September 22, 2014 by willedare

So Many Stars…

“So Many Stars” is a song I have heard performed by many different singers, and I have always thought to myself, “I need to learn that song.”

This past summer I visited a pianist/songwriter friend, Steve Sweeting, and his family while attending a Music Together training session in Manhattan.

One evening we were brainstorming about possible future collaborations, and I mentioned that I have long wanted to do an evening of songs about stars — both the amazing energetic phenomena that we see at night and the human-created idea of “star” — as in “movie star” or “musical theatre star.”

To get us started, he gave me the sheet music for “So Many Stars,” which I promptly began learning.

Pianist Doug Hammer and I recorded the version I have included at the top of this post — and then I went camping for two weeks with family on Cape Cod.

One of the things I love about getting away from the city is gazing at the sky on a cloudless night.

A couple of times I walked down to the beach after dark and sang “So Many Stars” over and over again while the universe beamed light across unimaginably vast distances to trigger the rhodopsin in my eyeballs — and awaken a sense of wonder in my mind, body, and spirit.

The deceptively simple lyrics of “So Many Stars” were written by the wife-and-husband team of Marilyn and Alan Bergman for a wonderful melody by Sérgio Mendes, a Brazilian pianist and songwriter.

The Bergmans created lyrics for a bunch of great songs including “Nice and Easy” (for Frank Sinatra), “The Way We Were” (for Barbra Streisand), “What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?” and “You Must Believe In Spring.”

Sérgio Mendes was a founding member of the successful vocal jazz group Brazil ’66 and left behind a 35-album legacy of music when he died from complications of long-term COVID in 2024 (I updated this blog post in 2026…)

Image by fernando zhiminaicela from Pixabay

There are so many ironies about the lives that we “modern” human beings have created here at the beginning of the 21st century on planet earth.

One of them is how — in the interest of safety and security and advertising — we have erected vast numbers of exterior lights, which means that we are less and less able to experience the truly amazing sight of a starry, starry night — along with the humility and curiosity and mystery that it can evoke in us.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

As someone who has (blessedly) never been mugged, I’d rather have more visible starlit nights and fewer streetlights in my life.

How about you?

Hurrah for rhodopsin, hurrah for music, and hurrah for the vast mysteries of the universe!

I can get so caught up in the human drama unfolding here on planet earth that I forget about the larger — and potentially un-knowable — universal patterns and cycles unfolding all around us at every moment of the night and day.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank you to the Bergmans and Mr. Mendez for creating this beautiful song.

Thank you to Steve for giving me the sheet music for “So Many Stars” and to Doug for recording it with me.

Thank you to the generous and gifted photographers at Pixabay.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts.

PS: You are always welcome to visit my musical website, willsings.com, by clicking here.

April 29, 2014 by willedare

Everybody Says Don’t…

Image by laurenta_photography from Pixabay

One of my favorite Stephen Sondheim songs — “Everybody Says Don’t” (on the player embedded above) — is from his first official flop, Anyone Can Whistle, which starred Angela Lansbury, Harry Guardino, and Lee Remick on Broadway in 1964 and ran for nine performances.

Among other topics, the plot explored the classic question of who is saner — the folks in a mental hospital or those who are not.

“Everybody Says Don’t” invites us to consider how we make choices.

Many of us make choices based on what other people say or think.

Sometimes this demonstrates a healthy respect for our shared values as human beings — and helps to keep our societies more, rather than less, civil.

Sometimes it’s a way to avoid saying or doing something important — something which might be utterly, uniquely, and profoundly why we are alive here and now on planet earth.

I might have stayed in my non-musical day job as a PR/development/events professional for another 16 years if I hadn’t been laid off.

The job offered me teamwork, camaraderie, shared purpose, a paycheck, respect from my peers, and daily surprises/challenges.

But it was not tapping very deeply into my musical soul.

Now I am devoted to making music for a living — as a performer, a songwriter, and a Music Together teacher.

