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Tracks
Sound clips below
Total Album Time 53:12
All compositions are
by
Paul Halley
©
Back Alley Music
(ASCAP)
1.
◙♫
Sea Song
PEL7003 Sea Song
Sheet Music
for solo piano and ensemble
2.
◙♫
La Alhambra
PEL7004 La Alhambra
Sheet Music
for solo piano and ensemble
3.
◙♫
Prayer
PEL4018 Prayer
Sheet Music
for solo piano with optional organ
4.
◙♫
Bulgarian Cowboy
PEL7005 Bulgarian
Cowboy
Sheet Music
for solo piano and ensemble
5.
◙♫
Rolling On
PEL4020 Rolling On
Sheet Music
for solo piano with optional organ
6.
◙♫
Montana
PEL7006 Montana
Sheet Music
for solo piano and ensemble
7.
◙♫
The Prince and The Pauper
PEL4019 The Prince and the Pauper
Sheet Music
for solo piano and
guitar
8.
◙♫
Todo Mundo
PEL7007 Todo Mundo
Sheet Music
for solo piano and ensemble
9.
◙♫
Ubi Caritas
PEL2003 Ubi Caritas
Sheet Music for SATB Choir and Piano
opt.
organ and ensemble
10.
◙♫
Angel On A Stone Wall
PEL4017 Angel On A Stone Wall
Sheet Music
for solo piano with optional organ
All compositions are
by
Paul Halley
©
Back Alley Music
(ASCAP)
Administered by
Pelagos Incorporated
Items with catalogue numbers
are linked to music available
on this site. Click on link.
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Description
Paul
Halley explores more of the extraordinary range of his composing,
arranging and keyboard skills, drawing on his roots in jazz and
classical traditions. Yet again, he demonstrates his unique flair for
creating original music that is vital and timeless. The album ranges
from ballads for solo piano, a piano-guitar duet, and arrangements for
the full ensemble, to a choral piece that juxtaposes and
interweaves Gregorian chant (Ubi Caritas) with a chant from West
Africa. He is joined by colleagues from across the jazz and global music
spectrum.
"ANGEL ON A STONE WALL
could have been a solo collection, but I have more fun playing with a band,
and I love orchestrating. By contrast, my first album PIANOSONG, was wholly
improvised, while ANGEL ON A
STONE WALL is
entirely composed." - Paul Halley
ANGEL ON A STONE WALL - Composer’s Notes - Paul Halley
1. Sea Song
is the musical depiction of one of those
crystal-clear August afternoons I've spent sailing the Atlantic coast of
Nova Scotia. I have felt such freedom and exhilaration with the wind and
sun in my face and the spray off the whitecaps flying about me - and
always those barely perceptible voices, the voices of the sirens that
beckon me on...
2. La Alhambra
While touring Spain with the Paul Winter Consort, I was
anxiously searching for a name for this piece which had the working
title of "New 9/8." There is a sinuous quality to this tune, which
reminded me of the stray cats in La Alhambra at Granada. I saw hundreds
of those cats, and all were doing something in 9/8! The Cats of La
Alhambra was my first title for the tune, but I was told it sounded too
much like the name of a Latin jazz combo!
3. Prayer During a stay in Israel, I was part of a private tour of
Jerusalem by a friend from the Hebrew University. We arrived at a place
(called Dominus Flevit) on the Mount of Olives where we were given the
same view of Jerusalem that Jesus saw when he came to the city on that
first Palm Sunday. He understood in his heart what that ancient city had
been through in her first thousand years, and what lay ahead, and he
wept. This music is a prayer for the peace of Jerusalem. It is a 3,000
year-old prayer.
4. Bulgarian
Cowboy
The piece opens with a wacky Eastern Bulgarian-style melody,
harmonized a la Stravinsky, which soon encounters a straight-ahead
Western cowboy tune. The two cultures mix and meld until they finally
erupt into a joyous chant of hope and triumph. The inspiration for this
piece arose as a somewhat frivolous antidote to the awesome power and
beauty of the Grand Canyon, encountered during my first rafting trip
down the Colorado River. I guess you could say that’s cowboy country!
5. Rolling On
I improvised the seed of this piece at a sound check for our
Carnival show at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1988. Paul
Winter loved it, and it developed into a short piano solo. This is the
most PIANOSONG-like piece on the album.
6. Montana I wanted this piece to express the inner qualities of
those majestic mountainscapes of Montana - openness, spaciousness and simplicity,
and for the alpine flute to be heard "singing" the melody as if from a
distant peak.
7. The Prince And
The Pauper
During my years as Music Director at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine in New York City I was blessed with the opportunity to write
several musicals for the children of the Cathedral School. The Prince
and the Pauper was one of them and this piece is taken from that
musical. It is the song that the dying King Henry Vlll sang to his
supposed son who was afraid to be crowned King. Not realizing he is
addressing a pauper instead of the Crown Prince, Henry gives the child
some good advice on how to deal with fear and doubt in one's life. I
wanted to write of that quality of tenderness between a father and son,
when each recognizes the humanity of the other.
