I posted some new music from my recent recording ” Laments, Dreams and Visions”. It will be available very soon with a digital release first this summer, then as a physical CD in early fall. I also just finished a project which is kind of a compilation disc from most of my previous album and a few synth piano, strings and flute pieces.It features pieces from my son’s new album as well as selections from Reverie and Jodi Thiele. The disc is called ” Living with a Broken Heart” and is the soundtrack to the book ” In The Midst” by Debra Jenkins. So go to my Soundcloud page and take a listen. There is even a poetry/piano track. It is pretty dark but will make you think! Take a listen here: Patrick on Soundcloud
Sorry folks….I have been really crazy with music and a new website called http://www.patrickleehebert.com . Lots going on here I tell you. I have 60 students and I am now training the gifted composer Sierra Hanson. Sierra has studied with me now…I guess two years. She is a gifted 15 year old that will be teaching for me and helping me meet the needs of my students here at Highland Piano Studios. More about Sierra is coming…she will be recording with Highland Label hopefully within a year. Her compositions will soon be able to be sampled so stay tuned!
Also, I am continuing “the Window” saga of songs I started last year. It will be out I hope January 2012….17 years after it’s first release…..amazing it has been so long.
I am going to NH in October to visit with web-wizard/reviewer/talk show host/Actress and costume designer and all around cool person…ROBIN BOYD. Can’t wait………
My next two albums are in early planning….I have secured an engineer from planet records to do the job. He is a master of native american flute recording so has an amazing sense of acoustics. It will be a GREAT time. ” Laments,Dreams and Visions” will be available I hope within a year…..closely following will be a follow up to Psalms…..Called….” I have no Idea yet….” LOL….
So all for today….just stay tuned and forgive my absence…But….I am a composer, I am suppossed to be crazy LOL…..see you
Soul Ties was a very simple song to portray a very simple emotion. I was just ending a very tumultous relationship with a girl I thought I would marry. I remember my Mom telling me that every girl I fell in love with for real would leave an impression on my soul. These, according to her were ” Soul Ties” and this for sure explains the way I felt. It was very simple really…I hurt and was lonely. So, enjoy ” Soul Ties”…the girl never heard it to my knowledge. Young love…
This is song number three in my continuing description of the album ” The Window” which is due for re-release on its 17th anniversary January 11th. I have decided to wait till then because it seems so right to make it 17 years. This is because I was that age when I began to see the world in a different light and began searching for my voice. At 17, I was starting music school and had very high hopes. I did well in music but very bad in an early relationship as I mentioned in the last post about ” The Window”. The Ledge is written about a place…a place of complete peace that was deep into the twelve acres of woods I grew up in. I remember going there as a child as well as an adult.
There was a little mountain at the end of my land. It seemed that no-one but my brother and I ever visited this place. There is a 25 foot rock wall that leads down to a hidden valley I had named ” Lost Valley” when I was 6 years old. ( I wrote a song by this title which can be found on my ” Murmurs” album” We spent countless days playing there as boys and as an adult I visited to escape the pressures of the world I had created. One day, I visited this ledge and sat down as usual. You could watch the hawks circle and hear birds everywhere sing a song they believed was for themselves. Such peace. I wanted to capture it.
My father had a condo in the mountains of White mountains of NH. I went there for a week with a keyboard. There was no phone and I was totally secluded. It was the off-season and I wanted to be alone anyway. I wrote this song and a song called ” Soul Ties’, which is my next blog planned as it is song 4 on the album. Both songs were written for a special girl who spent a lot of time with me there. ” The Ledge” is really a very simple song about the place I loved so much. It has a touch of melancholia right from the start but really sounds kind of pensive to me. When I play it I can go right back and be sitting there with nature my only companion. The girl lingers there in spirit as well. I wrote a series of poems called ” The Girl in the Picture” and all the settings and descriptive landscape are here in my mind. I hope you enjoy it. Here is ” The Ledge”
Welcome to the first of eleven posts that will introduce and explain each song from my upcoming release ” The Window”. This album was originally released in 1994. Most of the songs were written between 1989 and right up to the day of the recording which was January 11th, 1994. The studio was in Lewiston Maine with Henri Roi behind the booth. What is really neat though was that the studio was closing and everything was packed in boxes except a couch, table and one beautiful 7 foot 4 Yamaha Grand. I was nervous and very sad after having lost my mother only one month before. Not to mention I had never recorded before except for television and I was really unsure as to what to expect.
