I just spent a day rehearsing for a performance in Tiverton, RI.
It’s a new show called “In Perfect Harmony” with fellow singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist/composer Doug Hammer — in which all the songs being sung include at least a partial harmony somewhere.
Since we have been performing together for ten years, and since one of our favorite things to do is sing in harmony, we have a lot of material to choose from.
The show also includes quotations and anecdotes about the process of collaboration — which for us has involved a great arranger, Mike Callahan.
From time to time we send Mike recordings from our rehearsals, along with detailed notes about which harmonic ideas we think show promise and which need help.
Invariably he sends charts back to us that both improve our ideas AND surprise us with some great new musical impulse.
Here is an MP3 of our version of Mercer/Mancini classic “Moon River” if you are curious to hear the fruits of this collaborative process.
There is something very intimate and satisfying about singing with someone else — whether in unison or harmony.
And since electricity entered our daily lives in the last century, our patterns and habits of singing have changed.
Crooning along with the radio or a CD or an MP3 is great — yet it’s different from singing with another real live human being.
I just returned from a week in upstate NY at a wonderful, ramshackle family cottage with no internet access and no TV.
One of my cousins told me about songs she heard as a child from her parents and grandparents — some of which were originally sung by people working outside in gardens and fields as a way (according to my cousin) to pass the time and remain connected with their neighbors.
What a different era of human civilization!
Thanks to my ukulele and the great “Daily Ukulele” songbooks, we sang together most nights on the beach around a camp fire — while the younger members of our family roasted marshmallows and made s’mores for all to eat.
I could do this for hours — and in fact on the last night I did play without a break for over three hours.
Music. Stars above. Friends and family all around. Lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.
Bliss.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 