Holiday Greetings and Goings-On

Hello good people,

I hope you are well.

It has been a little while, so I wanted to reach out and extend my seasonal salutations!

2022 is rapidly coming to a close, and with December comes many fab traditions.

In my music teaching world, the Singing Seniors had their Winter Recital December 9th at Lenox Hill Senior Center at St. Peter's Church. Our illustrious band this year was made up of great local players: Paul Pimsler on guitar, Booker King on bass, Jonathan Peretz on drums, and our preeminent accompanist Clare Cooper on piano.

This is our eighth year of Singing Seniors (twenty-three sessions!), and it is always a delight to round up the Senior Center community for some musical entertainment. Our set list this year was L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole, It's A Good Day by Peggy Lee, Let 'em In by Paul McCartney and Wings, God Bless the Child by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Wah Watusi by Mann & Appel, ('Til) I Kissed You by Don Everly, And I Love Her by Lennon/McCartney, and, to honor the season, the classic Christmas song Winter Wonderland.

As many of you know, our beautiful Middle Church burned to the ground two years ago (December 5, 2020). Gospel choir has been migratory since then, singing wherever we land, primarily at East End Temple every Sunday at 11:45 am. Thank you Rabbi Josh for the Sunday use of your beautiful Synagogue! This year Middle has been invited to hold our Christmas Eve service at Marble Collegiate Church, with Dr. Rev. Jacqueline Lewis leading.

Christmas Eve Service 9:00pm
Marble Collegiate Church
1 West 29th St at Fifth Ave.

The extended McCarthy family are coming together this weekend for our annual Pollyanna Luncheon. It is a fun day filled with kids' gift exchange, dessert swap, caroling and a sumptuous buffet lunch!

This will be our first time back together for the Pollyanna since 2019. Some things never seem to change but other things certainly have.

For instance, rapid tests are encouraged.

In honor of my family's tradition, here is the very charming video of "Merry Christmas To You" to celebrate the season. I wrote the song, inspired by our family Pollyanna gathering. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent. The incomparable Johnny Jake produced this video. Thank you again Johnny!

The Caroling Carolers will be meeting again this year under the Washington Square Arch on December 22nd at 6pm. Hosted by dear friend, Terre Roche and friends, it is always a beautiful and well attended public event. Bundle up and come on down!

One more joyful piece of news: my Eye to Eye partner, Julian Marshall, has recently released a beautiful new work titled "The Angel in the Forest." This philharmonic piece he composed and debuted in 2010 is at last widely available for listening.


https://orchid-music.lnk.to/angel

The work has been added to the Spotify Classical New Releases playlist (with over 660,000 subscribers) and the New in Classical playlist on Apple Music, which is thrilling for all involved! Congratulations, Julian!

And from me: Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, and a healthy, peaceful, and restorative New Year!

Love,

xxx,

Deborah

September 11, 2001: Twenty Years Later

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, I offer this video as a small gift to my New York City community, inspired by Eye to Eye's song “Fly Now.”

xxx,

Deborah

LYRICS
Technicolor morning, summer just gone
New shoes on, schools begun
The human hum...

Came without a warning
Sudden change morning doves
left their towers and flew away

Full flight, low hum
Shadow across the sun
Steel melts to liquid, fountain of glass

Fly Now

Whether it's a calling or different drum
Some folks think first of all
To help someone

Technicolor morning, no different pace
Shower and shave and for some
A lasting embrace

Daughters and girlfriends
and moms and wives
Brothers and fathers and sons and husbands

Hearts melt together, fountain of souls

FLY NOW

Whether it's a calling or different drum
Some folks think first of all
To help someone

P.S. after the Inauguration

Reporting from the other side of the Inauguration with great relief and gratitude -- here's a slightly revised version of Patrick Mulcahy's choir caroling photo from my last post, as edited by my friend Riqi Vélez.

Welcome, 2021!

Hello, friends of music & life,

I would like to greet each of you by saying, however weird all this is, Happy New Year!  

Surely this time we are living in will go down in history as having been full of unprecedented extremes.  Sheltering in place has been a hardship for so many.  The sense of loneliness and isolation has been brutal and the tragic loss of life due to the Corona virus, staggering.  

As we wait out this deadly virus and process the recent destructive and deadly anarchy in DC, I wonder if all this cumulative crisis has actually helped us stay anchored in our convictions as informed individuals and as citizens of the World? 

