James Posted October 27, 2021 Report Share Posted October 27, 2021 ....on my Twitter feed just now. Talk amongst yourselves: : ) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirk Posted October 28, 2021 Report Share Posted October 28, 2021 I watched that a few weeks ago. Pretty cool. Thanks for posting this! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raspbernie Posted October 28, 2021 Report Share Posted October 28, 2021 David Foster. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Helen G Posted November 5, 2021 Report Share Posted November 5, 2021 The David Foster documentary on Netflix also touches on this Celine Dion version and how he had to challenge her to go for it, being in the upper side of her range! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lew Bundles Posted November 5, 2021 Report Share Posted November 5, 2021 Good to see you on board and posting, Helen… 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Helen G Posted November 5, 2021 Report Share Posted November 5, 2021 My husband Jay is a music theory genius with a Masters in Music Composition (he's a choral music composer & former HS music educator) so I had him watch this "most elegant key change in all of pop music" YouTube footage. The scary thing is that he understood it completely. 🙂 I understand the theory enough to get the common tone(s) between the prior chords to the ones at the key change. 😉 (Sharing the footage of my husband's 8-part "double choir" composition that was commissioned by the award-winning Westminster Chorus (CA) - this was a "spontaneous" performance when they were on tour in Europe. The formal performance with the singers wearing matching suits 😉 came later and was not videotaped. - 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Posted November 5, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2021 My gosh Helen, that was stunning. First, a high five from me to your husband. Second, where/under what artist name can we buy this music? James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Helen G Posted November 5, 2021 Report Share Posted November 5, 2021 James - first some "back story" ........ My husband is nearly the same "vintage" as Eric 😉 and was, for the most part, a really decent self-taught "chords" guy having taught himself piano keyboard surrepticiously borrowing his older sisters' piano lessons books then also getting skilled on chords in 5th & 6th grade on the ukelele by his Italian uncle (Jay's grandparents immigrated to Cleveland in the 1910's escaping the post-earthquake poverty in Sicily, and Jay's dad Joe and siblings grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland! Jay's dad became a national champion gymnast and eventually got hired to be the first Chicago suburban high school boys gymnastics coach, so that's where Jay and his 3 older sisters were raised! [That's the short story!]). Jay delved into folk music, playing a stand-up bass he constructed in his parents' living room, starting in jr. high with a locally popular folk music trio that got hired around town for gigs (early 1960's) - yep - jr. high kids getting gigs! 😉 He also took up guitar and was great at that as well, taking lessons from a Chet Atkins' protege. He discovered barbershop music in high school and went "all in" in that direction, allthewhile pursuing a music teaching degree at Boston U. (with teachers such as John Oliver and Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Institute). The Music Composition degree came later at the well-known Big 10 school Northwestern Univ. close to "home" (northern Chicago burbs). 50+ years later, after achieving 1st place gold medals as a barbershop quartet champion AND chorus director (which is a rareified distinction in that genre), my husband's nick name is "The Chord Lord" and he's not only a Hall of Famer but was also recognized with the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award with the Barbershop Harmony Society. The reason I say all that is because Justin Miller was the Music Dir. of the Westminster Chorus for many many years, and Justin's dad John Miller not only was in jr. high and New Trier High School choirs with my husband but was also the bass singer in their quartet - Grandma's Boys (1979 champs). So ..... (back to the actual explanation about this YouTube footage...) , this commission for this choral work came from Justin right at a time when my husband had just had open heart bypass surgery, so Jay was "laid up" from his regular dayjob of computer programming (that's a whole other story 😉 . When Justin sent him the text of the James Agee poem which served as the lyrics for this work, Jay laid out this composition for double mens chorus in about TWO DAYS! (I was blessed to hear it all unfold because of the FINALE music notation program playback over & over again (hahaha)! Similar to what Eric has said, "writing the music is the easy part" if you have the lyrics to work with in the first place. And that's what happened here with this a cappella choral music composition set to pre-existing lyrics (yes, our small-ish music publishing company works with the James Agee Estate to share all copyrights 50/50% - I'm technically the Copyrights/Licensing Mgr. for GSB Medal Music 🙂 ). Westminster Chorus has laid down several recordings, but the "Still Crazy After All These Years" recording with the "Sure On This Shining Night" track is where it's most recently included. Interestingly, Westminster also performed another of Jay's choral arrangements ("Early American Uptempo Medley") at the World Choir Games where they were given both divisional winners and overall grand champion. That track is included on the other recording ("It Only Takes a Moment"). Since all our non-profit, all-volunteer-singer barbershop choruses worldwide have effectively had to halt rehearsals and performances during the pandemic, I'm sure the Westminster Chorus would be very grateful for your purchase of their recording(s)! (It looks like these recordings are also available for download on iTunes, where I'm grateful to have found most all of Eric Carmen's recordings & paid for the downloads in recent weeks! 😉 https://westminsterchorus.org/music/ 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lew Bundles Posted November 6, 2021 Report Share Posted November 6, 2021 Wow...Quite elegant And a wonderful backstory Helen... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Posted November 6, 2021 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2021 Great post Helen, thank you. I´m going to purchase both the cds you mentioned. James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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