All posts tagged: jazzvocals

Lorena Fontana – A Vision

A couple of years ago I was surprised and honored to get an email from Lorena asking me to review some of her original lyrics before her recording date. She is an amazing singer and composer I met in Rome in 2011. At the time I was surprised she had reached out to me because her English lyrics were so imaginative and grammatically correct (not easy for anyone, but especially when working in a second language) so I did not know how much value I could add to her work. She did not need any real corrections, but we did engage in a wonderful dialog about motivations in the lyrics and questions about certain phrases that she subsequently revised herself. It was such an exciting exchange of ideas and I am grateful to have assisted her in any way during her creative process. She thanked me in the liner notes and that was a nice little thrill to see. Lorena traveled all the way to California to record this CD and she produced a cool video about the trip entitled “The …

YouTube, Barry Harris Workshops, and a Favorite Song

To initiate my blog here at WordPress I will start this first “MUSIC” post by sharing one of my favorite songs, Where is Love? by Lionel Bart, from the 1960 musical, Oliver!  The original Broadway cast album of Oliver! was one of my favorite records growing up, played it over and over, sang these songs all the time.  I include the full song lyrics below, as well as a link to my recording on YouTube. In 2009, I setup a YouTube Channel to share original songs, but it seemed like anything that I posted there was not safe. The honest truth is that I have had things stolen by pirating websites who then asked listeners for money to download. I never received a penny. Therefore, I am wary of posting anything else until after I publish a CD of my work. So…for the time being, on my channel there are a couple of songs to listen to and you will see a lot of playlists I have put together as I have been using the channel to create reference lists for myself and other students that study with …