Welcome to “What’s Your Story?”, the occasional space where I invite YOU to participate in the story telling. Every episode, I offer a different prompt. What’s your story?
I want so badly to get to know you better. My favorite “get to know you” prompt is this… Tell us the story of a musical moment in your life. It could be any moment that somehow included music. I love this prompt cause I know that everyone has a musical moment. What’s yours?
Keep it under 200 words. (here's a word counter) Be honest. Be specific. Leave your contribution in the comments. I’ll go first.
I grew up in a family that didn't listen to music. Sure, my dad had a small record collection, but it wasn't a big part of the culture of my growing up. Standing around the piano singing hymns with my mom and dad was my family's musical style. I had an alarm clock radio by my bedside and sometimes I would listen to Casey Kasem count down the American Top 40.
My musical world opened up when I went away to college. I met Charles who wore black capes, drank Jim Beam and listened to Béla Bartók. I met David who practically worshiped Dave Sanborn and I met Javad who wore purple pants and danced to Donald Fagen.
It was one night in my freshman year that my new friends and I were gathered in Rob and Dave's room. We were sitting on the floor and passing the bong. Rob put on Neil Young "Live Rust" and for the first time ever, I heard the homespun sound of acoustic guitar, vocals and harmonica. I couldn't believe my ears as Neil sang "Sugar Mountain." In that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
New Year's Eve 2006-07. I was working as lead guitarist in a classic rock cover band for Carnival Cruise Lines aboard the MS Inspiration.
The band leader had arranged for the band to play on the open deck for NYE instead of our usual bar lounge, and the company flew in a sound system from Miami that we picked up in Long Beach and spent the day of setting up.
If you know Carnival ships, you know their trademark funnel smokestack. Lights were hung on it in the shape of 2006. At around a minute to midnight or so we paused for some chatter and to get the crowd pumped up.
There may have only been a couple thousand people, but it seemed like a figurative sea of people on deck on the ship, somewhere out in the Western Caribbean in the dead of night like outer space.
As soon as the 10 second countdown started, the band was poised. And at the stroke of midnight, the giant 2006 switched to 2007, everyone went bananas, and I got to play the most intensely fun Auld Lang Syne ever or since with one of the best bands I've ever worked with.
One dark December night during my second year of college, my friend Cory, who was a year older than me and involved in every single ensemble our school had to offer, unlocked the campus chapel for myself and a small group of friends. Each of us brought tokens for Secret Santa: College Budget Edition, and those of us who had them also brought our instruments—May her flute, myself my accordion, and Cory pulled the school’s upright from the wings. Jim also brought one a projector, which he set up to hit a screen on stage.
We settled down in a circle around it, on the stage but still facing its deeper reaches, and in the black wood and stolen solitude of that magnificent old church, we sang Christmas carols together. Only one of us believed in the Christian god, but I think it was some kind of sacred for all of us—because in my mind, at least, we were celebrating something that didn’t have structure or creed, something that music had been giving name to long before it came to be called “god”: life itself, and good company to share it with.
Nov 12, 2023·edited Nov 12, 2023Liked by Hal Walker
I've been a singer/songriter/ harmonica player and teacher since 1968 and have had many musical moments but starting at age 72, I had my first of many seizures. One was so big I lost I part of my memory and co-ordination. I could not play certain chords on my guitar and forgot how songs went. (fortunately my harmonica brain seemed undamaged.)
My problems went beyond this because I couldn't remember streets in my town, and very vague about remembering old friends. There was nothing else to do but play the blues. Since then, I have been rebuilding my brain through making music. I couldn't make a Bm7th chord on guitar so I played its again and again until it was second nature again. I played the songs until the changes were smooth. I think these efforts were very healing. I moved on to bar chords over 20 months or so, am pretty much back to where I was before the seizure, and maybe better.
I think the relearning the songs and skills that had been part of my lifeblood was brain therapy, like taking my brain to the gym, and it brought back my overall function 360 degrees. (An MRI showed no brain damage!)
So right now, this time in my life, when I need music the most for healing and purpose and fellowship ..this my musical moment.
I had a complicated relationship with my father, but one thing that brought us joy was when he was dancing. When Dad put on an Elvis Presley or James Brown record, we knew dancing was coming. He would grab my mom and whirl her around. Sometimes, he grabbed me, and even though I had no idea how to dance to these songs, he would spin me around, giggling the whole time.
