Category: music

An evening with Bach

I’ve been having an evening of classical music tonight, swopping youtube links with a friend via IM. He’s thrown some wonderful suggestions my way, from this movement from Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 21, Movement III, to this beautiful alto aria from J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion:

Both are very different and well worth a listen.

J.S. Bach : B Minor Mass : John Elliot GardinerFor my part, I suggested this astonishing piece of music from Bach’s B minor Mass: [Gloria] Cum Sancto Spiritu, which is one of my favourite pieces of music ever. We started on a Bach binge, so my other two favourites are both from the St Matthew Passion, which I was lucky enough to sing as part of a choir when I was in university. These are two of my favourite parts of that work: Wir setzen uns & Erbarme dich.

Dublin calling

I’m in Dublin at the moment, working as a score reader for a small production for the next two weeks. It’ll give me a much needed break from Galway and some time to work on moving to Dublin properly.

I met up with Morgan of Cuckoo Savante (check that band out – they’re awesome) and was chatting about our lives and work. Just catching up really, but he was excited by how many songs I’ve got at the moment. Which made me stop to think how few I’ve demo’d and how badly I’ve done those. I need to stop spending time alone with the songs and start performing them and sharing them with other people so they don’t start to suffocate in my bag.

I’m going through my lyrics at the moment, adding in the edits I’ve made on the fly as I practise and work out the songs. I like a few of them, but I blow hot and cold about my own work quite frequently. I guess I need to let other people judge the work and not be so critical of myself.

Collaborating #2: Alex Hahn

Alex's going away night - The Sequel - 15Alex Hahn is an Australian jazz singer, who spent a few years in Galway, initially singing with the band Electrogecko, before we got together to form a jazz duo.

When we first started performing together, it was along with two other singers, Sarah Elaine and Meadhbh Sullivan, doing jazz/60’s girl-group numbers as the opening act for the Cuckoo’s Nest weekly cabaret night, as well as solo jazz standards from Alex.

This developed into a weekend residency playing jazz standards, and our own jazz-influenced takes on pop and rock songs such as Gossip’s Standing In The Way Of Control, Jason Mraz’s You And I Both and Mr. Zebra by Tori Amos. Read More

Free Download: Theme 4 (instrumental)

This was just an idea for a project I was working on briefly, but there were two of the piano instrumentals that I came up with that I really liked. Much like Bewerunge, this is what it sounds like if I sit at the piano and play sometimes. A lot of my piano music is improvised, and then shaped after I’ve improvised the themes or ideas I want to work with. Sitting and just allowing yourself to play is a challenge initially – I remember some of the awful music I used to come out with when I first started to just let myself play anything at the piano instead of just reading music from a page.

In terms of instrumental music, I guess I’m influenced most by the kind of piano music that I like to play these days. Composers such as Lucovicio Einuadi, Philip Glass and Max Richter are some of my absolute favourites to listen to and to play. So, there’s a strong influence from their styles of music these days when I go to play something.

[audio:http://www.misterebby.com/previewtracks/theme4.mp3]
mister ebby – theme 4

pres primary school piano (used for a show) - 3

Free Download: Take Me Away (demo)

I wrote the lyrics for this song while I was in Dublin, I think some were written on the train to Dublin and the rest in the IFI. I wasn’t fully sure what the lyrics were about at the time, and they were puzzling me a bit. But I had a music idea in my head, but when I went to the piano some time later, the music changed and the song developed a different sound to what I had previously thought in my head.

But even as I had started playing the song live a little, there was something missing in it, and I couldn’t hear what it was. Then an Allelujah I’d written for a amateur musical production inspired by the music of Sister Act (no joke), decided to slip into the song. It fitted, and definitely suited this song more than the choral arrangement of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head that I’d written it for initially. (again, I’m not joking. I still have that arrangement.)

But as soon as the Allelujah slipped into the song, I realised what the song was about, and it all became much clearer to me. The beautiful Meadhbh Sullivan added the vocals for the Allelujah parts for me, and the demo is a good idea of what the song will be.

[audio:http://www.misterebby.com/previewtracks/tmademo.mp3]
mister ebby – Take Me Away (demo) featuring Meadhbh Sullivan

meadhbh and ebby

Lyrics
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