Rob Mathes Music

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Welcome I have been blogging regularly on this site but have to put some new material inside the site itself, new photos and whatnot and am writing the first new front page in about 6 weeks. The Sting record is out and is doing well. I have read some beautiful reviews and some snippy ones, which is to be expected. It is a musical and strong piece of work though. The Bettye LaVette project "Interpretations" has gotten across the board raves and she so deserves it. I was on Good Morning America with her in early July and she just slayed everybody. It is a particular thing, a kind of wizened and intense sound, not for every moment of your life but certainly a record to put on to reflect and feel things. I worked with legendary engineer Ed Cherney on the Sting record and he thought the Bettye LaVette record was one of the most important music releases of the last year which was high praise coming from the Rolling Stones's favorite engineer. She is a master and producing that record with her and Michael Stevens was the best three months anyone could ask for. Add to that "Symphonicities" and life is a rich thing right now. I will leave some of the below info for new visitors. The next number of months contain some interesting things. Some of you know I am a Mahler fanatic. I have started a dialogue with Mahler expert Gilbert Kaplan who is famous, notorious even, for conducting one piece, and only one piece, of music, the Resurrection Symphony, Mahler's no. 2. His recording of it is the best selling Mahler disc ever and one of the best selling Classical music discs of all time. The piece is written for an absolutely massive orchestra and so many slightly smaller orchestras around the country and abroad want to perform it. Schoenberg and others did arrangements of Mahler's works for different ensembles and they were successful so Gilbert is researching the possibility of doing one (it would help if we had half the brain power of one Schoenberg). Leonard Slatkin spoke to him and sent him to me. It has been wonderful to talk with him and I may help him with that, which is akin to going on a search for a Golden Chalice of some sort. Those are now sacred notes. I will also be producing Matthew Morrison from the show Glee. We have started and it has been pretty joyful. I have been working with Jamie Siegel who is a great engineer and all around musical presence. He has helped me get things started. I am going to do an encore performance with soloists, orchestra, choir and band of the piece I wrote and performed a few months ago. It is called "At Night A Song Is With Me" and is a setting of a cycle of lyrics by the great Irish Poet Micheal O'Siadhail. The reaction to the premiere performance was so overwhelming for all of us that we realized we had to do it again. It will be November 6th back at Christ Church at 8pm. That is a Saturday. We are doing only one Christmas Concert this year with Will Lee on Bass, Billy Masters on Guitar and the rest of the troupe. It will be Saturday December 18th and will be at The PALACE THEATRE in Stamford, CT. It is a great venue that seats 1500. Purchase was home for many years but we all felt we needed to shake it up a bit. Let's see how it goes. We are excited about moving to such a wonderful theater and, from the reactions I have been getting, you are too. I have a number of other projects in the offing including the completion of Wheelbarrow (Lord help me!). Haven't visited those tracks in over a year and it is so close. Evening Train's true sequel, a Gospel Blues Pop shouter with a ton of madness and soul I think, if I may say so myself. Keep the cards and letters coming on that one. Finished a score for an HBO film called Thurgood and was nominated for an EMMY for musically directing the Kennedy Center Honors this year again. More gratitude on that front. Go visit Chris Jordan's new site. The link is here---www.chrisjordan.com and he has this genius idea to, in the form of a word sculpture of sorts, list thousands upon thousands of charities around the world in an installation called "E Pluribus Unum". You can experience the idea beautifully by visiting the site. I am reading Roberto Bolano's 2666 which is fascinating. It has been so difficult for me to read fiction in the past 8 months because my schedule has been so mad. You pick up and leave off and lose the thread. I am going to make a go of this one. Listening to Part, Stravinsky, Haydn, Radiohead, Janelle Monae, and The Bird and The Bee (and, I confess, the Sting record I just co-produced). Great stuff, especially the song "Again and Again" by The Bird and The Bee. Love it. Much more to come in the months ahead. I send greetings to all who give a damn. Check out Mary Oliver's "Red Bird" and Wendell Berry's "Leavings". Pretty great poetry. Robert Haas has a "New and Collected Poems" just out also which I am excited about. Enough already though. I'll try to visit and renew the front page a bit more often. The blogs are coming fast and hard though. I am averaging at least one a week if not two. See you soon, Rob http://www.robmathes.com/images/content/katrinaRadio.jpg