Music had a way of making everything better when we were younger. I feel that has carried on in my adult life, too!
It was Flamenco Dancing in Seville, Spain. There were five professionals: an older pair of singers, two younger dancers, and a guitarist with quicksilver fingers. It was raw and wild and it put an ache in me.
I’ve never danced, not really, always stuck in the place between feeling and fearing deeply.
The performers were regular looking folks, not movie stars or fashion models. But they embraced a tempest of emotion and let it tear through their throats and fingers and bodies without reservation in a liberating embodiment of sensuality.
I may never have words for it, but I wept. It was a gift.
I have had many musical moments: the first time I heard Grandpa Jones sing Mountain Dew, Ian and Sylvia sing Circle Game, the first time I heard a record in stereo, etc. The moment that I’m writing about now is when I was a student at Kent State, majoring in geology.
It was on a weekend field trip to Pennsylvania; the class was staying in a small town motel. That night, I took my guitar out to the balcony and sang overlooking the parking lot. I had been singing for a while when I noticed a couple of guys approaching me. They stood under the balcony and looked up at me, listening intently. I was very flattered, but a little uneasy--I was singing “”The Old Orange Flute” a folk song from northern Ireland that poked fun at the Catholics. I needn’t have worried...it turned out that they were Protestants from Northern Ireland and they loved the song. They thought I was one of them! Who in America would know it, much less sing it?
I broke the spell by admitting that I had learned it from a Clancy Brothers record.
Hi Hal. I have been working on our film all day today and just finished watching all of the footage. Now onto the real editing. It's going really well. I thought I would check on your Substack and saw this post. Your "Musical Moment" story where you mention your friend David who worshiped Dave Sanborn reminded me of my own musical moment. I do not consider myself a musician anymore, but I used to be. I took piano lessons from ages 4-12, and I started playing the saxophone in school when I was 10. I was much more invested in saxophone than I ever was in piano and soon found that I had a particular love for jazz music. Besides playing in my school's concert band and jazz band, I also started taking private lessons with a jazz saxophonist named Vince Ercolamento, starting when I was 12 up until I was 18. Vince is a world class musician. He makes a living as a professional saxophone player in Rochester and also teaches lessons. His original jazz compositions are a feat of the craft. He has the best tone of any player I have ever heard. It was a privilege to learn from him. One interesting thing about Vince is that he's blind. He has a degenerative retina condition that caused him to become fully blind in his early 20s, but he slowly lost his vision before that. His teaching style was unique because of his blindness. He couldn't see music to read it so he mostly learned everything by ear, or by having someone read the notes to him ex) "A flat, eighth note, B sixteenth note, etc." He stressed the importance of tone over anything and cited David Sanborn as someone whose tone I should model. I listened to David Sanborn records as my homework, and soon Vince had me learn some of his songs by ear. I would sit in his office with him and we would listen to the record over and over while he helped me train my ear. Then I would improvise over the track which was scary and exhilarating. Vince told me that David Sanborn had permanently weakened lungs from having polio as a child. He started playing saxophone as a way to strengthen his lungs. His beautiful tone is an impressive feat given his weakened lung capacity.
My time studying with Vince, learning jazz by ear from David Sanborn songs, made me think about how I think for artists, the crafts we are drawn to stem from our weaknesses. Both Vince and David Sanborn developed their unique jazz practices around their physical limitations.
I was never a great music student. I hated practicing and lacked discipline. I knew it was not my calling and I was relieved to quit saxophone when I graduated high school. But I think of my obsession with movies and wanting to be a filmmaker and how that stems from my weaknesses. I think my creativity is born out of an innate loneliness and profound shyness. Filmmaking is a craft I've developed to cope with it, a way to use my loneliness to fuel something productive that has the potential to help me connect with others.
I’m grateful for all that time I spent studying with Vince. It was some of the happiest times of my adolescence, and I think I’m a better filmmaker because of it. Vince helped me learn to sit through the discomfort of doing something difficult. Learning those Dave Sanborn songs by ear was no joke. Okay, time to go back to editing….
