Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life

[mtmynd]

Natalie Merchant sings from her new album, Leave Your Sleep. Lyrics from near-forgotten 19th-century poetry pair with her unmistakable voice for a performance that brought the TED audience to its feet.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/823

http://www.ted.com/talks/natalie_mercha ... _life.html

[judih]

yeah - this is sensational.
saw it a few days ago- her voice is terrific, dontcha think?
and she's got the TED folk charmed

[SadLuckDame]

I could feel those vibrations, stunning and beautiful.

[Doreen Peri]

This is fabulous! Thanks for sharing this, Cecil!

Who's the nearly forgotten 19th century poetry pair? The lyrics are great!

I love this!

Edit:
... sorry i replied too soon... listening to the whole thing now... where she's explaining the project.. thanks again

[Doreen Peri]

What I'm really excited about is that this is an idea I had a few years ago.... I talked to Clay about doing it... same type of thing... Putting older poetry which is in the public domain to music... I realize we're not Natalie Merchant or anything but this was a BIG inspiration... to do something like this! I'm so glad she's done this. I always have liked her a lot!

Now, I gotta go back and finish watching it.. LOL... i keep stopping it to post, then I start it over again....

[Doreen Peri]

I would have liked her to have created some more upbeat pieces... but they were all really good!

Here's one of my favorite poems of all time... by Gerard Manley Hopkins... one of the poets whose work she chose to put to music. I've loved this poem since I was a teen... one of the reasons I fell in love with poetry to begin with.... the language in this poem.. it is just soooo beautiful... the assonance, the consonance, the lyrical beauty of the words.... It's called Pied Beauty..

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.