly chorus so I could weave it directly into “I Am Dying” itself, carried from the Big Island straight onto the record. This album furthers my journey of singing more in English as well as Sanskrit – for as much as Sanskrit holds an ancient power English will never touch, there is also something about singing in my Mother tongue that unlocks a different kind of access to the heart of what it means to be alive and navigate the existential and relational complexities of this human incarnation.
Join Adam for a free live listening session and Q&A on Sunday, October 11, 2026, from 2–4pm ET, over Zoom. Come hear Life + Death together and ask questions about the songs, the sessions in India and the U.S., and the journey that shaped the record.
Life + Death is out now. Stream it on any platform, or own the full-album download — your choice of hi-res WAV or MP3, with the 8-page art & information booklet. The single, “I Am Dying,” is here too.
Life and Death was produced by Ben Leinbach and mastered by Michael Fossenkemper at TurtleTone Studio, published by RadhaKrishna Recordings (ASCAP). The single I Am Dying was produced by Tina Malia. The album features Mohan Shyam Sharma on pakhawaj, Kailash Sharma on bansuri, Mukesh Sharma on sarod, Sukriti Sen and Anisha Roy on vocals, Aminah Chishti on tabla, Noah Hoffeld on cello, Ryan O’Connell on trumpet, Harvinder Singh on esraj, Gawain Mathews on guitars, and Carl Golembeski on Kyma DSP.
The album was recorded in India at Riddhi Creations (Udupi), Fire Hill Studios (Tiruvannamalai), and Rangayan Broad Q’s Studio (New Delhi), and in the USA at Old Bull Studio (San Anselmo, CA), Northfire Recording (Amherst, MA), and Windhorse Studio (Nevada City, CA). Life and Death is Adam’s fourth album and second self-release, following 2020’s Return to the Sacred — and “Ten Thousand Things” and “I Am Dying” mark his first all-English songs in decades.
Adam Bauer is a singer, life coach, and trained end-of-life doula whose devotional music draws on the Bhakti Yoga tradition. He played bass for Krishna Das (2001–2008) and for Bhakti Yoga teacher Shyamdas (2005–2013, until his passing) — lineage that runs through every note of Life + Death. His three prior critically-acclaimed solo chanting albums are Shyam Lila (2014), Wonderville (2017), and Return to the Sacred (2020).
Adam trained as an end-of-life doula at the Emberlight Center for Conscious Living & Dying in Asheville, NC, shortly before the events that inspired “I Am Dying.” Since 2012, Adam has been leading kirtan and sacred chant programs on three continents, and offers workshops, programs and private sessions worldwide and online.
He also co-founded and played bass for fifteen years in The Equalites, a reggae-rock band and cornerstone of the Western Massachusetts music scene in the 1980s and 90s, and leads Wonder Mountain, his 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