Nov 12, 2023·edited Nov 12, 2023Liked by Hal Walker
I only spent two years at TRHS in Kent Ohio before moving to Hiram in 2017 and finishing out my HS career at CHS in Mantua. I transferred my class schedule via email to my new Choir director. Due to my previous participation in an Audition Choir, I was the only "Chamber Choir" member at CHS who didn't audition. Also on my first day at CHS I met Leah during choir. She was in HS doing college work/performing in a show called Urinetown at Hiram College. She informed me about a vacancy role available to HS students. That evening I went to Hiram College and met the director Betsy in the Greenroom. She said "You don't need to audition. I can tell you can sing"
She explained she knew; due to the vibrations "in my face". AMAZING! I never second guessed her theory.
After the show was over, a few weeks passed and I was asked to come back and audition for a lead role "with singing" in the next show Hiram College would do called Dancing at Lughnasa. I played the only welsh character. The others were Irish. I had a solo. Those are irreplaceable musical moments.
Nov 12, 2023·edited Nov 12, 2023Liked by Hal Walker
Mention of "Sugar Mountain" gave a thrill, having sung along with Neil for many years. A high T/B part in a recent choral number, and a moment with us alone in rehearsal led to an impromptu, a capella cover of "After the Gold Rush," which was awful and wonderful.
Longer ago, one afternoon of my freshman year in college, music from "Oregon" came on the radio, and there was a free concert, right.... now. Rode my bike the 3 blocks to the Elvehjem Art Center, slipped into the third level of a tall, skinny recital hall and watched four guys make music with more than a dozen instruments, and no amplifiers. Amazing, amazing day.
And a third, fourth, fifth, sixth: The last time I was with my mother, in her hospital room, after we said all there was to say, and slipped into awkward silence, it occurred to me to sing, and what popped into mind was "The Baby Tree," by Rosalie Sorrels, taught to me by Paul Kantner and the "Blows Against the Empire" album. The last moment we had together; I reprised it with my three grandbabies in my arms, each one in turn.
I had very little access to music when I was younger. Of course we had music at church but not really great music as we now have. Piano was it, and not always played well. We had a radio but no television. I've never learned to read music or how to play any instrument. I remember listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford as a child. I did and still do like some of his music. I have come to really love the old gospel hymns which speak to my spirit and I still listen to some groups today on U Tube. Elvis Presley couldn't be wrong on this. He loved to sing the old hymns also. How Great Thou Art is one of his best.
I've never been to a concert and really don't care to. I have to mention I was a great fan of Liberace and have been to several of his live shows before his death.
One thing I have always hated in music is loud, loud and loud. So loud the words, if any, can't even be understood.
I studied classical piano for ten-ish years as a young person. I could play complex pieces well, but never really understood the *instrument.* For the next few decades, I played a few of those classical pieces once in a while on my mothers piano, because they were still in my fingers, but that was it.
About 10 years ago, I acquired an old upright piano from a neighbor who needed a place to put it. In the piano bench was a book: “how to play popular piano.” I opened it up and started teaching myself some of the basics of theory and composition. IT BLEW MY MIND!!! For the first time it all started making sense beyond just playing the notes. “Ohhhhhh! *That’s* what’s happening.” It was amazing when I heard the familiar sound of moving from the I to the IV to the V and all of a sudden knowing just how to make those sounds.
I’m still slowly slowly cracking open the part of my brain that just wants someone to tell me which notes to play, but I remember that moment of awakening with so much delight, and continue to enjoy learning this incredible language of music.
I grew up in the Catholic church, pre-Vatican 2, when everything was in Latin. Our parish musical director was very fond of Gregorian chant. And I am forever grateful to him for that fondness.
I was the weird kid who got picked on all the time, so my memories of grade school are mostly not good. Except for this one when I was 11.
We were in church for an all-school high Mass. The priest began the Litany of the Saints in Latin. A few responses into it, I was overcome with a sense of peacefulness. The hurt went away, and the things that bothered me suddenly didn't matter. I floated above everything. I was somewhere else. My heart was open and I felt a part of a great Love, with a capital L. And it felt so good.
That moment showed me the transformative and mystical power of music.
Over the years I have loved finding music that makes me feel this way...Hildegarde of Bingen is one of my favorites. But other more modern artists have also written music that makes me feel like this...like The Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, and a whole lot of others. But the best is still Gregorian chant. It always takes me to that place of peace.
My musical seminal moment is "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess (Gershwin and later Ella Fitzgerald) It was my grandmother who filled our home and chased our sorrow with this song after my father died and we moved in with my grandparents. As she busied herself and us with the everyday tasks, a radio was on to accompany her. She would sing along, opera, or her memorable rendition of the music of Porgy and Bess. This was her eternal lullaby, begun when we were infants and through our journey with grief.
