On A Clare Day (2023)

The ten pieces here were inspired by a discovery I made. A singer from Tucson named Clare Demer was recorded singing individual musical notes, which were then made freely available for downloading. With these, you get to play her voice on your MIDI keyboard the way you might play a sampled clarinet. Her tone is just great, right on key, and free of that nasty vibrato that (to my mind) mars so much of trained singing, and doubly so for sopranos. (With a bit of digging, I found out that she also sings actual musical pieces with regulation vibrato including, to my surprise, an opera by Nino Rota, the film composer sans pareil.)

So what I did is I played Clare singing some short songs, from Gyorgy Ligeti to Peggy Lee. (Yes, I realize that's a pretty wide spread.) I used some sampled instruments and sound effects for accompaniment and variety. The songs are my arrangements, adaptations, and free-range alterations of the originals. That's the fun of it, innit? Her singing here is wordless, but all the songs originally had words in Latin, German, English, Portuguese, and French. (The three French songs are ones we were taught in grade school.)

If Lux Could Kill (from Lux Aeterna by Gyorgy Ligeti) 1:05 Shalala (from Le Vieux Chalet by Joseph Bovet) 2:47 Orff (from Manha De Carnaval by Luiz Bonfa) 2:57 Fond (from Fond Des Bois by Friedrich Silcher) 2:45 Solaris (from Ich Ruf Zu Dir by J.S. Bach) 2:35 Gentle (from Chuva Delicada by Luiz Bonfa) 2:35 Nayzh (from La Premiere Neige by Joseph Beaulieu) 1:46 It's just Lakme (from The Flower Duet by Leo Delibes) 1:48 How (from Insensatez by Antonio Carlos Jobim) 2:19 Ahwrite (live at Artie's Pizza Joint) (from Alright, Ok, You Win by Sid Wiche) 3:18 23:55

This music is dedicated to my new granddaughter Sienna, who might even end up sounding like Clare in a few years.

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