Author Description

Nine Songs is a collection of original compositions of the "lighter fare" scored for voice and piano by composer, Dr. Gary Funk. Nine Songs includes interpretive melodies, beautiful unpredictable harmonies, surprising shifts in tempo and "feel," jazzy chord changes, the incessant power and push of rock n' roll, an emotional folk story, and a gentle country waltz. The poetry challenges singers and audiences alike by presenting moments of the human condition with which people have likely dealt in some fashion in their lives. The music asks them to reflect upon what those experiences may have meant to them in reality. The subjects of the poetry and the composer's musical response to the lyrics range from social commentary to lost love, from ethical questions to the tragedy of war. The song What is right? What is wrong? strolls along side the family that searches "forever" to find the name of their loved one, Tom, - on The Long Black Wall (the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington D.C.). Angry protestations are sung by jilted lovers in You Promised Me! and You Walked Right Out of My Life. Mature grief is addressed touchingly in the arching melodies of I Try Not to Cry Anymore. Down in Jamaica Plain describes the brutal Boston winter wind that creates snowy waterfalls that cascade over waxy ice.Ukrainain Rain falls on a man motorcycling in the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia, but he was not drenched in water but rather was unrelentingly pelted and silently coated with the invisible radioactivity from Ukrainian Rain that drifted west from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant explosion of 1986. While the songs are written in popular styles, the music and poetic content deserve study, serious interpretation and performance by excellent singers.