In addition to a lifelong love of George Gershwin, Ella Fitzgerald and music, this song has become a steadfast lullaby for my grandchildren. It shapes the bond with and assuredness of our immigrant grandmother’s belief in the beauty of music and stories to give us life. This is the kind of music that fills my grandchildren's playlist
Further learning of the history of the opera, Gershwin's stipulation that it only be performed by Black artists to prevent white singers in black face proved monumental as well.
My daughter was a vocal performance major at Miami University. Her junior recital was coming up. The week before, my mother had a major stroke and was in the hospital. She was still conscious, but unable to talk or see. There was little hope that she would survive, and my brother came to be with her while we took the trip to Oxford for my daughter’s recital. I did not tell my daughter about her grandmother until after the recital. I will never forget her beautiful soprano voice as she sang that night, poised and elegant in her long gown. I had a hard time holding back the tears thinking that my mother would be so proud of her and that my mother had always encouraged her in developing her musical talent.
It's not a single musician moment, more a gradual evolution.
When was a teenager in the 80s, I loved buying and playing vinyl records. It was mostly pop music, the type most girls like at that age.
I started going through my mum's old 45s and vinyl albums. Some stuff passed me by, I really didn't 'get' them. But, wait a moment, what about that cover with the four male heads peering out from black background? Loving the sound of them. And there are more records from the same group.
So my journey of Beatles fandom began, bringing joy to a teenager. Still bringing joy to a 50 year old right now.
I know this is absurd but I found Jesus during his musical. Yep. Jesus Christ Superstar, the movie. I’m serious. I had an actual awakening at 12 years old. My life at that time super, duper sucked. My parents were abusive and I had no idea how I would survive the next day, let alone my teen years. That song when Jesus is about to be captured called, “I only want to say,” devoured my being into some kind of true opening. I didn’t know anything about Jesus, but the music and his story held me captive,
My sister and I learned every single word of every song in that movie and sang it at the top of our lungs while driving across country. I obsessed on the lyrics, the melodies, but the story got under my skin. I felt reflected in it. I didn’t become a born again Christian. But I did become a songwriter, a dancer, and a performer. I did, later, find my voice and my way forward. Even now, the songs of that musical remind me of the girl I was, how lost she was, how she recognized a sliver of light and music that was true, and followed it to safety.
Growing up in the Lutheran Church, I loved singing hymns and old gospel tunes. When I went away to college, I was privileged to enjoy ‘choral’ music by the world class St. Olaf College Choir. Then after marrying a Southern boy, I spent many Sunday mornings attending services at the First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. It was there that I had a sublime musical experience. “Standing between my husband and his father — both strong and vigorous tenors—singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ I was transcended then and there to the heavens and beyond.” I will never forget the moment.
College in 1984 -- two albums dominated dorm life...George Winston, December, and Stop Making Sense. One song on the film album riveted me. What a Day that Was, from a David Byrne soundtrack. Once I found the soundtrack recording at RAT X...record and tape exchange, I listened as one musical revelation followed another. The Catherine Wheel soundtrack was my aural Bible. It influenced my musical taste and sensibilities from there on. Thank you for the prompt...great question!
When my dad died peacefully at home about 4 years ago...we were waiting for them to come take away his body which was upstairs. It was a strange, sad yet peaceful and inevitable time. I sat at his beloved grand piano (a very old Steinway) and for the first time ever could actually play a particular piece of music properly. I’m no pianist at all and cannot work the pedal and dad al ways used to try telling me how. But it just clicked that day and I played the particular piece (an Einaudi composition) properly WITH pedal. Never have done so since!!
A long, long time ago I traveled to the Middle East and rambled around. With my Jewish heritage, I had to go to Jerusalem. What a memory! Jerusalem is the most beautiful city I have ever seen with its four ancient walls encasing the old city, with four gates each associated with a different population : Jewish, Christian, Arab .
One afternoon I drove over the Allenby bridge into the West Bank to Jericho. I was the only person at this amazing place in an isolated world, surrounded by dirt rocks, and then the distance mountains that have a temple carved into them, I stood at edge of the excavation and looked at the layers of civilizations. Since I was all alone, I played my harmonica . Jericho is 11,000 years old. I don’t remember what I played, but you can be sure it was the blues,
Out on the road were two boys and that donkey. I stopped the car, of course, and we somehow communicated . I gave them each harmonicas and we played them together.
