Category Archive for: ‘HEARTbeats’

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!

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.

I recently returned from Nepal where my foundation was working with orphans from the Unatti House  and children in Bhaktapur. I also had the pleasure of doing my very first Artist Ambassador program with the Save The Children foundation and I can say that everything was an intensely emotional and gratifying experience. I plan on writing more about everything but until then, there is an extraordinary record of the trip at the HEARTbeats Nepal blog. From there, you can find a wonderful account of what transpired from the perspective of my wife and HEARTbeats co-founder Helen Nightengale, Unatti House Founder, Stephanie Waiser, HEARTbeats executive board member, Drew McManus, and one of our documentarians, Janelle Eagle (bios).

Speaking of the documentatians, we had a three member film crew along to document everything and we plan on having that footage available within the next several weeks so you can see exactly what made this a very special trip; one we hope will be the first of many.

In the streets of Bhaktapur.

I know I’ve been negligent with my blogging but if nothing else, it has been for good reason. My performing schedule has been jam packed this season; so much that I’ve been reduced to tweeting rather than blogging. But the other reason is becasue of a great deal of important work with the HEARTbeats Foundation, which my wife and I founded this year. Two important projects from that work are filling most of my December days, the first was a recording session with the incomparable Jessye Norman that includes the two of us playing together for one of the tracks from our upcoming benefit album, They Are Why We Sing and the other is our inaugural service trip to Kathmandu, Nepal…