The sentiment of “Everybody Says Don’t” reminds me of one of the guiding principles of Music Together — that anything a child chooses to do during class is fine and needs to be respected as part of their learning process/style.

A child’s caregiver may want them to sit still and “play” a drum — or a shaker egg, or a triangle, or a set of wooden sticks — in a particular manner.

But their way of soaking up the music in class may involve moving their bodies around the room, sitting in a corner (seemingly disconnected from everything happening in class), or bouncing up and down in someone’s lap.

As long as the child is not endangering themselves or hurting someone else in class, s/he is free to respond to the music in her/his own fashion — which may change from song to song and class to class.

I sometimes imagine the adult caregivers (moms, dads, nannies, grand mothers, grand fathers, au pairs, uncles, aunts and more) as younger versions of themselves — who may have been told somewhere along the line: “don’t sing so loudly,” or “don’t sing out of tune,” or worst of all, “don’t sing — just move your lips.”

One never knows what musical wounds people may be bringing into our classrooms…

As one teacher remarked at the end of a three day Music Together seminar, “90% of our job is showing up with a compassionate heart.”

I guess that could be true about a lot of our interactions here on planet earth…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Thank you for reading and listening to this blog post.

I welcome any comments you might be inspired to share below.

April 11, 2014 by willedare

The Lord Of The Dance

Once upon a time, Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell for a wonderful series, The Power Of Myth, which aired on PBS.

I remember being very stirred up by many of Mr. Campbell’s observations.

One of them was the idea that plants grow back — sometimes more vibrantly — after being pruned/cut down and how this biological event might relate to the idea of a g-d such as Jesus, who was killed yet rose from the dead.

I think this concept stuck with me because of a song, “The Lord of the Dance,” which I first learned from a friend of my older sister when we were singing in my grandmother’s kitchen.

I had always assumed that “The Lord Of The Dance” was a traditional folk song, but a fellow blogger recently told me that the words were written by an English songwriter, Sydney Carter.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Carter was inspired partly by Jesus, but also partly by a statue of the Hindu God Shiva as Nataraja which sat on his desk.

Pruning… (Image by Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay)

He later stated, “I did not think the churches would like [“The Lord Of The Dance”] at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord … Anyway, it’s the sort of Christianity I believe in.”

Many years ago I recorded a version of “The Lord Of The Dance + Simple Gifts” with help from Jere Faison (producer), Patty Barkas (back up vocals), Jonathan Keezing (guitar), and Robert M. (bass).

With Easter on the horizon, I thought this might be an appropriate time to share it.

Just click the player at the beginning of this post.

May we all be able to rise up again after we have been knocked down by one of life’s many challenges.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

I will close with more thoughts from Sydney Carter (and you can click here to read a simple obituary if you are curious to learn more about his life…)

“I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus; in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.

Whether Jesus ever leaped in Galilee to the rhythm of a pipe or drum I do not know. We are told that David danced (and as an act of worship too), so it is not impossible. The fact that many Christians have regarded dancing as a bit ungodly (in a church, at any rate) does not mean that Jesus did.

The Shakers didn’t. This sect flourished in the United States in the nineteenth century, but the first Shakers came from Manchester in England, where they were sometimes called the “Shaking Quakers.”

They hived off to America in 1774, under the leadership of Mother Anne and established celibate communities – men at one end, women at the other; though they met for work and worship.

Dancing, for them, was a spiritual activity. They also made furniture of a functional, lyrical simplicity. Even the cloaks and bonnets that the women wore were distinctly stylish, in a sober and forbidding way.

Their hymns were odd, but sometimes of great beauty: from one of these (Simple Gifts) I adapted this melody. Sometimes, for a change I sing the whole song in the present tense. ‘I dance in the morning when the world is begun…’. It’s worth a try.”

One more deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

March 27, 2014 by willedare

The Beauty All Around

crocus-yellow-closeup

Today I visited one of my favorite urban yards (near the intersection of Dana and Centre streets in Cambridge, MA) as I was biking home from a visit with my beloved acupuncturist.

