10 posts tagged “music”

If you are a man, I need your input.

Is there music which really makes you feel strong as a man...makes you think big thoughts...makes you dream big dreams...centers you...makes you want to leap over tall buildings...

Are you getting the idea?

This music really could be from any source, I just need your thoughts on it.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

I hope this list comes out cool instead of dorksville...

1. Keeping the Faith by Billy Joel
2. Speechless by Stephen Curtis Chapman
3. Whispered Words by Peter, Paul and Mary
4. From This Moment On by Diana Krall
5. Make Me Smile by Chicago
6. My Tree by Chris Rice  (Hmmm.  Do I know this song?  I don't think so.)
   
7. Let Me Kiss You by Nancy Sinatra
8. Priceless Treasure by Charlie Hall
9. Paint My Life by John Michael Talbot
10. A Place In His Heart for You by Farrell & Farrell

Okay.  I'll take that list.  I'm probably a 46-year old woman.  :D

This first selection is Sircut Cervus by Palestrina as performed by the Westminster Cathedral Choir.  The video isn't exciting for most but the piece is simply beautiful.  I do not know Latin but I am told the text is Psalm 42:

"As the deer pants for flowing waters, so my soul longs for you, O God."  This is beautiful stuff.

My second selection is Classical Gas by Mason Williams who, I am told, wrote it to impress some people at a party. (I love trivial stuff!)  Anyway, this arrangement is reggae in feel and is performed by Vanessa Mae and played on her electric fiddle.  I just enjoyed the ride. (I also wish I could learn to play it on the guitar to impress my step-dad.)  I guess the electric violin is exciting to me.  I've loved jazz violin for years--ever since I heard Jean Luc Ponte.

 

The third selection is called "Advent Suite" as performed live by John Michael Talbot.  I first encountered this on the album "The Painter" with John Michael Talbot and Terry Talbot performing.  I played it over and over again for years.  I loved finding it as performed.  Pretty.

Also, Talbot but from the album "The Lord's Supper."  This piece the "The Apostle's Creed."  I have early morning memories of commuting to high school and playing the album full-volume on my car stereo. 

 

In a moment of strong departure from the overtly religious themes I go for something a little more strange and just a shade less religious.  Besides, this is so fun it just gets me jazzed.

Imagine the sound of brakes here.  For for music that influenced my teen years we begin with the talented group Queen (I never heard that there was a controversy.  I only knew the power of the sound of this music.)  The song?  Bohemian Rhapsody. Man oh man!  Beautiful stuff!

I visited with a friend about grief today.  She lost her loved one almost a year ago.  We agree that grief is a very lonely process.  I'm awake a little late tonight...and found this.

 

KayCeeBee is an old friend of mine.  We use to attend the same church back when we were much younger adults.  Anyway, she visited a recent post and offered this song as well.  Someone has put the song to a slide show and even a few slides in the show are meaningful to me.  So, here is a new song that is meaningful to my current dealings with the miscarriage.

Someone sent a private message to me and said that they thought I was less affected with this miscarriage because I had said that we were blessed and that it was unlocking treasures...um, ...that I had reached for hope...and that we were in the hands of God.  All of that is true.  I would say that we are not LESS AFFECTED but affected differently.  Grieving is a process.  We revisit it.  Because I am in the position of people-helping it is necessary to shield my personal world a little bit so I can serve; however, that does not mean I am not feeling, needing, fighting, yearning, hoping, hating like the rest of the world.

Eventually, I will post about some of this journey but, for now, I am processing.  WE are processing.

I have enjoyed a group called Bela Fleck and the Flecktones for some years now.  One of the original Flecktones is Victor Wooten who happens to be a really amazing and innovative bass guitar player.  I thought I'd share this with you since, surprisingly, I found that it was out on YouTube anyway.  He happens to be playing an arrangement of "Amazing Grace" but you don't have to be religious to see the beauty of his playing.

You can hear more of the Flecktones here.

Make sure to listen to "The Sinister Minister" at their myspace site.

 

 

 

 

On Sunday night, Mr. Tony Bennett came to our nearby sister city of Tulsa where Oklahoma's Centennial Celebrations began this weekend.  The Tulsa Children's Chorus and Tulsa Youth Chorale opened for Mr. Bennett with several numbers appropraite for the centennial celebration.  (We are Oklahoma!  We've got a state song that was written by Rogers & Hamerstein!) 

This thing was excellent.  Our seats were good and we were in the upper level.  There is nothing like seeing a performer like this in 3-D!  He was able to play to the entire venue and made a large room feel quite nice.  His set-up was simple using a small combo with piano, rhythm guitar, acoustic bass and drum set.  Perfect!  He was gracious and grateful for the 60-years he's had to perform.  His stories gave credit to other writers and performers and made his success seem very much like luck or, maybe, providence.

