A New Project: Winter Peace

As I got ready this summer to work on my newest Floyd book, another project came my way introduced by my husband, Matt Richard, and my good friend Patrice Tiedemann. They are both musicians, and they developed an idea to create a holiday season recording, and maybe this recording could benefit music education in some way. And so, "Winter Peace" was born!

My original concept drawing...more about the art in a later post!

This CD recording will benefit the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra's educational outreach program, which brings music education to students in southeastern Massachusetts. As an art educator, I know first-hand how arts education needs support. The NBSO does an amazing job with their numerous student outreach programs and I know these funds will go to good use.

In addition to Matt on piano and Patrice singing original arrangements that you will absolutely love, a student ensemble (Southcoast Vocal Ensemble) joins Patrice on one piece, and 3 instrumental arrangements will be performed by The Southcoast Brass Ensemble featuring Dr. Mike Rocha, Bob Williamson, Ben Paille, Bill Kingsland, and Travis Blischke. Neil Sylvia will be featured on percussion, and cellist Peter Zay is leading a string quartet on a number of pieces as well. All of the arrangements were written by Matt specifically for this recording.

Here's the working list of songs so far...

I am very excited to be included in this project. Not only am I doing the art work for the CD packaging and marketing, I am singing a beautiful duet with Patrice: an Italian folk song called "Gesu Bambino". Some of you may not know this, but I have been singing for many years as a hobby, and Patrice has been my most patient and supportive voice teacher for about the past 7 years. She is basically magic. By the way, like many of the people involved with this project, I am donating 100% of my time on "Winter Peace".

We are crowd-funding this project so we need your help! Any donation amount is appreciated and donors will receive gifts, like free downloads or copies of the CD mailed conveniently to your home, depending on the donation category. Most importantly, if we do not make our goal online, this project will not happen. And I really hope it does because not only will it be amazing, it will help support music in our schools! The deadline to donate is August 7, 2013!

Here is the link to read more about it and please share with friends: www.gofundme.com/WinterPeaceCD

Thanks in advance for your support!!
Please message me if you have any questions at artgirlkris@comcast.net
(Hopefully, I'll be blogging about my work on this project in the near future, so check back in!)