The people who live there have planted an astonishing number of bulbs under a huge beech tree in front of their home.

Crous-Yellow-Bunch

Right now hundreds of snowdrops and crocii are blooming, as well as one tiny Siberian iris.

And even though the temperature was near 32 degrees Fahrenheit, I saw two little bees diligently visiting each crocus flower to gather tiny bits of pollen.

Amazing!

Crocus And Squirrel

The crocii have inspired me to share two different versions of a song I wrote a couple of years ago, “The Beauty All Around.”

Here’s a version I recorded last week with pianist/composer Doug Hammer.

I think this song originally sprang out of an excited realization that some of my favorite pop songs — such as “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay — were based on only four chords.

I am not sure when I came up with this particular four-chord progression — but I remember sitting at a picnic table next to a lake near Worcester, MA, when I started recording it.

It was a warm autumn afternoon, and I was attending one of my favorite congregations of human beings on planet earth, the Massachusetts Men’s Gathering.

Although I was not having the best time at my day job (as the lyrics attest…), I was happy and grateful to be sitting by the water, surrounded by trees and birds and sky and clouds.

Here is my original version, recorded using my trusty Apple laptop running GarageBand plus my small, blue ukulele.

If you are able to take the time to listen to both versions, you will notice how the lyrics have evolved a bit.

ps: If you are ever feeling down in the dumps and have access to the internet, just do a search for “crocus images.” So many colors! So much beauty! What a planet…

March 15, 2014 by willedare

What’s It All About?

Last night I attended a party at a home in Medford, MA (a neighboring town just outside Boston).

The host had invited a couple of pianists and a bunch of friends who like to sing to celebrate his birthday.

After some delicious food and inspiring conversation — including how the Boston Beer company decided to withdraw its support of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston — we all moved from the kitchen into the living room.

And then we made music together for three hours.

Sometimes it was one singer accompanied by a pianist.

Sometimes it was the whole room singing together.

Sometimes one of the pianists sang.

At one point each of the pianists even accompanied the other — who was uncharacteristically standing to sing.

The daily news from our mainstream media brings so many unhappy stories into our homes and into our hearts — planes which mysteriously crash; snipers who fire on civilians; species being wiped out by poachers; wars being waged over natural resources and political power and religious beliefs…

I often wonder what we human beings are doing here on planet earth — and how music fits into the larger equations and patterns unfolding on a daily basis.

Are we here, as some teachers suggest, so that our souls can experience fear and love?

If that is the case, we are certainly doing a great job with the fear component of this cosmic experiment!

Maybe music is one of the tools we can use to respond to fear.

I know from my own experience that listening to music — and making it with others — can lift my spirits.

And can reconnect me with my deeper feelings.

And can bring my energy — for lack of a better word — into harmony with others.

Last night someone at the party sang the great Bacharach/David song “Alfie.”

It reminded me of a recording (embedded at the top of this blog post) which Doug and I made a few years ago at his studio in Lynn.

I am reassured that other human beings, such as Burt Bacharach and Hal David, have pondered similar questions, too.

And I am very, very grateful that my life is now focused on making and sharing music with others.

Thank you for reading — and perhaps listening to — this blog post!

ps: When I wrote this blog post over ten years ago, it included no photos. So in April 2024 I added some from a wonderful photographic resource called Pixabay. THANK YOU to all of the generous photographers and graphic artists at Pixabay!

pps: And when I first recorded this version of “Alfie” with the wonderful pianist Doug Hammer, I knew nothing about digital distribution of music. Now it is available on a bunch of streaming services — and you can click here to stream it.

February 14, 2014 by willedare

And So It Goes

Another Valentine’s Day is here.

Lots of snow.

I bought a box of cards at CVS yesterday so that I can hand out child-sized Valentines to the little ones in my Music Together class.

There were cards which featured wrestling action stars and others with garish visual special effects.

There were cards publicizing children’s movies and TV shows.

I showed my final choice — puppies and kittens with accompanying tattoos — to a mom in the card aisle.

