My Favorite Song

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfAyX8l5-g

This is my #1 favorite song in all of music.  If you are interested in more information on this piece, I have a previous post with translation and background information here:

https://www.conradaskland.com/blog/2006/11/ave-verum-corpus-wa-mozart/

Ave Verum Corpus by W.A. Mozart.

Personal Evolution on the Language of Music

This is a thought on the language of music and how my personal vocabulary has changed since working with Cirque and working in China.

I don’t know if this would qualify as a “paradigm shift”, but I had an eye opener today. I had a friend send me a video of a music performance. It’s a group that plays a style of music I used to play. And when I watched it, it was like a foreign language to me. Like something distant I recognized just faintly. And this was a style of music I played for many years.

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Susan Boyle – Singer – Britains Got Talent 2009

47 Year old Susan Boyle wows the judges with her performance in the auditions for Britains Got Talent, singing I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables.

Embedding for most of the videos has been disabled, probably because of the high traffic, but you can watch a video clip of her on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

It’s moments like this that make a life in the arts so rich…

Billy Bob Thornton ‘Blow Up’ on Q TV

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJWS6qyy7bw

Q was visited by country-pop band The Boxmasters. The Boxmasters’s biggest claim to fame is that their singer is Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton. If you were listening, you heard what could best be described as a ‘showdown at the Q corral’ when Mr. Thornton took offense to our mention of his cinematic accomplishments.

Freddy Fender in concert 2003

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj4ohpzU4vQ

Freddy singing “before the next teardrop” and “wasted days and wasted nights” New Mexico State Fair 2003. Conrad Askland is playing keyboards with Freddy in this video. Not a great video, but just happened to run across it while surfing YouTube. Augie Meyers is also playing accordion with us in this video.

Asian Buddhism and the Lay Population

Mmmmm…….another blog post about nothing that I am an expert on. Just an observation from my limited personal experience. This post is about my perspective of religion and Buddhism in Asia and the lay population. (“Lay people” are ordinary people like you and me. Members of congregations and everyday people. They are not church leaders, monks or ministers.)

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Zaia Music Soundtrack CD

The soundtrack for the Cirque Du Soleil ZAIA show is completed and will be printed to CD soon and available to the public. I don’t know a specific release date, but somewhere around early Summer 2009.

My part in the project was to play keyboards and arrange string parts recorded by members of the Hong Kong Symphony. Most of the recording was done on location in Macau (SAR) China, and the string parts with the HK Philharmonic players was completed at a recording studio in Hong Kong.

Rumor mill on the street is that Guy LaLiberte (founder of Cirque Du Soleil) has heard the soundtrack and loved it. I’ve even been told he asked to hear a second time the next morning.

Members of the ZAIA band got to hear a preview of the finished soundtrack with composer Violaine Corradi at the end of February. I won’t give you any spoilers, except to say that I was very pleased with the project and enjoyed the creativity in the mixes.

Violaine Corradi (ZAIA composer) told me one of her goals of the finished soundtrack was to have it be like looking at a prism held in your hand, then rotating it to look at the prism from different perspectives. I definately got that feeling from the soundtrack.

To my knowledge, this is also the first Cirque Du Soleil soundtrack CD recorded by the actual performing musicians in the show. The other soundtracks are recorded with studio musicians in Montreal I’ve heard. (With the exception of some subsequent live releases from shows like Mystere).

So I hope you all enjoy our work on the ZAIA CD when it’s released. Of course I’ll post on my blog when I know the official release date.

King’s Singers – Madrigal History Tour – Of all the birds

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnr6Oxybkq4

Composed by John Bartlet, “Of all the birds that I do know”, from “The King’s Singers, Madrigal History Tour, The England”

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