Just downloaded this CD, on realease day, (love that!) by famed opera singer Renee Fleming. It is a collection of rock songs, some somewhat obscure B sides, some current, and some older. They have amazing arrangements,and she is singing them, not as a soprano at all, but in her lower register. It is an amazing recording! One song that is blowing my mind, "Hallelujah," by Leonard Cohen, a song so many love but I just never "got" really works for me on this CD.

Of course, not only did I get sucked into the music, but her website as well. I have been reading biographies, and news releases, watching YouTube videos, and listening to all of the original songs, done by the original artists. God that sounds like a K-Tel records advertisement, but then again, as I have admitted before, I AM a cover song junkie. As I read, this quote was the one that really hit me over the head and made me realize why I was connecting so much...

"It just struck me as an interesting adventure," she said. "In this stage of my career, I'm facing a kind of maintenance program. I've been on this plateau, where there's no place to go, other than to stretch myself artistically. And this seemed to fit."

YES YES YES! Now, Renee is 51 and has be "at it" professionally for a lot longer than I have, but that is still such a sentiment I believe in! You do reach plateaus, throughout life, professionally and personally, and how you traverse those plateaus says so much about who you are as a person. Once you've made the climb, do you just stay there, or do you consistantly push yourself, creatively, to new places? Well, Renee surely took herself to a VERY new place with this recording, and I am loving it as a backdrop to my continued creative evolution through this blog. Thanks SO much Renee! OH, and by the way, Mom, who was a Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam student, just like Renee, my latest reader, you will need to give this one a listen!
I love ya!