After the glorious return of George Skaroulis creating his own compositions on Passions in 2013, two years later he continues to be in a stellar stylistic mood to create another wonderful album simply entitled Sanctuary 2. Arguably Passions could have been named as such making his most current release volume 3 but this would be semantics. In essence Sanctuary 2 is the continued theme of Skaroulis’ no edge gentle piano performances with the occasional gently washed synthesized string embellishments that will allow you to find the ultimate escape from your busy days.

With a total of fourteen tracks running at 58 minutes the pastoral musical compositions for the most part are originals with a total of five covers. But even here the covers, largely in the mid section of the album, are “Skaroulirized” with only Sting’s “Fragile” being the most obvious one. And it is this particular cover, while done by many others that stands out the most clocking in over three minutes longer than Sting’s original recording. It receives the greatest embellishments of all the tracks and the arrangements and the performance are so sublime that even the seven minute plus running time is insufficient.

Otherwise Skaroulis’ self composed songs are on display that begins with the delicate opener “Love Is The Key” which unlocks and opens the door to the elegant world of Sanctuary 2. Equally outstanding melodies can also be found on “Chrisoula” (dedicated to George’s mother) or for that matter the reflective closer “Revelation”. However, the song that stands out the most is the gentle more rhythmic “Stepping Stones” that conveys the imagery of large flat stones lying at the edge of a slow flowing river bed. Let your mind drift as you add the setting of the deep red sun sparkling and sprinkling across the passive water surface sweeping you softly to your own sweet surrendering sanctuary.

Everyone is faced with the challenges of our day to day living that as the day comes to a close there is no doubting that we all desire that need to escape and decompress. Well Sanctuary 2 is a perfect soundtrack to accomplish this goal. Add the original album along with Passions to your three disc player then you have a perfect soundtrack for your own personal sanctuary for the entire remainder of your day. This is just a perfect soundtrack getaway.