The “World Music Project” LAUNCHED this weekend!
The “World Music Project (WMP)” LAUNCHED this weekend! Here is a little of the “back-story” from my perspective:
Approximately a year ago, I received a Facebook message from Jesús Cabrera, a young Dominican Film Composer/Musician/Producer now living in New York. He had seen some Youtube footage of me performing “Change the World” and was inviting me to be a part of a very unique collaboration of musicians from all over the world to produce a video of a song, “I Have A Dream”, where each musician was to be featured on their instrument/voice. Each artist was sent the chart and basic bare-bones .mp3 of the song to play/song over and contribute to. Recording happened in professional and home recording studios … then each musician shot some video footage near a monument or location that represented their country.
Honestly, I entered this as a bit of a skeptic … a social media message out of the blue – a lofty dream of pulling together 30+ musicians globally to record a song – was this for real? … what could come of this? I was also quite busy completing the Trevor Dick Band – NEW WORLD Project. Could I commit the time to this? I had lot’s of questions as did many others … but as we collaborated (encouraged by persistent messages from Jesús) discussed and ironed out the details of the project (completely over a private Facebook group/forum) all the details were ironed out and the song slowly took shape.
I was invited early on in the project – so was quite involved and engaged in the full process from beginning to end. As I jumped in and recorded my string parts (on acoustic and 5-string electric violin/viola) I could see how others also jumped in. On a trip to Ottawa (to visit Carleton University with my son, Kyle and family) Aaron and Kyle helped me shoot the video footage on Parliament Hill using my iPhone 5s. Two other Canadians are featured in the project: Navid Goldrick (Oud, Alberta) and Richard Cleaver (Audio Engineer, Ontario). Richard (who has engineered my last three projects) did a another wonderful job mixing and mastering the project. You can read more of his perspective here.
WMP truly took on an exciting life of its own. Is it perfect … no … but there is truly something special about it – a young man who had a vision saw it come to life through persistence and collaboration with musical brothers and sisters from around the world. It was a real honour to be a part of this. Here is the official video. My solo happens at 5:41.
As the web site describes it:
One World
One Song
One Sound
One Heart
The WORLD MUSIC PROJECT is a collaboration of musicians from all over the world, playing a whole variety of common and rare instruments, working together on one song.
Together, they hope to show how music, creativity and love can unite us as a people, beyond boundaries of geography, culture and language.
SITE: http://www.worldmusicproject.org/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/groups/754591307992946/