It took a total of ten hours to record the album, including a lunch at Wendy’s. High budget I assure you!! What was lucky for me though was the fact that the engineer was really a pro. He had worked with just about everyone I knew and respected and he did a marvelous job with this recording. I was so green in the field of recording that I never realized it had not been mastered, just recorded ” Raw”. In 1994, few independents even made CDs so I had no advice from anyone. SO, my agent, Michael St. Jean and I just assumed it was ready to press. So to press we went with big expectations. It was very good ” raw” and no-one ever mentioned it until my new engineer was hired to digitize it in 2003 and he exclaimed ” this is amazingly clear and full, but it has never been mastered”. This was the guru of solo piano recording Gerry Putnam who worked five albums in total with me. The rest as they say….is history.
So here we are at song number one: Snow
Snow is probably the easiest song to explain from this album which tends to be a bit sad and melancholy as well as downright angry. But there are several songs about happier things too that balance the effect I think. Snow is about …well…snow. I was 20 years old and pulling another all nighter in my practice room…my fathers church. I was music director, so very often I would sleep under the piano because I practiced six hours or so a night. I was studying heavy classical with the great George Loring at the time for school, and he made me work very hard. Anyway, I noticed that a stormfront was piling snow outside the windows at an alarming rate. I remember it was about three AM and I was finally about done for the night. I went outside and looked around. It was amazing how quiet the world was. It was like I was locked in a time portal with all that snow and no noise at all. I walked into the woods next to my house for at least an hour enthralled. Everything was white and pure. At this time my personal life was a mess with a nasty divorce in sight with heartbreak my most frequent state of mind. I felt free for the first time in so long, I had to capture this in music.
I made my way back to the church, brewed some coffee and got to work. I penned the song in about three hours writing it down as I went. I remember going to work that day VERY tired but very excited about how inspiration just attacked me, a new composer with dreams of music. I began to play solo concerts not long after this and played it live all the time, especially in winter. I had no idea my life was about to explode in the biggest trial of my life…but I will save that for next week which will be the title song ” The Window” itself. So for now, enter a New Hampshire winter morning right before dawn, where all is new and all is hopeful. Listen for the snow as it starts and stops…timeless. Click here for “Snow”
At last, my first album ” The Window” is being re-released. It has been digitally remastered by the great Gerry Putnam of NH. The new cover work is being done by the equally great Robin Boyd, also from my home state and town of Hooksett, NH. This album has so many memories. I wrote it while going through a horrible divorce at the age of nineteen. I also lost my dear mother to cancer within a month of its recording date of Jan 11, 1994. There are songs of love and hope, as well as sad and downright angry. I call this my “Raw” album because I was so young as a composer…..it is still my wife’s favorite album; (My new wife of 16 years, the darling Caroline.) She met me four months after it’s first release in April 1994. The CD release will be Sept 15th and it will be available everywhere CDs and downloads are sold shortly after. I will begin posting a song from this album per week with an explanation of it’s background. I plan to concertize this with a small tour as well, so stay tuned in!! Also, if you like Pandora radio……do a search for Patrick Lee Hebert there….I was just accepted and am going thru the process. It will say ” no we don’t have him ” but it will make them have me sooner by search requests.
Hello everyone.
Wanted to let you know what is new and forthcoming at Highland Music. My poetry book “Ravings” is being edited as we speak by Sarah Troutman of Tennessee. This is very exciting, and very arduous for me. I am selecting poems from a 18 year span. This is difficult because sometimes they ALL look good. I know better though, I can only choose 150 or so. And I have written over a thousand!! So hence it goes. Thank God for Sarah. I will email her with inclusions and exclusions and change this or that. She is right on top of it. There will be a blog site dedicated to this next week. If you subscribe, you can read a poem per day and YES…..send me some comments.
Also, three new albums:
The re-release of my 1994 album “The Window” is slated for May or June. It has been digitally remastered and has all new cover work. It seems so long ago that I wrote this album. It was recorded in 94 but most of it was written in the late eighties. Lots of memories.
A new album “Laments, Dreams and Visions” is scheduled for recording in late summer with a possible Fall release. I have included a track for you to hear called “When the Sky is Crying” I hope you enjoy it. This album is very different than my previous six albums. It has a dreamy, soul searching quality. Of course, I need to finish it by then lol.
“Meditations on the Psalms of King David Volume 2” is almost finished and being concertized now. I work best when playing concerts so I can try new ideas in front of an audience. I usually compose the endings and bridges live, by improvisation. Very fun……sometimes scary. You can listen to the first Psalms album by clicking here:
All for now. I am quite busy teaching as well, and am writing many student pieces for my charges. I have 45 students now. They keep me busy, that’s for sure.
Please keep checking back as we have planned a bunch of free listens as these projects progress. Take care!!!
Patrick Lee Hébert 