UPDATE! We raised $120 for Haiti – massive thanks to everyone who helped me by purchasing this recording – I will continue to donate 100% of the profits from any continuing sale to Partners In Health…so you can hear me sing and contribute to an excellent cause at the same time. Thank you!
So here it is!
Me, singing.
As part of The Help Haiti Blog Challenge, I’m offering this recording of my singing to raise as much money as I can for Haiti.
The recording is of the Hermit Songs, written by American composer Samuel Barber in 1953. It is a group of 10 songs in English, composed to a collection of anonymous poems written by Irish monks and scholars from the 8th to the 13th centuries, in translations by W. H. Auden, Chester Kallman, Howard Mumford Jones, Kenneth Jackson and Sean O’Faolain.
These songs are beautiful, quirky, moving and heartfelt in their simplicity.
There is even a song giving heavenly thanks to beer. Which means it must be good, right?
This song cycle was recorded way back in 1996 and it is strictly bootleg hush-hush (even though I’m here plugging it to the whole world on the web.) As most of my life is still packed away in cardboard boxes from the move back to Australia from the UK, it was the only recording I could get my hands on fast. It was professionally recorded for broadcast, but because it is bootlegalicious I can not really say any more about it.
Except that I really hope that you’ll love these songs as much as I loved singing them.
When you click the button below, you will be treated to a download of the aforementioned musical loveliness for the bargain donation of $10. This will go to Partners in Health in Haiti to assist in bringing urgently needed medical relief to this shattered country.
So go click! And thank you.
Natalie Christie – Hermit Songs Op. 29 By Samuel Barber
- “At St Patrick’s Purgatory” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
- “Church Bell at Night” (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
- “St Ita’s Vision” (translated by Chester Kallman)
- “The Heavenly Banquet” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
- “The Crucifixion” (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
- “Sea Snatch” (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
- “Promiscuity” (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
- “The Monk and his Cat” (translated by W.H. Auden)
- “The Praises of God” (translated by W.H. Auden)
- “The Desire for Hermitage” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
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