“Summer,” is the last song on my e.p. I aim to leave the listener with a freshness and a sense of beauty, appreciating the natural wonder and poetry of the natural world. The title for the ep also is in this song- see if you can spot it!
I was inspired by several other pieces of art/music…old and new. It is not unusual for artists and musicians to depict the seasons…Vivaldi’s Four Seasons etc. My inspiration came from even longer ago. Breugal was a german painter from around the renaissance time and I have enjoyed his paintings since I was a small girl. (I used to be fascinated by the details and facial expressions portrayed in his paintings…some of it humorous, some of it garish and some of it ghoulish! ) But, his paintings depicting the seasons really captured the heat, the cold and the landscape so I wanted to paint a picture in sound and lyrics that encapsulated Summer.
The other seasons – apart from Spring- have also been written…..hopefully they will appear in future albums! I was also inspired by Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Debussy’s “Au Clair de la Lune” which captures the feeling of night time and moonlight.
So, summer is painted in a slightly nostalgic way with lots of images and omnimatopeia to create the warm sibilance that is Summer. I felt it had to have a wistful, nostalgic edge as living this far north in the British isles…there is nearly always a chill wind and summer is a beautiful minute in the hour that is winter!
The arrangement for the piano are much more modern and twentieth century in feel than my other songs, giving this last song quite a different vibe than the others. I also wanted to have a non philosophical song to finish……showing another facet to my writing …..You can’t be deep and meaningful all the time! Just enjoy life and the Summer whilst we have it!
The next few blogs will tell my story about how I came to be a songwriter…it is a slightly quirky story, but very human and real. Look out for : ” The Accidental Songwriter…..and Moors, Music and Meditation!”
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