She assured me that most parents are OK with temporary tattoos.

We shall see…

I have long admired the song I included at the beginning of this post.

“And So It Goes” is one of Billy Joel’s most beautiful, wise ballads.

I recorded it with Bobbi Carrey — who provided harmony near the end — and Doug Hammer — who played piano and engineered simultaneously — at Doug’s great studio outside Boston.

It is one of the tracks on our CD, If I Loved You.

There are more tracks from that CD in the music player on the right hand column of this blog, including “I’ll Be Here With You,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?” “Dog At The Pound,” and the title track, “If I Loved You.”

I realize — not surprisingly —that almost every song in the right hand column of this blog is about love.

Music has an uncanny power to re-connect us with our hearts.

May you have much music in your life on this — and every — day.

January 15, 2014 by willedare

The Starry Night

What is it about Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” that touches so many of our human hearts?

At the end of December I was wandering through the Museum of Modern Art in New York City when I happened upon his masterpiece.

First I noticed the scrum of people who were jockeying for position in front of it.

Then I noticed the guard who had the extraordinary responsibility of making sure that none of the members of the scrum got close enough to damage the painting.

And then I saw it…The Starry Night.

And tears immediately appeared in my eyes.

Even with a crowd of people taking photos of it, taking photos of themselves in front of it, and tweeting and texting their friends about it, “The Starry Night” was serenely, astoundingly beautiful.

I don’t know if I cried partly because I, too, love to gaze at the night sky — amazed at the beauty of the stars and the vastness of the universe — and Van Gogh captures it so well in this painting?

Or if I was reminded of Don McLean’s song “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night),” which speaks so poignantly about how little respect or success Van Gogh earned in his lifetime — as well as his eventual suicide?

The juxtaposition of the clamoring crowd of art-lovers in the 21st century and Van Gogh’s downwardly mobile existence in the 19th century was odd.

And yet we all still share the same huge questions — about how our finite lives relate to the unimaginably vast realms of space, about what happens to us when our bodies die, about how our wonderful blue-green planet fits into the swirling patterns of the universe, about time…and space…and love…and loss.

Ahh, art.

Ahh, music.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

If you are curious to learn more, here is a link to MOMA’s web page for “The Starry Night.”

Special thanks to pianist Doug Hammer, at whose Dream World studio we recorded the version of “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)” you can hear by clicking at the top of this blog entry.

November 18, 2013 by willedare

We Never Know Who Is Listening…

One of the truly magical aspects of a musical life on planet earth in the 21st century is how widely one can share one’s songs if one has access to the internet.

After Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer and I — with lots of help from Mike Callahan, Jonathan Wyner, and guest musicians — recorded our CD “If I Loved You,” we heard from family, friends AND folks whom we had never met.

One listener included our version of the David Friedman ballad “I’ll Be Here With You” (which you can hear by clicking on the right hand sidebar of this page) on a CD she sent to her fiance who was serving in the US military overseas.

Another fan — who had been given our CD by a friend — tracked us down and told us that she listened to our music each morning while she worked out. When her husband died, she asked us to sing at his memorial service.

And I recently learned — in a reply to my blog post about music and spontaneity — that a CD of my “Will Loves Steve” show (which features songs written by people named Stephen, Steven, Stevie or Steve) had traveled from Massachusetts to Argentina, where it helped lift the spirits of someone who was feeling very low.

Here’s a selection from that show — “Overjoyed by Stevie Wonder…

The pianist is Doug Hammer, and the horn player is Mike Callahan.

I am curious to see how my musical endeavors may continue to ripple around the planet thanks to the internet.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Ahh, music!

ps: Since I wrote this blog post almost 12 years ago, I have begun distributing music to various streaming platforms.

You can click here for a streaming link to my version of Overjoyed” in case you might like to add it to a playlist and/or “like” it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

Thank you for reading, listening and maybe even leaving a comment!

November 9, 2013 by willedare

Synchronized Heartbeats!