I grew up in a family that didn't listen to music. Sure, my dad had a small record collection, but it wasn't a big part of the culture of my growing up. Standing around the piano singing hymns with my mom and dad was my family's musical style. I had an alarm clock radio by my bedside and sometimes I would listen to Casey Kasem count down the American Top 40.
My musical world opened up when I went away to college. I met Charles who wore black capes, drank Jim Beam and listened to Béla Bartók. I met David who practically worshiped Dave Sanborn and I met Javad who wore purple pants and danced to Donald Fagen.
It was one night in my freshman year that my new friends and I were gathered in Rob and Dave's room. We were sitting on the floor and passing the bong. Rob put on Neil Young "Live Rust" and for the first time ever, I heard the homespun sound of acoustic guitar, vocals and harmonica. I couldn't believe my ears as Neil sang "Sugar Mountain." In that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
New Year's Eve 2006-07. I was working as lead guitarist in a classic rock cover band for Carnival Cruise Lines aboard the MS Inspiration.
The band leader had arranged for the band to play on the open deck for NYE instead of our usual bar lounge, and the company flew in a sound system from Miami that we picked up in Long Beach and spent the day of setting up.
If you know Carnival ships, you know their trademark funnel smokestack. Lights were hung on it in the shape of 2006. At around a minute to midnight or so we paused for some chatter and to get the crowd pumped up.
There may have only been a couple thousand people, but it seemed like a figurative sea of people on deck on the ship, somewhere out in the Western Caribbean in the dead of night like outer space.
As soon as the 10 second countdown started, the band was poised. And at the stroke of midnight, the giant 2006 switched to 2007, everyone went bananas, and I got to play the most intensely fun Auld Lang Syne ever or since with one of the best bands I've ever worked with.
One dark December night during my second year of college, my friend Cory, who was a year older than me and involved in every single ensemble our school had to offer, unlocked the campus chapel for myself and a small group of friends. Each of us brought tokens for Secret Santa: College Budget Edition, and those of us who had them also brought our instruments—May her flute, myself my accordion, and Cory pulled the school’s upright from the wings. Jim also brought one a projector, which he set up to hit a screen on stage.
We settled down in a circle around it, on the stage but still facing its deeper reaches, and in the black wood and stolen solitude of that magnificent old church, we sang Christmas carols together. Only one of us believed in the Christian god, but I think it was some kind of sacred for all of us—because in my mind, at least, we were celebrating something that didn’t have structure or creed, something that music had been giving name to long before it came to be called “god”: life itself, and good company to share it with.
I've been a singer/songriter/ harmonica player and teacher since 1968 and have had many musical moments but starting at age 72, I had my first of many seizures. One was so big I lost I part of my memory and co-ordination. I could not play certain chords on my guitar and forgot how songs went. (fortunately my harmonica brain seemed undamaged.)
My problems went beyond this because I couldn't remember streets in my town, and very vague about remembering old friends. There was nothing else to do but play the blues. Since then, I have been rebuilding my brain through making music. I couldn't make a Bm7th chord on guitar so I played its again and again until it was second nature again. I played the songs until the changes were smooth. I think these efforts were very healing. I moved on to bar chords over 20 months or so, am pretty much back to where I was before the seizure, and maybe better.
I think the relearning the songs and skills that had been part of my lifeblood was brain therapy, like taking my brain to the gym, and it brought back my overall function 360 degrees. (An MRI showed no brain damage!)
So right now, this time in my life, when I need music the most for healing and purpose and fellowship ..this my musical moment.
I had a complicated relationship with my father, but one thing that brought us joy was when he was dancing. When Dad put on an Elvis Presley or James Brown record, we knew dancing was coming. He would grab my mom and whirl her around. Sometimes, he grabbed me, and even though I had no idea how to dance to these songs, he would spin me around, giggling the whole time.
Music had a way of making everything better when we were younger. I feel that has carried on in my adult life, too!
It was Flamenco Dancing in Seville, Spain. There were five professionals: an older pair of singers, two younger dancers, and a guitarist with quicksilver fingers. It was raw and wild and it put an ache in me.
I’ve never danced, not really, always stuck in the place between feeling and fearing deeply.
