Album Cover

So here's the latest "Still Falls the Rain" update - we just chose an album cover yesterday!

  

I'm very excited about it!  Now that this step is done, we can start progressing with the rest of the CD booklet design.

To those of you who have contributed to the album's Kickstarter campaign: Many, many thanks for your continued support and generosity!  We are half way there with five days to go!  If you think about it, only 100 more $50 pledges, and we will have hit our goal - so please keep spreading the word!  If you haven't pre-ordered your advance copy of the album by pledging your support you - do so now before the campaign is over!

In the meantime - have a great weekend!

Happy Independence and a Plea For Help

Happy 4th to all of you who are celebrating Independence Day today!

I hope you are all enjoying fantastic fireworks and grilled meats of every variety.  I'm celebrating in Eugene, Oregon, in between moments of frantic St. Matthew Passion studying...

In case you haven't had a chance to pledge your support for the "Still Falls The Rain" Kickstarter campaign yet, we are only 6 days away from the finish line now and about 40% of the way there! The catch with Kickstarter is that if we don't raise 100% of the fundraising goal, we will lose ALL of the money pledged so far.  So it is important that we reach that finish line in time!

Pledging your support is not only a fantastic opportunity to help bring some extraordinarily moving music to the world, but it's also a great opportunity to pre-order your own advance copy of the album.  In case you haven't checked the album's Kickstarter page out yet, every pledge-level reward includes an advance download or advance CD - a pledge as low as $50 includes both!  We're only 120 $50 pledges away from reaching our goal, and this blog gets about 100 visits a day.  If everyone who visited this blog in the next 24 hours stopped by Kickstarter and pre-ordered a copy of the album by pledging their support - just imagine how much closer we would be towards that goal and bringing this album out into the world!

To those of you who have already pledged - I cannot thank you enough for your support and generosity!  Please help to continue to spread the word!  Many, many thanks and Happy Independence Day!

Alan Cumming and 8 Days To Go

I just thought I would check in here with a little update about my latest recording project!

Let me start off by saying a big THANK YOU to all of the backers who have pledged so far to the Kickstarter campaign for Still Falls the Rain!  We're just short of 35% of the fundraising goal with a little over a week to go - so if you haven't joined the list of people who have already pre-ordered an advance copy of the album by pledging their support, there is still a little time left to do so.  If we don't raise 100% of the fundraising goal - we lose all of the money pledged - so it is imperative that we get there in the next 8 days!  No pledge is too small, and every little bit helps!

photo by Francis Hills

The latest update regarding the album is that last Friday, we recorded the final tracks of the album!  There are a few readings of Edith Sitwell's poetry that are interspersed throughout Britten's piece, The Heart of the Matter. I am excited to report that the phenomenal actor, Alan Cumming, was kind enough to do the readings for the album.  Alan is currently performing a one-man production of Macbeth at the National Theater of Scotland, and was generous enough to take some time out of his busy rehearsal/performance schedule to record the tracks in a studio in Glasgow, Scotland.  Through the wonders of the internet, the album's producer was patched in to the Scottish studio from a studio in NYC, and we were able to quickly get the final tracks of the album down.  Alan's readings of this poetry are incredibly moving - it's stunning poetry, and even more stunning to hear Alan's expressive delivery of the text.  Now that this final piece of the puzzle has come into place, I am even more excited for you all to hear the finished piece!

Again - I am so grateful for your support of this project.  I am so excited that we are nearing the finish line, and it is YOUR support that is nudging us closer and closer to our goal.  In the meantime, if you have already pledged your support, please keep spreading the word about this campaign by posting about it on your Twitter feeds/Facebook pages, etc., I would be eternally grateful. This is a fantastic chance for any Britten-lover you know who will enjoy this album to pre-order their advance copy of the album!