One night in Paul Winter's barn, I was sitting at the Grotrian piano
with guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves—one of the most human beings on the
planet. I was showing him how this tune went, and he picked it up
immediately (he seems to know most of the tunes that haven't been
writ-ten yet), and for once, the tape had been rolling!
8. Todo Mundo This is a happy-go-lucky piece that happens to be in 5/4. It has
two major themes that miraculously work together. I wrote this with the
Paul Winter Consort instrumentation in mind. It was a musical party for
the whole gang.
9. Ubi Caritas This Gregorian chant -
"Where there is love, there is God" - has been in my life since I was
ten years old as a choir boy. I sang a setting of it by Durufle, who is
one of my favorite twentieth century com-posers. Both the words and the
music have tremendous universal appeal. I tried to bring out the
inherent power and optimism of the Gregorian Chant by juxtaposing it
with the chant of another culture. Sometimes we need to look at the
obvious through other people's eyes. It was Russ Landau's persistence
and tenacity that got the piece recorded properly, and with the
appropriate groups at the Cathedral in New York.
There is a wonderful kind of upstairs/downstairs scenario at the
Cathedral. There is the daily round of services in the church itself,
while below in the crypt all these groups are doing their own forms of
worship - whether in the soup kitchen, the gymnasium, the theater, or
the studios. One of the downstairs groups is called The Forces of
Nature, an African dance group of great power and vibrancy. Occasionally
during a service we'd be in the middle of some sublime Gregorian chant,
when we would hear The Forces of Nature start up their rehearsal with
some intense drumming, giving us some stiff competition! At the time, it
irritated me. Now, it is one of my combinations.
10. Angel On A
Stone Wall This piece comes from my late night drives home following
recording sessions in Litchfield. They always seemed to be misty, foggy
drives with lots of moonlight. I'd pass stone walls and in my tired
state, imagine seeing things. One night as I drove past a graveyard out
of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like an angel sitting on the
stone wall. I was so struck by this image that it has been with me ever
since.
So why is this piece so sad -
why the nostalgia? Maybe because that angel represents a perfect kind of
Love which is unattainable in this life. We get glimpses of it from
time, but the vision I saw on the stone wall spoke of a Love that was
unending, and all-embracing. |
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Reviews
from
Sound Waves
"Paul
Halley is an immensely creative musician who gathers inspiration from
wherever the wind blows. Angel on a Stone Wall is both beautiful and
inspiring, enlightening and free."
from
The Cincinnati Enquirer
"The
melodies he [Paul Halley] wrote for his solo
piano/pipe organ LP, Pianosong, are so tuneful Barry Manilow would become an
axe murderer just for the chance to say ‘I wrote them’. "
from
The Kitchener Waterloo Record
"Halley has managed to banish murkiness altogether from his playing.
Perhaps it’s his clarity that’s most outstanding, or maybe because of his clarity
he can accomplish so much more than ordinary mortals."
(Concert review)
from
The Huntsville News
"An inspired testament to the
keyboard maturity and compositional vision of one of today's most
original musicians."
from Amazon
Customer Reviews
“Was fortunate to receive this from my niece who was a music buyer for a
major US retail chain - she knew my love of fine piano artistry. This
has become one of my "standards" - mixing tremendous technique combined
with a wide breadth of artistic license... classical, new age, choral.
Exhilarating and soothing (if that's possible) on a single CD. One of
those unknown jewels that you feel privileged to find."
-
anonymous
"I've never come across a composite of songs that access the soul so
completely. Each song takes you to another place. Moving, peaceful, or
exhilarating. What an incredible combination of emotions this album
evokes. I've been listening to it for years and still am amazed how it
moves me each time." - Mike Miller
"It's been one of my "go-to" albums since I got it. Tasteful, emotional,
'real'; one of those rare albums I want to share with people like a rare
gift.
Paul's sensitivity and enthusiasm for communicating through gentle music
is without comparison. His juxtaposition of the African rhythms with the
traditional "Ubi Caritas" is the essence of fusion that made his work
with the Winter Consort so essential. The freedom expressed on "Montana"
and "Bulgarian Cowboy", and the tenderness of "La Alhambra" sound fresh
to these ears 15 years after the fact." - anonymous
CREDITS
Artist
Paul Halley
piano
pipe organ
Ensemble
David Blamires - voice
Oscar Castro-Neves - guitar
Amit Chatterjee - sitar
John Clark - french horn
Eugene Friesen - cello
Jamey Haddad - percussion
Nick Halley - percussion
Russ Landau - bass
Rhonda Larson - flute
Kenny Mazur - guitars
Ted Moore - drums
Glen Velez - percussion
Paul Wertico - drums
Paul Winter - soprano sax
The Cathedral Singers - vocals
Abdel Salaam & The Forces of Nature - vocals & percussion
Recording/Production
Russ Landau,
Recording Engineers
Piano and pipe organ recorded at The Cathedral of St. John The Divine,
New York, and Litchfield, CT
All Rights Reserved
Made in USA
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