The performers were regular looking folks, not movie stars or fashion models. But they embraced a tempest of emotion and let it tear through their throats and fingers and bodies without reservation in a liberating embodiment of sensuality.
I may never have words for it, but I wept. It was a gift.
I have had many musical moments: the first time I heard Grandpa Jones sing Mountain Dew, Ian and Sylvia sing Circle Game, the first time I heard a record in stereo, etc. The moment that I’m writing about now is when I was a student at Kent State, majoring in geology.
It was on a weekend field trip to Pennsylvania; the class was staying in a small town motel. That night, I took my guitar out to the balcony and sang overlooking the parking lot. I had been singing for a while when I noticed a couple of guys approaching me. They stood under the balcony and looked up at me, listening intently. I was very flattered, but a little uneasy--I was singing “”The Old Orange Flute” a folk song from northern Ireland that poked fun at the Catholics. I needn’t have worried...it turned out that they were Protestants from Northern Ireland and they loved the song. They thought I was one of them! Who in America would know it, much less sing it?
I broke the spell by admitting that I had learned it from a Clancy Brothers record.
Hi Hal. I have been working on our film all day today and just finished watching all of the footage. Now onto the real editing. It's going really well. I thought I would check on your Substack and saw this post. Your "Musical Moment" story where you mention your friend David who worshiped Dave Sanborn reminded me of my own musical moment. I do not consider myself a musician anymore, but I used to be. I took piano lessons from ages 4-12, and I started playing the saxophone in school when I was 10. I was much more invested in saxophone than I ever was in piano and soon found that I had a particular love for jazz music. Besides playing in my school's concert band and jazz band, I also started taking private lessons with a jazz saxophonist named Vince Ercolamento, starting when I was 12 up until I was 18. Vince is a world class musician. He makes a living as a professional saxophone player in Rochester and also teaches lessons. His original jazz compositions are a feat of the craft. He has the best tone of any player I have ever heard. It was a privilege to learn from him. One interesting thing about Vince is that he's blind. He has a degenerative retina condition that caused him to become fully blind in his early 20s, but he slowly lost his vision before that. His teaching style was unique because of his blindness. He couldn't see music to read it so he mostly learned everything by ear, or by having someone read the notes to him ex) "A flat, eighth note, B sixteenth note, etc." He stressed the importance of tone over anything and cited David Sanborn as someone whose tone I should model. I listened to David Sanborn records as my homework, and soon Vince had me learn some of his songs by ear. I would sit in his office with him and we would listen to the record over and over while he helped me train my ear. Then I would improvise over the track which was scary and exhilarating. Vince told me that David Sanborn had permanently weakened lungs from having polio as a child. He started playing saxophone as a way to strengthen his lungs. His beautiful tone is an impressive feat given his weakened lung capacity.
My time studying with Vince, learning jazz by ear from David Sanborn songs, made me think about how I think for artists, the crafts we are drawn to stem from our weaknesses. Both Vince and David Sanborn developed their unique jazz practices around their physical limitations.
I was never a great music student. I hated practicing and lacked discipline. I knew it was not my calling and I was relieved to quit saxophone when I graduated high school. But I think of my obsession with movies and wanting to be a filmmaker and how that stems from my weaknesses. I think my creativity is born out of an innate loneliness and profound shyness. Filmmaking is a craft I've developed to cope with it, a way to use my loneliness to fuel something productive that has the potential to help me connect with others.
I’m grateful for all that time I spent studying with Vince. It was some of the happiest times of my adolescence, and I think I’m a better filmmaker because of it. Vince helped me learn to sit through the discomfort of doing something difficult. Learning those Dave Sanborn songs by ear was no joke. Okay, time to go back to editing….
My favorite Vince song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PQF2GCu9nk&ab_channel=VinceErcolamento-Topic
My favorite David Sanborn songs that I played long ago…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQpUr30xyNU&ab_channel=DavidSanborn-Topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZqwWT39Ld4&ab_channel=DavidSanborn-Topic
I only spent two years at TRHS in Kent Ohio before moving to Hiram in 2017 and finishing out my HS career at CHS in Mantua. I transferred my class schedule via email to my new Choir director. Due to my previous participation in an Audition Choir, I was the only "Chamber Choir" member at CHS who didn't audition. Also on my first day at CHS I met Leah during choir. She was in HS doing college work/performing in a show called Urinetown at Hiram College. She informed me about a vacancy role available to HS students. That evening I went to Hiram College and met the director Betsy in the Greenroom. She said "You don't need to audition. I can tell you can sing"
She explained she knew; due to the vibrations "in my face". AMAZING! I never second guessed her theory.
