“If our bodies are what we eat, then our hearts and souls are what we watch, listen to, and read,” says Six Elements’ composer, lyricist and keyboardist Misha Shengaout.
Six Elements is an Atlanta-based progressive rock band. It was founded in 2007 by keyboardist Michael (Misha) Shengaout, whose vision was to craft conceptual music combining profound, inspiring lyrics (like Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”) with arrangements in the tradition of Russian Romantic composers. Misha spent the following two years composing material for Six Elements’ first album.
Misha met guitarist Jeff McGahren in 2009. They hit it off, co-wrote two songs for the album, and spent the next year developing arrangements for their first album. In mid-2010, bassist Dave DeMarco (Crack The Sky, Oblivion Sun) and drummer Marc Norgaard signed on for the recording sessions. It was Dave who introduced Misha to vocalist Stanley Whitaker (Happy the Man, Oblivion Sun), ultimately completing the three-member band.
Misha describes its sound as heavily influenced by the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis: “Their music helped shape our vocals and some of our guitar. You’ll also hear the influence of Pink Floyd in some of our guitar solos. The clarinet and flute in the music might remind you of Russian Romantic composers (think Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky).”
Shengaout adds: “Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” has inspired millions of hearts and souls (including mine), capturing the ideal of human character in just 32 short lines. Our ideals make us who we are, which is why this poem should be shouted from every rooftop, and absorbed by our senses in every possible way.“
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IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!