Sunday, December 26, 2010

Karaoke Secret Santa: 2010!

Here is my contribution to Karaoke Secret Santa for 2010 (please click the link to check out the other videos - they're a mixture of beautiful, inspiring and hilarious!). My Secret Santa recipient was Mikael Short, a gorgeous girl from Utah who often graces YouTube with karaoke videos of her own. I wish her well in her performance career! Without further ado...

This is "Whatever You Imagine", originally performed by Wendy Moten for the Disney classic, The Pagemaster. Having said that, I haven't seen The Pagemaster, so the song was new to me. Recorded at half-past midnight on Christmas morning.




For anybody who missed it last year, here's my 2009 video as well:





Wishing you joy!

Pam

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Quiet

Fellow Music Lovers,

There are some songs from contemporary American music theatre that just smack me fair in the face and leave me bleeding on the floor, hopelessly in love with them. Usually, they're composed by Jason Robert Brown (I accepted long ago that I will always be a slave to his music), but this time, my fabulous pianistic friend Mikey (and fellow lover of good music) sent me a song on YouTube by a composer I'd never heard of, and I LOVE IT.

The song is called "Quiet", and it's from a show called "Forward", by American composer Jonathan Reid Gealt. The singer in this video is called Natalie Weiss. I find her to be a stunning, capable singer, and am hooked on her utterly convincing characterisation of somebody who has remained quiet for too long.



What makes this song even more fascinating and beautiful to me is the fact that it can be performed by a male singer -- and, in my opinion, be made even more powerful. I am utterly struck by this poignant performance by Tituss Burgess of "Quiet". What a fantastic performer. He is so at ease with his character. I have no hesitation in believing him, and am instantly drawn in, from his first word, to his conversational style of singing. Kudos indeed must go to the composer for the intelligent vocal setting of this compelling one-sided story, but further kudos are absolutely required for this amazing performer...



I hope you've enjoyed these two renditions. What a great song - a great composer - and two great performers. I'm having a deliciously lovely time looking up more about all three of them on YouTube.

Musically,
Pam

Pam's National Anthems Quest!

Dear Folk of the Interweb,

Since finishing my Master of Music degree in November and commencing FT work, my musical spirit has been a little sad. My lovely Joseph theorises that it's because I'm not doing any singing (except in the car), and he could well be right. Paying the bills is all well and good, but my heart needs to SING! So I've got two projects on the go.

The first is Karaoke Secret Santa, a project dreamed up by Joseph Restubog in 2009. Details can be found at the Karaoke Secret Blog. We're a small pool of enthusiastic karaoke singers who are intent on spreading good Christmas cheer to each other! So, on December 11, the Elfster Secret Santa Gift Exchange will assign me a Secret Santa recipient, and, after perusing their musical wishlist, I shall choose a song to learn, and then video myself performing it! Upload it to YouTube by Christmas Eve, and Bob's your uncle. Merry Christmas!

The second project I'm going to be working on is a personal project that I've been thinking about doing for awhile. I enjoyed learning the first verse of the Welsh National Anthem so much this year that I've decided to make it a goal of mine to learn ALL national anthems of the world. Now, the Wikipedia page has informed me that there are MANY national anthems, and not all of them are referred to as national anthems, either. That's perfectly okay. What I want to do is learn each patriotic song from each country, which is going to involve a lot of brainpower on my end to get all the pronunciations and translations right! I'm so excited. It's going to be a great project for me! So many different languages and cultures... Just the thing to keep my mind occupied while I dwell on the fact that I'm no longer studying singing full-time, and figure out what to do next.

I will be recording all of these songs, just on my little digital camera, and upload them to YouTube, as a way of keeping track of the songs and letting you all hear what each different anthem sounds like! I'm trying to find non-naff karaoke versions on iTunes to download and sing to. Here's hoping I can avoid the really obvious MIDI-sounding tracks.

I'm going to start off easy, and the first anthems that I hope to learn/record are:

AUSTRALIA - "Advance Australia Fair" | score

UNITED KINGDOM - "God Save The Queen" | score

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - "The Star-Spangled Banner" | score

WALES - "My Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" | score

With each post and recording, I hope to give a brief background of the piece and teach myself a little of the history of that particular country, especially with regard to their patriotism and national song. I welcome suggestions on which national anthems/songs to embark upon learning after I've completed this first four! I will also welcome feedback and updates on my pronunciation of unfamiliar languages and the histories of various songs.

I'm excited! I hope you are, too.

Cheers,
Pam