Earlier this year a fellow WordPress blogger directed me to new research from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

The study — named ‘Kroppens Partitur’ or ‘The Body’s Musical Score’ — monitored the pulses of fifteen choral singers as they made their way through three different exercises: humming, performing a hymn, and chanting a slow mantra.

The authors of the study reported:

“When you are singing, the heartbeat for the whole group is going up and down simultaneously…It gives you pretty much the same effect as yoga breathing. It helps you relax, and there are indications that it does provide a heart benefit.”

This synchronization is thought to be caused by the breathing patterns which the music inspires in the singers.

When they are singing the same melody, they tend to pause to breathe in the same place, and these breathing patterns then influence their heart rates.

I love learning about this research, because it corroborates what human beings have experienced for thousands of years — singing with other human beings is a special, healthy and often uplifting experience.

It also reminds me how important it is to include “sing-along” songs as part of a performance.

Who wouldn’t want an opportunity for a room full of people’s hearts to synchronize?

“Blue Moon” by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart is a song which Bobbi Carrey and I included in our In Perfect Harmony show in hopes that people might sing (or hum or whistle) along with us.

I have included a version that we recorded with Doug Hammer on the piano at the very beginning of this blog post.

I have long been aware of how intimate singing with another person can be — whether in unison or in harmony — but I didn’t realize that Bobbi and I might actually be synchronizing our heartbeats when we perform together.

Yowza!

Ahh, blessed music…

And the human heart…

Deep breath in.

Deep breathe out.

October 25, 2013 by willedare

Getting In Tune With The Infinite

I have been been blessed to sing wonderful songs written by other people for many years — as the MP3 player on the right hand sidebar of this page can attest.

And every now and then I have helped to co-write a song.

But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I bought my first ukulele, that I started writing songs on a regular basis.

The song in the player at the beginning of this blog post is one I recorded using my this ukulele and Apple’s wonderful GarageBand program on my laptop.

I love learning about how other songwriters have created their hits.

Composer Harry Warren and lyricist Johnny Mercer, for example, co-wrote “Jeepers, Creepers,” “On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” and “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.”

And at some point Warren gave Mercer the nickname ‘Cloud Boy’.

As Warren explained, “A lot of times when I would play a melody for John… particularly if it was after a good lunch… he’d stretch out on a couch and just lie there with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his stomach. He was way up there some place in the clouds. Of course, what came out later was just great.”

When asked by his father about his creative process, Mercer once said, “I simply get to thinking over the song — pondering over it in my mind — and all of a sudden I get in tune with the Infinite.”

Many songwriters have expressed a similar sentiment — that they feel as though they are acting as a conduit or channel for something greater than themselves.

The lyricist Ira Gershwin said that the composer Harold Arlen would never “approach the simplest musical requirement or idea without first calling upon ‘the fellow up there’ — jabbing his finger at the ceiling.”

I cannot say that I have experienced this phenomenon yet.

I have, however, noticed that lyrical themes sometimes emerge which surprise me and lead a song in a different direction than I had originally intended.

And I have had the inspiring experience of writing a song which gradually became true.

It is called “Can We Slow It Down?” — and I wrote it a couple of years ago when I was working full time at my day job in Harvard Square.

I realized recently when I was practicing it at home that my life has in fact slowed down since I began singing this song.

If you are curious, you can listen to two different versions of “Can We Slow It Down?” — the ukulele + GarageBand version at the top of this page and the piano/vocal version I released with pianist Doug Hammer by clicking here.

I will be singing it plus two other originals as part of a mini-set at a lovely open mic in Lexington — hosted by Nourish Restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue — on Tuesday, November 5, 2013, starting around 7:30 pm.

Perhaps you can join us.

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

a musical life

So Many Stars…

Everybody Says Don’t…

The Lord Of The Dance

The Beauty All Around

What’s It All About?

And So It Goes

The Starry Night

We Never Know Who Is Listening…

Synchronized Heartbeats!

Getting In Tune With The Infinite