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…
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”
The days are getting very warm and sultry here in the south. Alot has been happening in the background. Besides music, I have been setting my two gardens and raising my first two beef cows. Their names are ” Ribeye and T-bone”. They are very friendly now with us feeding them grain in a bucket daily. It is a neat feeling trying to ” live off the land”….I am having alot of fun.
Ribeye and T-bone
In the music department, the albums continue to crawl forward. I just returned from a wonderful concert in Ft. Myers, Florida. It was very relaxed and I had a nice time with friends from Tennessee that came with me. I was able to cruise the beaches and soak in the natural charm of this area. It is time to get moving on the albums though, and I am gearing up. Look for a tour announcement that is coming soon. Several concerts will accompany the re-release of ” The Window” which I pushed to this fall. The summer is a lousy time to tour when you are a pianist I find. So, back to my farming.
After it’s release in 1998, Patrick Lee Hebert and Chris Lonsberry’s album ” Reverie” is still alive and well. Although the duo lives in different southern states, they are still making music together. In 2007, they released a christmas album entitled “Reverie at Christmas”. They recorded it via the internet and performed a concert in New Hampshire for the event. Now, after more than ten years in the making, ” Reverie two” ( yet unnamed ) is being finished in the same manner. Patrick in Tennessee, and Chris in South Carolina, sending tracks back and forth to be reworked. Some of these tracks were written and performed as early as 1999 and still the team continues to compose. Patrick says: ” we both took a turn at our solo works for awhile and both put out two more albums in the process. Chris and his guitar will always be a part of my future work.” Chris put out a tenth year anniversary edition on ” Diode Melody”, his first electronic venture with a remastered re-release called ” Diode Melody Rewired” as well as a modern Christian album called ” No other way”. You check him out at www.chrislonsberry.com and all over the web where downloads and albums are sold. You can also check out Patrick’s works at his website to the right of this page. His newest album ” Meditations on the Psalms of King David” continues to bring him to concert venues all over the area, with a summer tour to begin soon. And keep your eyes and ears open for Reverie’s latest work, which alot of people may call ” Finally” LOL…you can watch Reverie perform “Lazy Daze” a track from the upcoming album. It is from a concert in New England, July 2007. Enjoy!!
I have to share an experience I had today. For my birthday, I bought tickets to see a pianist in Knoxville. She was a soloist with the ” Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series” hosted at the beautiful Central Baptist Church in Beardon. She was a Ms. Di Wu, a chinese pianist that has won many awards, including finalist for the coveted prize at the Van Clinburg competition. You can check her out all over the web. I was dumbfounded.
First, picture a nine foot Baldwin grand piano. In a big Baptist church with TONS of seating. Only about sixty people were there besides my wife,my son and I. She played the Schumann Davidbundlertanze Opus 6, which Robert Schumann wrote as a wedding present to his concert pianist wife Clara. Robert was a bit, well crazy……and took a theme from her Opus 6 Mazurka and did a 35 min take of variations. Ms. Wu played the piece as if she wrote it. It was powerful, provocative and so real, I had to share it. It is said Robert Schumann had two personalities in real life, as well as his music. I am a believer!! She also played Ravel’s famous “Miroirs” and a Liszt transcription of Faust. Check her out on youtube. This was one of the best concerts I have ever been to. ( and I have been to alot) she is going to be a amazing force in the musical world. Anyone who missed it will never know Schumann so exposed. ( unless she plays it again.) She seemed to melt into the 1800’s and enter the composers mind and share with me the very essence of his thoughts. I was blown away. Take care and check her out on the web. You will not be disappointed!! Watch Di in the Van Clinburg competition by clicking here.
Welcome. So much of what I write has many facets. I’m so excited to bring a new dimension to my music and poetry here on my blog. Please visit often, share often, and hopefully reflect often through what touches me in hopes that it will also touch you.
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Patrick Lee Hébert 