After the show was over, a few weeks passed and I was asked to come back and audition for a lead role "with singing" in the next show Hiram College would do called Dancing at Lughnasa. I played the only welsh character. The others were Irish. I had a solo. Those are irreplaceable musical moments.
Mention of "Sugar Mountain" gave a thrill, having sung along with Neil for many years. A high T/B part in a recent choral number, and a moment with us alone in rehearsal led to an impromptu, a capella cover of "After the Gold Rush," which was awful and wonderful.
Longer ago, one afternoon of my freshman year in college, music from "Oregon" came on the radio, and there was a free concert, right.... now. Rode my bike the 3 blocks to the Elvehjem Art Center, slipped into the third level of a tall, skinny recital hall and watched four guys make music with more than a dozen instruments, and no amplifiers. Amazing, amazing day.
And a third, fourth, fifth, sixth: The last time I was with my mother, in her hospital room, after we said all there was to say, and slipped into awkward silence, it occurred to me to sing, and what popped into mind was "The Baby Tree," by Rosalie Sorrels, taught to me by Paul Kantner and the "Blows Against the Empire" album. The last moment we had together; I reprised it with my three grandbabies in my arms, each one in turn.
I had very little access to music when I was younger. Of course we had music at church but not really great music as we now have. Piano was it, and not always played well. We had a radio but no television. I've never learned to read music or how to play any instrument. I remember listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford as a child. I did and still do like some of his music. I have come to really love the old gospel hymns which speak to my spirit and I still listen to some groups today on U Tube. Elvis Presley couldn't be wrong on this. He loved to sing the old hymns also. How Great Thou Art is one of his best.
I've never been to a concert and really don't care to. I have to mention I was a great fan of Liberace and have been to several of his live shows before his death.
One thing I have always hated in music is loud, loud and loud. So loud the words, if any, can't even be understood.
I studied classical piano for ten-ish years as a young person. I could play complex pieces well, but never really understood the *instrument.* For the next few decades, I played a few of those classical pieces once in a while on my mothers piano, because they were still in my fingers, but that was it.
About 10 years ago, I acquired an old upright piano from a neighbor who needed a place to put it. In the piano bench was a book: “how to play popular piano.” I opened it up and started teaching myself some of the basics of theory and composition. IT BLEW MY MIND!!! For the first time it all started making sense beyond just playing the notes. “Ohhhhhh! *That’s* what’s happening.” It was amazing when I heard the familiar sound of moving from the I to the IV to the V and all of a sudden knowing just how to make those sounds.
I’m still slowly slowly cracking open the part of my brain that just wants someone to tell me which notes to play, but I remember that moment of awakening with so much delight, and continue to enjoy learning this incredible language of music.
I grew up in the Catholic church, pre-Vatican 2, when everything was in Latin. Our parish musical director was very fond of Gregorian chant. And I am forever grateful to him for that fondness.
I was the weird kid who got picked on all the time, so my memories of grade school are mostly not good. Except for this one when I was 11.
We were in church for an all-school high Mass. The priest began the Litany of the Saints in Latin. A few responses into it, I was overcome with a sense of peacefulness. The hurt went away, and the things that bothered me suddenly didn't matter. I floated above everything. I was somewhere else. My heart was open and I felt a part of a great Love, with a capital L. And it felt so good.
That moment showed me the transformative and mystical power of music.
Over the years I have loved finding music that makes me feel this way...Hildegarde of Bingen is one of my favorites. But other more modern artists have also written music that makes me feel like this...like The Origin of Love from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, and a whole lot of others. But the best is still Gregorian chant. It always takes me to that place of peace.
My musical seminal moment is "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess (Gershwin and later Ella Fitzgerald) It was my grandmother who filled our home and chased our sorrow with this song after my father died and we moved in with my grandparents. As she busied herself and us with the everyday tasks, a radio was on to accompany her. She would sing along, opera, or her memorable rendition of the music of Porgy and Bess. This was her eternal lullaby, begun when we were infants and through our journey with grief.
