doug hammer

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So Many Stars…

Image by yavorzhelyazkov from Pixabay

“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.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

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!

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

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.

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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…

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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.

Image by Jackie Matthews from Pixabay

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.

Image by yinet gomez from Pixabay

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.

Image by Susanne Stöckli from Pixabay

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.

Image by Gerry from Pixabay

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.

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Hints Of Spring

Last weekend I saw a dad herding two small boys wearing rubber boots.

They were delightedly stomping their way across a very large puddle.

The sun was shining.

Snow was melting everywhere.

The air almost felt warm on my face.

Ahh, the intoxicating approach of spring!

Robins have landed twice on the bushes outside my bedroom window, eating berries that — miraculously — remain on the branches.

Two male cardinals have been jousting in the airspace around our house — flashes of scarlet fluttering from fence to roof to branch and then back to fence — all the while uttering a passionate selection of hormone-infused songs.

Soon tiny frogs will wake up and start peeping in the wetlands behind my friend Doug Hammer’s studio to the north of Boston.

A few years ago Doug found a great sound sample of spring peepers, and we added it to my Snow Flake Song (playable at the top of this post).

Right now the peep frogs are still hibernating under a log or behind the loose bark of a tree.

When they are full grown, spring peepers are only an inch and a half long.

According to a National Geographic article I found online, they tend to peep in trios….

Who knew?

If you have time, please consider clicking here to watch a video I made a few years ago for the Snow Flake Song.

It features many different kinds of flowers blooming.

Happy (almost) spring!

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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.

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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.

StarryStarryNight

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.

Van-Gogh-Self-Portrait

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.

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We Never Know Who Is Listening…

Image by Felix Neukirch from Pixabay

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.

Image by Ekaterina from Pixabay

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!

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Synchronized Heartbeats!

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

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.

Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

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.

Image by Massiel from Pixabay

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.

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Music and Spontaneity

I am at an open mic run by the Boston Association of Cabaret Artists (BACA) in an elegant UU church in Watertown, MA.

Steve Heck — a wonderful local pro — is playing the grand piano, and I am singing “Over The Rainbow.”

Harold Arlen

It is one of the songs in a new show about Harold Arlen which I have recently begun performing with pianist Joe Reid.

After Steve takes a piano solo, I re-enter at the bridge of the song (“Some day I’ll wish upon a star…”) and then I hear elevator doors opening behind me.

Three women — friends of Steve Heck, I later learn — appear on stage with me.

They did not realize that the elevator would deposit them there.

I turn and — still singing — welcome them so that I can escort them across the stage and down into the audience.

But as I do this, I realize that they probably love music and very likely know the words to “Over The Rainbow;” so I encourage them to stay with me onstage and sing — which they happily do.

One woman in particular catches my attention because she is adding a beautiful harmony in a great big, belting voice.

Image by Ermel Tufiño from Pixabay

We make eye contact as the song builds to a dramatic climax of “Why oh why can’t I?” — each of us singing at the top of our lungs, my microphone completely unnecessary.

The entire series of events lasts less than a minute, and the entire room is happily caught up in the moment.

Afterwards, during a break period, I am asked how I managed to time their arrival so perfectly.

I explain that I had never met them before and that the entire experience was utterly spontaneous — unfolding moment by moment with no guidance other than the lyrics of the song, Steve Heck’s solid accompaniment, and our shared love of music.

Ahh, music!

Ahh, spontaneity!

Joe Reid

I have been experiencing a lot of spontaneous musical moments in the past few months.

Joe Reid and I put together our hour-long Harold Arlen program in one rehearsal that lasted about two hours.

He is a jazz pianist who is very comfortable making music in the here and now.

I brought a bunch of Arlen sheet music to his house plus a rough idea of a song run order.

We double-checked the keys for all the songs, played each one through once or twice, and Joe was ready to take it public.

So far we have performed at two retirement communities with very enthusiastic audiences (and we did get together for another hour-long rehearsal between our first and second performances…)

I also spent many additional hours making sure I knew exactly how the song was originally written, reading several books about Arlen I ordered from my local library, recording practice piano tracks with Doug Hammer, memorizing lyrics, and writing the “patter” to lead from one song to the next.

All of this preparation helps me to surrender to the moment when we are performing these wonderful songs.

Me and one of my favorite MT participants of all time!

I have also begun leading Music Together (MT) classes in Arlington and Belmont (a neighboring town where Mitt and Ann Romney used to live).

