From minstrels show, cakewalk, ragtime, blues, and jazz right up through rap and hip hop the African-American musical experience is rich. Our extensive collection of this great niche in sheet music can be reached here:
The fourteen tracks are all solo piano, and include ten original pieces and four delightful arrangements of favorite tunes. Nevue pays homage to one of his early influences, George Winston, in the title track. The opening melody is simple and heartfelt, beginning in the upper registers of the piano, much like a music box. He repeats the melody, fleshing it out, and brings in a middle section that sounds very much like a Winston passage; a reprise of the melody closes the song with a sigh. A great beginning, and one of Nevue's best pieces ever. His arrangement of "Greensleeves" is sweet and simple, with a wonderful gentle flow. "The Moment Everything Changed" is almost a lullaby - very quiet, with a sense of wonder. "Jesus Loves Me" is truly a classic children's hymn, and Nevue's theme and variations approach to it is lovely, keeping it warm and childlike. "Song For Noelle" is a charming, tender ballad for Nevue's daughter. Quiet enough to be a lullaby, the loving emotions flow through. One of the surprises is a great arrangement of The Turtles' "Happy Together." Nevue gives it a semi-classical approach that works really well. I've always loved this song, and Nevue's version made me realize how strong it is musically. In the liner notes, Nevue writes about how much he loved looking at the stars as a child and how, as he got older, he got too busy to remember to do so. One of the first words Nathan learned was "star," and his discovery of a starry sky has brought "Daddy" full-circle to loving to look up again; "Ursa Minor" has a gentle, twinkling quality that describes a night sky. My favorite track is "Taking Flight," which has a graceful, rolling left hand that gives it momentum, and a melody that suggests excitement and anticipation. I hope this will be available in sheet music soon! "Across the Velvet Sea" is kind of a dark, dreamy waltz. "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is another theme and variations, and is totally charming in its innocence and wonder. "The Face of the Deep" is a bit more mysterious, but is tranquil and calm.
goodnight moon go radio sheet music
"What a wonderfully rich piano recording this is! It's really one of the better solo piano albums I've heard in a while, and one that gets better and better each time I listen to it. You'd expect a CD with the title Sweet Dreams & Starlight to be sappy, saccharine-coated, and laid back in the extreme. While there is no denying that this is a "nighttime" CD (best enjoyed in the "wee hours"), you'll be surprised at the complexity, the depth of emotion, and the myriad of styles on this sophisticated offering from David Nevue (this is his seventh release). There are more than a few moments where you may hear classical influences at work, but there are also subtle moments of jazz and, of course, plenty of mellow new age melodicism, too.I just love the opening title track which has a "dark" side to it, but not dark in a menacing way, more in a rich and nuanced fashion, where Nevue walks the line between wistfulness and romanticism. Nicely done! "Eden Again" is "spot on" loveliness, soflty playful and gentle even as its rolling rhythm unwinds. The refrain is particularly enjoyable on this song. The liner notes are lengthy and the artist writes about everything from the CD's cover photo shoot to how fatherhood has affected him and "Why starlight?" This glimpse into the inner workings of a sensitive and caring artist go a long ways to increasing one's enjoyment of the songs on Sweet Dreams & Starlight, or at least they had that effect on me. You also have to give bonus points to Nevue because he actually covers "Happy Together" (yes, that "Happy Together" by The Turtles) and talk about re-envisioning a piece of music! You will recognize it, but you won't believe it, especially the chorus! It's Nevue's more introspective pieces that affected me deepest, though, such as "Ursa Minor" which is sparse and minimal yet suffused with delicate beauty. "Across the Velvet Sea" is, surprisingly, somewhat morose and somber, even though it's also slightly uptempo, mostly owing to the lower register work that Nevue does at times. "Goodnight Moon" closes the album out in fine fashion, being one of the more sedate pieces here, yet still containing a flowing sense of movement and melody. This is really what Nevue is all about, i.e. uniting a strong sense of musicality with the nuance and complexity that one usually hears in more minimal piano music. I also heard this on Postcards from Germany, one of his earlier releases. It's what distinguishes him from some of the other players in this genre.
