G e r r y L e o n a r d

Greetings Friends

We had a great night at Rockwood 3 on Friday. A real nice turn out and an intense show.

One new piece I tried out was a kind of Meditation on Life on Mars. I was working on the DB Tribute for the Brit Awards show and around the same time listening to a beautiful piece by Arvo Part, one of my favorite composers of modern classical music and his Cantus for Benjamin Britten in particular . Anyhow I was then inspired by Davids composition of Life on Mars. I discovered that it has a descending half step line all through out, also most like a classical piece and I wanted to develope a study to illustrate this. You will hear that the piece starts out quite spare and simple like a prelude, or an omen of something forthcoming but soon takes some interesting turns if you stick with it.

You can listen below. I posted one with the spoken introduction which kind of sets the scene, and one with just the music if you want to just get to the music straightaway.

Anyhow , I hope you like it…

Spoken Introduction Version

Music Only Version

And the Arvo Part masterpiece …Cantus in memory of Benjamin-Britten, which of course is light years ahead of my little study …