I'll brag a moment on the young performers as well.  My niece, Allison, is with the Tulsa Youth Chorale and they really are blessed to have such an opportunity as to share the stage with Bennett.  Allison was very visible in the center of her group standing 2nd row from the back.  I'm so proud of this for her.

Tony was on the television tonight but the doorbell rang.  It was my next door neighbor, Shannon.  She had big news.  Her husband, L, got saved this week and is very excited about what God is doing.  Shannon received the Lord around 3 months ago.  I love this stuff.  So, I missed Tony on television but was thrilled with the interruption.

This post is to bring a comment from another neighborhood to my VOX-y friends here.

Leonard Jones posted this today and I liked it.

I've heard this phrase a lot: "when we all get in unison, speaking with one voice, then great things will happen"
In musical terms the unison is probably the most powerful of all musical tools, (but it is not the only one.)
The most famous phrase in all of music history is the opening figure in Beethovens 5th Symphony:
da da da da...........          da da da da.............
The whole orchestra is playing in unison, then something very interesting happens, Beethoven uses the same figure in different configurations and this becomes the harmony. Every instrument saying basically the same thing but in it's own voice and in its own way.
Even Beethovens 5th would be tedious to listen to if it stayed in unison the whole time, anyone who has studied the Gregorian chants, knows how boring unison music can very quickly become .
We do need to be in harmony as much as is possible and then there will be the times where we really need power, at that point the only thing that will do it is the unison.

 

 

 

This is my dad, James Robert Storment.  He was from Iuka, MS in the northeast corner of Mississippi.  "Mississippi" is one of the first "big words" that I learned to spell. We did it a little like this:

Em- eye- crooked-letter crooked-letter eye crooked-letter crooked-letter eye humpback humpback eye

*sigh

...but I digress

He was a young man here....a man outstanding in his field!

eh hum.  that was a joke

Anyway, he's been gone since 1978 and I was only 17.  Cancer killed him. It killed him bad.

Lately, I am missing him.  I go through this from time to time but my year has been a little difficult emotionally and I wonder what advice he might have offered.  It wasn't that he was a big advice guy but he was balanced and seemed to be pretty wise.  Plus, I think my temperament was a little more like his.  I don't know if I've developed character equal to his or not. 

The day of his funeral I found out that he was popular and that LOTS of people respected him both professionally and as a friend.  I was his kid.  What did I know?

I want to give tribute to some of my memories of him.  I just want to remember him a bit. 

So, my dad thought he was a conductor.  Yes, I mean of the orchestral kind.  He would drive down the road with the music going full volume and flail his arms and conduct his auto-orchestra.  He didn't play an instrument that I know of...but my sister and I can vouch for his mastery of the car keys as an instrument at Christmas.

I have multiple memories of Saturday or Sunday housecleaning with all the doors and windows open, records on the turntable on our console stereo and the attic fan on.  This memory is more of a "feeling" rather than all the details.  I remember how the house felt and sounded and smelled on those days.

We would sit out in the driveway in the car and listen to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio.  We couldn't get the broadcast in the house.

Summer thunderstorms didn't send us inside but instead we would pull out the lawn chairs and feel the blast of the storm front as it moved in....hot day...hot, moist air....sudden hot wind...followed by the smell of rain...sounds of thunder....powerful lightening...cool puff of air...then the rain.

I hated doing it but it was my job to help with the yardwork.

I remember my interest in the end times...thoughts about the rapture of the Church...curiosity about the book of Revelation and it was then I found out that my dad actually read the bible and knew about Revelation.  I was astonished but comforted since I was, as the time, the only one in my family going to church.

He said to me when he became really ill:  "Don't let them put me in the hospital."  But, I did.  What was I to do?   I was the kid.

I prayed he would be healed like my pastor said...and I tried hard to not "doubt in my heart" and to really, really, really believe.  But, Pop died.  The pastor at the time said that if I had had "enough faith" my dad would have been healed.  I believed this guy for a long time afterward.  THAT guy was careless.

Today, I am comforted to know I'll see my dad again.  Maybe God will let us sit in a car and listen to the radio.

 

(C)1992 or 1993 (C) Laura Leigh Storment

Break Me, Again

Lord,I'm amazed at the hardness of my heart
And how I've allowed it to keep us apart
But now that I'm broken so my eyes can see
Break me again until I am set free

It is a good thing to repent
To be broken, not just bent
It is a good thing to repent

It is your kindness that has brought me here
In repentence my heart is laid bare
Break me, then break me again