Michael Emmanuel » John Keats

Keats’ Ode to A Nightingale

MichaelEmmanuel — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 03:56:56 +0000

The album “Ode on a Grecian Urn” now includes Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Click here to link to lulu.com. It’s also available at amazon.com in the Ode to a Grecian Urn II album.

Thanks for your support.

Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

MichaelEmmanuel — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:00:54 +0000

First draft of John Keats’ famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale”. Just me with my guitar…. oops, says file is too big! The song turned out to be right at 10 minutes long. O.k. I’ll see what else I can do.

So here’s a preview of the first two verses:

Ode to a Nightingalepreview2

Here’s the first two lines again but different:

FirstlinereviseOdeNight

I’ve been playing with violin, viola, cello and flute which all sound good, but I keep coming back to the bare bones creation. What can I say!

Thank you, John for this beautiful poem. I hope you like what I’m doing with it.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (John Keats)

MichaelEmmanuel — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:47:48 +0000

I was pleased and surprised to find several musical settings for this great poem. There are classical versions and folk versions. There are choral versions and solo with orchestra and even instrumentals of various kinds. Here’s one I wrote for tenor and guitar, quasi folk/classical. How would you classify it?

La Belle Dame Sans Merci Keats

Last verse:

“And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.”

Shaman’s Hand: 2/22/09

admin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:25:08 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

On Shaman’s Hand, Michael featured some of his classical work including rehearsal audio for a voice recital in 1990.

He also debuted a piece he is finalizing for his new album based on Keats’ poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci“.

And with his usual twist he brought in guests at a dinner and listening party to introduce songs for the episode.

You can listen to the February 22, 2009 broadcast of “Shaman’s Hand BlogTalkRadio” below:

[podcast]http://www.michaelemmanuel.com/uploads/show_409012.mp3[/podcast]

In the studio again

MichaelEmmanuel — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:20:58 +0000

Michael recording "Little Angels, Dust Your Wings".

Here I am in the studio recreating a recording session. Hey, it’s a bedroom studio without all the nice stuff that “real” recording studio has. I’m working on Little Angels Dust Your Wings. It’s…tada….finished!

Earlier in the day I was looking for some CDs to record on and I found a long lost song called At the Door. Also on the hard drive is the full version of La Belle Dame sans Merci poetry written by John Keats.

So it’s been a full day. I came home from work with 50 CD-Rs! Hooray!

SO aside from a few machine malfunctions (my DAT headphone jack is useless) and I broke a tape in it this evening.

While working on this post I’ve been listening to Parazona and onlinewithandrea on Blog Talk Radio. Tomorrow I’m Andrea’s guest.

Hooray!

All’s well that ends well.

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