There’s nothing quite like working with good friends and when I have the chance to combine that with doing charitable work, it makes a good thing great! Several months ago, I had the pleasure of recording a very special arrangement by Randy Kerber of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that featured Christine Brewer and me. And if that weren’t enough, my good friend John Williams was gracious enough to conduct the orchestra and work with Randy on some last-minute fine tuning to the score. Fortunately, we had a film crew on hand to document the recording session and the video turned out great!
Category Archive for: ‘Blog’
New HEARTbeats videos 3
Not one, but TWO terrific things happened today! 2
My latest album, The Known Unknowns, went on sale today at Amazon and iTunes for its July 26, 2011 release. This has been a very special project for me and my wife, violinist Helen Nightengale, who is also the album’s producer. The album also features the Angeli Resemble, a spectacular group of colleagues and friends. I plan on writing much more about this in the near future and although you might not know it from the number of blog posts, I’ve actually been doing quite a bit of writing lately; in fact, I wrote all of The Known Unknown’s liner notes.
Read MoreSome Thoughts From The Tchaikovsky Competition 2
It is a strange experience to be here in Moscow as a judge for the 14th Tchaikovsky Competition, because my last connection with this competition in this city was 50 years ago at the 2nd competition. The former Soviet Union, and at that time the recent shock of Sputnik, was still fresh on our American psyche not to mention the impact of one tall and lanky Texan pianist named Van who four years earlier, had rocked our world and gave us the dream of ticker-tape parades and super-stardom.
Over the half century, there has been a sea change throughout the world, in music, and internally. Young people today definitely feel that they are more ready to pounce on this prize and instantly change their lives (and ours) than we fantasized in 1962. The reality, of course, is that the winners’ careers can be helped and abetted, but the real change that needs to take place must happen internally with each individual who has been lucky enough to have been exposed to this remarkable arena.
Read MoreSongs My Father Taught Me 12
My father, bass-baritone Mack Harrell
I’m in Moscow right now as a judge for the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition but I wanted to post a note letting everyone know that today at 4:00pm Central Time, 98.7 WFMT is going to broadcast Song My Father Taught Me, which I’ve been recording with them for the past year. The program looks back on my own career and on that of my father, bass-baritone Mack Harrell. My special thanks to Louise Frank from WFMT for producing the program and putting so much of her own heart and soul into this as well as my friend and collaborator Victor Santiago Asuncion. Even if you don’t live in the Chicago area, you can still listen to the program at wfmt.com.
I’ll be writing more about the competition very soon as today is our first day off since arriving so stay tuned!
The additional photos I promised 6
I wanted to post a quick note to everyone pointing out that the additional photos from the recording session with the great Jessye Norman are now available at the HEARTbeats website. In addition to seeing Jessye and more of the recording crew, I enjoyed composing a short introduction for the photo gallery that truly sums up my feelings about the session and how much I admire Jessye.
Read More15 new videos 3
Just a quick note to everyone pointing out that I posted 15 new videos that are from a recent recital at The Broad Stage, here in LA.
They are all available at the video page.
Welcome to my blog. I am a 67 year old solo cellist who has been touring the world for the last 40 years playing almost everywhere of note in the classical music scene alongside many of the greatest musicians. Over all these years, I have accumulated many stories, opinions, and insights, and gifts of the spirit as well as objects. It has been and still is incredibly inspiring work and even though I consider myself “techno-challenged” I wanted to have an outlet to share everything.