In addition to a lifelong love of George Gershwin, Ella Fitzgerald and music, this song has become a steadfast lullaby for my grandchildren. It shapes the bond with and assuredness of our immigrant grandmother’s belief in the beauty of music and stories to give us life. This is the kind of music that fills my grandchildren's playlist
Further learning of the history of the opera, Gershwin's stipulation that it only be performed by Black artists to prevent white singers in black face proved monumental as well.
My daughter was a vocal performance major at Miami University. Her junior recital was coming up. The week before, my mother had a major stroke and was in the hospital. She was still conscious, but unable to talk or see. There was little hope that she would survive, and my brother came to be with her while we took the trip to Oxford for my daughter’s recital. I did not tell my daughter about her grandmother until after the recital. I will never forget her beautiful soprano voice as she sang that night, poised and elegant in her long gown. I had a hard time holding back the tears thinking that my mother would be so proud of her and that my mother had always encouraged her in developing her musical talent.
It's not a single musician moment, more a gradual evolution.
When was a teenager in the 80s, I loved buying and playing vinyl records. It was mostly pop music, the type most girls like at that age.
I started going through my mum's old 45s and vinyl albums. Some stuff passed me by, I really didn't 'get' them. But, wait a moment, what about that cover with the four male heads peering out from black background? Loving the sound of them. And there are more records from the same group.
So my journey of Beatles fandom began, bringing joy to a teenager. Still bringing joy to a 50 year old right now.
I know this is absurd but I found Jesus during his musical. Yep. Jesus Christ Superstar, the movie. I’m serious. I had an actual awakening at 12 years old. My life at that time super, duper sucked. My parents were abusive and I had no idea how I would survive the next day, let alone my teen years. That song when Jesus is about to be captured called, “I only want to say,” devoured my being into some kind of true opening. I didn’t know anything about Jesus, but the music and his story held me captive,
My sister and I learned every single word of every song in that movie and sang it at the top of our lungs while driving across country. I obsessed on the lyrics, the melodies, but the story got under my skin. I felt reflected in it. I didn’t become a born again Christian. But I did become a songwriter, a dancer, and a performer. I did, later, find my voice and my way forward. Even now, the songs of that musical remind me of the girl I was, how lost she was, how she recognized a sliver of light and music that was true, and followed it to safety.
Growing up in the Lutheran Church, I loved singing hymns and old gospel tunes. When I went away to college, I was privileged to enjoy ‘choral’ music by the world class St. Olaf College Choir. Then after marrying a Southern boy, I spent many Sunday mornings attending services at the First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. It was there that I had a sublime musical experience. “Standing between my husband and his father — both strong and vigorous tenors—singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ I was transcended then and there to the heavens and beyond.” I will never forget the moment.
College in 1984 -- two albums dominated dorm life...George Winston, December, and Stop Making Sense. One song on the film album riveted me. What a Day that Was, from a David Byrne soundtrack. Once I found the soundtrack recording at RAT X...record and tape exchange, I listened as one musical revelation followed another. The Catherine Wheel soundtrack was my aural Bible. It influenced my musical taste and sensibilities from there on. Thank you for the prompt...great question!
Z
When my dad died peacefully at home about 4 years ago...we were waiting for them to come take away his body which was upstairs. It was a strange, sad yet peaceful and inevitable time. I sat at his beloved grand piano (a very old Steinway) and for the first time ever could actually play a particular piece of music properly. I’m no pianist at all and cannot work the pedal and dad al ways used to try telling me how. But it just clicked that day and I played the particular piece (an Einaudi composition) properly WITH pedal. Never have done so since!!
A long, long time ago I traveled to the Middle East and rambled around. With my Jewish heritage, I had to go to Jerusalem. What a memory! Jerusalem is the most beautiful city I have ever seen with its four ancient walls encasing the old city, with four gates each associated with a different population : Jewish, Christian, Arab .
One afternoon I drove over the Allenby bridge into the West Bank to Jericho. I was the only person at this amazing place in an isolated world, surrounded by dirt rocks, and then the distance mountains that have a temple carved into them, I stood at edge of the excavation and looked at the layers of civilizations. Since I was all alone, I played my harmonica . Jericho is 11,000 years old. I don’t remember what I played, but you can be sure it was the blues,
Out on the road were two boys and that donkey. I stopped the car, of course, and we somehow communicated . I gave them each harmonicas and we played them together.
Magical musical moment in the heart of history.
*musical