Our work with HEARTbeats Foundation, a non-profit organization that my wife, Helen Nightengale, and I set up for helping children around the world to better cope with the circumstances of their lives, is one of the most gratifying parts of my professional career that now is over 50 years in the running. It is particularly a joy that my relationship with WFMT in Chicago has been there for me for so many years as well; it was in 1966 that I first performed live for the station, and in a few weeks I will be going to Chicago to continue that tie with more music.

My friendship with great artists over the years has given me immense vital input to this human growth aspect of what music can and does mean: I have been changed in many ways to what our art is, and can mean to people. These friends’ excitement on joining us is truly amazing: The immeasurable talent of Christine Brewer, Randy Kerber’s remarkable arrangement of the great song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Harold Arlen, and the great composer, John Williams, who took time to conduct this for us, was an amazing gift. By the way, when we were doing this recording we realized that we were in the same space, the same sound stage that was used in the late 30′s for Judy Garland’s recording of it for “The Wizard of Oz.” We all felt something very special indeed that afternoon: music can reach parts of our collective past that is, well, a religious experience.

I believe you can listen to the station online at their website, http://www.wfmt.com.

You can watch the videoright from the HEARTbeats homepage, it’s the first slide so all you need to do is click it and the video will start. If you think everyone sounds great in this, just wait until you hear the final mix on the benefit album. Here’s a shot of all four of us in the booth during one of the breaks.

Photo: 2011 © Dana Ross

In addition to the session video, we also have a video documenting our time in Nepal from Last December working with the local children. That’s me in the background playing Bach!

The Known Unknowns: Amazon

Even though one album release is terrific, I have another album being released today as well. This one features Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle symphony. This one is available to purchase or download now as a single track or entire album. I’m very pleased to see such a great initial response at the Amazon.com website!

Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1: Amazon

There’s an online catalog from Naxos that has all of the track listings and related info for both albums, which you can find here.

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.

Yes, this competition is probably the most international of all of the classical performer’s competitions just by the nature of its artistic demands and whom it attracts in the concert business as well as the competitors themselves. A wider range of cultural differences exist on both sides of the concert stage. That is true for the young musicians and the judges as well.

Fifty years ago the focus was less on the immediate result than it is today because of the changes resulting from the social and media revolution. In the early 60’s one had a great deal of time to adjust to the change in one’s status if you will. Now, literally, the whole world knows instantly of your success and thereby expects it to be lasting and permanent. No time for reflection, growth, metamorphosis of style, etc. The top achievers will have to be impervious to any change or smallest lapse. The pressure is enormous.

In a related matter, I know of one teacher whose demand overnight tripled in student applications because of the success of one student in the limelight. This used to take years to develop, but now because of YouTube, Facebook , Twitter, etc. we not only know the latest news when it happens but we know far more details, such as who studies where and how to contact those individuals.

The music is still there but there seems to be more demand for a super hero type of performer, one who can perform virtually perfectly and also have the depth of an old philosopher. Someone, who is to be destined to rewrite the history books of the performers achievements; or at the very least, their wikipedia pages.

It’s almost as if we yearn for these supermen to comfort us in a time of such swift change that we are dizzy from it all.

But the pressure to fill this gap in someone who is under 25 instead of 40 is perhaps just a dream. We will see.

One of the exciting things in this process is the biggest surprises arrive when one least expects it.

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!

Last Thanksgiving was, for me, the most thankful of my career as I spent it recording a beautiful spiritual with the legendary Jessye Norman. Jessye personally wrote this arrangement for the loneliness of a solo cello plus voice and what an experience it was! It is a tender and simple song but with an artist like Jessye, it became a symphony of expression, history, love, regret, and bewilderment. It is a marvelous work and an equally special gift to our album and the foundation. It was given with thanks for our being able to make a difference for young lives, and in the process, enriching our own lives. ~ Lynn Harrell, HEARTbeats Co-Founder

Click to visit the photo gallery.

And please take a moment to visit the Jessye Norman School for the Arts website! She’s put jsut as much of herself into this school as I have into HEARTbeats.

They are all available at the video page.

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.

The recording session with Jessye was an absolute delight, I’ll be writing more about what we recorded and how it went next month but in the meantime, I wanted to post some of the photos from the session. Besides Jessye and myself, the session was produced by Helen Nightengale and Alan Abrahams and engineered by Fred Vogler. The photographs were taken by Chad Batka and I love all of them; these are just a handful of the ones which caught my eye but I’m sure we’ll be posting more at the foundation website soon.

Our trip to Nepal is going to be a wonderful undertaking, the foundation’s vice president for marketing and communication released the official press release earlier this week and we’ll be blogging about our work the entire time we’re there at  www.heartbeatsforchildren.org/nepal2010.

Such touching poignancy at a difficult time. Let us all be aware of our wonderful, mysterious and awesome power of music in our lives!

Cellist at Trinity Music School – devastation, concentration, dedication

Cellist at Trinity Music School – devastation, concentration, dedication

Cellist at Trinity Music School – devastation, concentration, dedication