Sweet Dreams & Starlight is number eight for self-taught pianist, composer, and music promoter David Nevue. His music has topped the charts more than once and he is heard often on radio stations around the globe and on the internet. He is the creator of Whisperings: Solo Piano Radio heard on the net as well.
I have a number of versions of the talk I am giving tonight. The last time I gave this talk it was about the history of classical music. So I played some pieces by Johannes Sebastian Bach. Yes, perhaps the most famous German composer, but when you dissect the style of Bach, you find it’s a free trade style. It is cosmopolitan. It’s synthetic. It’s a mix of French influences—he wrote the French Suites—Italian influences—Vivaldi.
Now, I mentioned the last talk I gave was about classical music and Bach. And the next talk I’m giving is about the history of oil painting, so I thought tonight I’d talk about a little about music of the Caribbean and how the music of the Caribbean illustrates just a few of the themes I’m talking about. And keep in mind, this is only one example, and one example, even two examples never prove anything. But I try to show in my book that this one example is pretty general. So if you’d like to see more about the generality, there’s question and answers, but also there’s my book. But I think this one example is a good illustration.
Hear the horn? Hear how everything is on the upbeat and the offbeat? It’s a kind of country music. People would just kind of play it for fun. That was Jamaican music a while ago. And what happens in the 1950s is that American music comes along and it’s integrated into the stew of African influences, Jamaican influences, British influences. People in Jamaica were able to get American radio stations from New Orleans, which was not so far away. Some Jamaicans went to work in the United States. In other cases, Jamaican DJs would use sound systems and play American rhythm and blues. So let me play you an American cut or two. This is the kind of thing the Jamaicans were listening too. Bear with me while I change CDs. [Plays “Gee” by the Crows (1953)]
I recently bought satellite radio for my car. It’s a marvel. I recommend it if you don’t know it. For $10 a month, I get a hundred stations. They’re almost completely commercial-free. There’s a whole station for reggae. A whole station for Latin jazz. A whole station for music of the ‘40s. A hundred stations—every kind of music you can think of, with good DJs—for $10 a month. It’s music from the Internet, music from book and record superstores, really a blinding array of music, so much to make you dizzy. There’s jazz. There’s country. There’s gospel. There’s folk. There’s blues. There’s classical. There’s romantic music. There’s opera. There’s rap. There’s techno. There’s raga. And you could go on and on and on. And the choices of music we have today are just remarkable, and this has all come about because of modern technology, markets and free trade.
We’ve moved from the world of 1450 to the world of today. No one would deny that things are lost, but I think there’s been much more gained. And I would say as a general principal that preservation improves as we get as wealthy societies. Poor societies didn’t have musical notation, they didn’t preserve their artworks. African artworks would rot or ruin or be lost to climate. More people today know Shakespeare and Mozart and the Bible than ever before. So your best chance of preserving the past over time, or taking advantage of it at any point in time, is to have this growth, have this trade, have a market in preservation. And that will mean letting some things perish. But I think when you look at the balance sheet, it’s not an even scale, but there’s really a preponderance of creativity, choice, freedom, on the side of the modern world and trade.
I think I own about 4,000 classical CDs and about a thousand LPs. So I have about 20 different talks I could give on that topic. But I felt like doing something different tonight, and that being said, I don’t think modern musics are more primitive than those musics. I think what’s primitive in a music is a very tricky question. If you’re asking, could Bob Marley write a fugue? Well no, not a very good one, at least. But does Jamaican music or British pop music have kinds of sophistication in the studio, or with rhythms, that classical music did not have? Absolutely. Or take the classical music of India.
I’m sorry for making a speech, but I do want to put a question to you. You said that the satellite that you can get in your car now has this wonderful variety, that you can listen to all these different kinds of classical and popular music. I used to be able to listen to a wonderful variety of classical, popular rock, jazz, and everything else on the radio, and now I can’t. In fact, I live a city that has no real classical music radio station. It’s kind of elevator music classical and that’s it. 2ff7e9595c
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