MT is a very-well-researched and very-well-planned program to introduce small children — along with their caregivers — to the joy and fun of active music-making.

Although participants are encouraged to learn 30 new songs accurately — each one carefully selected to include a wide variety of keys and rhythms — per semester, we teachers are given free rein to be spontaneous and improvisatory during class.

I am sure my training during the past six months to become a MT teacher helped me to go with the flow at the BACA open mic when those three women appeared onstage.

And I have experienced many moments of musical connection with children and caregivers during my first two weeks of MT classes which have given me a similar jolt of delight.

I think this might be what I am supposed to be doing here on planet earth…

The song in the player at the beginning of this blog post is a Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer classic called “Accentuate the Positive” which I recorded with pianist Doug Hammer during a rehearsal for the “Mostly Mercer” show that singer Bobbi Carrey and I created last year.

Image by Gabriele M. Reinhardt from Pixabay

Thank you to Doug Hammer, Joe Reid and Bobbi Carrey for being important musical collaborators.

Thank you to the generous and skillful photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to all of the families who have signed up for my Music Together classes.

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

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

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Singing Together

Image by Couleur from Pixabay

I just spent a day rehearsing for a performance in Tiverton, RI.

It’s a new show called “In Perfect Harmony” with fellow singer Bobbi Carrey and pianist/composer Doug Hammer — in which all the songs include at least a partial harmony somewhere.

Because we have been performing together for ten years — and since one of our favorite things to do is sing in harmony — we have a lot of material to choose from.

The show also includes quotations and anecdotes about the process of collaboration — which for us has involved a great arranger, Mike Callahan.

From time to time we send Mike recordings from our rehearsals, along with detailed notes about which harmonic ideas we think show promise and which need help.

Bobbi and me after a rehearsal

Invariably he sends charts back to us that both improve our ideas AND surprise us with some great new musical impulses.

At the top of this blog post is our version of the Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini classic “Moon River” if you are curious to hear the fruits of this collaborative process.

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

There is something very intimate and satisfying about singing with someone else — whether in unison or harmony.

And since electricity entered — and in many ways took over — our daily lives during the last century, our patterns and habits of singing have certainly evolved…

Rice Heritage Cottage

Crooning along with the radio or a CD or a song being streamed on Pandora or Spotify is great — yet it’s very different from singing with another real live human being in the present moment.

I just returned from a week in upstate NY at a wonderful, ramshackle family cottage with no internet access and no TV called the Rice Heritage.

My great grandfather James E. Rice bought this cottage (I think from fellow Cornell professors John Henry Comstock and Anna Botsford Comstock — who was the first woman to become a professor at Cornell University).

James E. Rice was a professor of poultry science at Cornell and had a farm — called the Egg and Apple Farm on Rice Road — just up the hill from this cottage in Trumansburg, NY.

The uphill view from dock to cottage…

He and his wife Elsie Van Buren Rice raised six children — three girls and three boys — almost all of whom ended up owning farms, too, when they grew up and married.

Sadly, however, Elsie died when their youngest daughter was still a teenager.

James ended up leaving the family’s cottage — overlooking Cayuga Lake — to his six children plus their descendants.

And many of his descendants continue to take turns staying there each summer in one- and two-week increments of time.

This summer one of my older cousins told me about songs she had heard as a child from her parents and grandparents — some of which were originally sung by people working outside in gardens and fields as a way (according to my cousin) to pass the time and remain connected with their neighbors.

The downhill view of dock and boathouse…

What a different era — and mode — of human connectedness!

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Using my ukulele and the great “Daily Ukulele” songbooks, we sang together most nights on the beach around a camp fire — while the younger members of our family roasted marshmallows and made s’mores for all to eat.

Yum!

I could do this for hours — and in fact on the last night I did play without a break for over three hours.

The beach with campfire at twilight…

Music.

Stars above.

Friends and family all around.

Lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.

Bliss.

THANK YOU for reading — and listening to — this (recently updated) blog post.

Thank you, too, to Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer and Mike Callahan for their musical contributions.

Thank you to Pixabay for the lovely photos of hydrangeas!

Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay

Thank you to my great grandfather and great grandmother for their generous foresight in buying this cottage and then leaving it to their descendants.

And thank you to all of my cousins who have pitched in — decade after decade — to keep the Rice Heritage intact and functional for generations to come.

Hurrah for summer!