Good things are happening.  I see that we are speaking up, encouraging each other to get the vote out in record numbers, raising our voices in collective solidarity and also in song, albeit online. To research and donate to important causes and campaigns, to get to know our neighbors, to cook more, practice more, write more, to spend more time outside and appreciate nature, to really listen to our friends, loved ones, and colleagues and therefore to grow because our interests and our conscience encourage us to do so. 

Amidst all of this societal change and transformation, I have continued to participate in the communities most dear to me. Here is what I have been up to recently! 

After quite a lot of technological adjustment at the beginning of the pandemic, the intrepid Singin’ Seniors, a musical ensemble group of well elderly singing students, continues to meet over Zoom to learn new songs and to enjoy each other’s presence, even if we are physically separated and meeting via screens. A little bit of touching base goes a long way these days. Some of our elder friends are living on their own, not able to spend quality time with their kids and grandchildren.  I am happy to say we have prioritized staying connected and have become a closer community in spite of the limitations.  

Thanks to Valerie Ghent and the non-profit organization, Feel The Music!, our Singin’ Seniors classes continue to meet online with gusto. Our next session begins on February 4th. 

It is our intention to present a video performance of our group singing a few of our selected songs in mid-May. We will keep you posted as to how to view it.

Besides directing our Singin’ Seniors in Zoom gatherings and participating in the Middle Church Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir online projects, I have also continued to write some new songs. I am slowly learning how to record, both audio and video, however rudimentary. I really want to share them with you soon, starting with a song I wrote that we have produced a simple music video for called “Anchored in Love.” The audio isn’t quite up to my standards yet – watch this space! 

And on top of everything else in this unreal year, on December 5th, 2020, Middle Collegiate, my beloved church in NYC, burned to the ground in a horrific electrical fire caused by faulty wiring in a neighboring building, closed for renovations. The stately, 19th Century stone façade still stands on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street but our glorious sanctuary is gone.

A week later, on a bright and cold afternoon an informal group of Gospel Choir members gathered outside Cooper Union to sing Christmas carols to the downtown public and to offer simple but lovingly prepared paper bag lunches to our fellow New Yorkers who may have been in need of a meal.  We made 32 bag lunches.  They went like hotcakes.  

Photo by Patrick Mulch

After caroling, we walked down to Middle Church to pay our respects to the building. 

We stood across the street on 2nd Ave, behind the barricades, and sang gospel songs of faith, hope and love, offering our four part voices to the physical site and emotional home of our beautiful, healing Mama Middle.  

It was a moving and healing experience on so many levels. 

Our faith-based, brave-heart church leaders are amazing. Rev. Jacqui Lewis is a tireless representative for Middle Church’s ministry.  

Here is the link to our building fundraiser:

www.middlechurch.org/rising

I was recently made a deacon at Middle church. I hope to help spread the collective word that Middle Church remains an active, vital community of diverse, God-loving individuals, representing a culture of citizens who offer help for the hungry and vulnerable and who support and uphold social justice and racial inequality through virtual marching and community organizing.  

I am honored and ready to serve. 

I thank you for spending time reading about all of my musical goings-on! 

My extended family is healthy and well. Our one-year-old dog Ralph is a happy chap, living the life out here in the country. Mr. Mitten continues to decapitate mice like the feline assassin he is, Mike and I are on a January cleanse which always feels great when it’s over, and life is good, albeit quiet.

I send you my very best wishes for a healthy, prosperous and productive 2021!

With love & harmony,

xxx,

Deborah

Sliver of a Moon on Women of Substance Radio

Today, “Sliver of a Moon” airs on Women of Substance Radio (Show #1133). Thank you, Bree Noble!

This song is based on a true story of a dear friend of mine; some of the lines are things she said. It’s not standard tuning - I dropped the low E to a D, which takes it out of the major scale and creates a moody atmosphere, which is what her story evoked in me.

Before “New Road Home” was released, a small team of artists gathered in Pennsylvania and created this music video together. Actors Mac Brydon and Jane Cortney took on the characters beautifully, and the creative team, led by Joshua Berger and Quincey Kai, wove a visual tale that’s not a literal translation of the song, but an emotional one.

I hope you enjoy it!

xxx,
Deborah