The Libera boys choir performed at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. and it was recorded for a PBS special. I am thrilled to have a copy of this glorious performance on DVD, Angels Sing – Libera in America, to give away. The 40 boys from London who sing like a celestial choir perform holy and secular music, classical and traditional in a concert guaranteed to touch and inspire. This is really special, and a perfect family treat for Easter.
Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Libera in the subject line and tell me what you are looking forward to this spring. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only). I’ll pick a winner at random on March 15, 2015. Good luck!
“The Sing-Off” is back and it is bigger! One of my favorite reality shows is Nick Lachey’s a capella competition. This year, Sara Bareilles joins Shawn Stockman and Ben Folds as judges. The contestants this year are:
AFRO-BLUE – Washington, D.C. – This fun-loving ensemble from Howard University started as a class in the music department. They have plenty of soul, and all nine members meld together with beautiful harmonies, soaring solos, and a fresh look.
THE CAT’S PAJAMAS – Branson, Mo. – The Cat’s Pajamas, the all-male vocal band that formed in 2005, pride themselves on their ability to engage each audience member during their dynamic, energetic and interactive performances, bringing a blend of classic songs with a modern a cappella twist.
THE COLLECTIVE – Nashville, Tenn. — Formed by Street Corner Symphony’s Jeremy Lister (“The Sing-Off,” season two), this Nashville based first-time a cappella group is made up of individual singer-songwriters who came together to demonstrate that there is strength in numbers.
DARTMOUTH AIRES – Hanover, N.H. — Dartmouth College’s oldest a cappella group, is currently made up of 15 fun loving, high-energy guys with eclectic tastes and no shortage of quirky antics.
DELILAH – Los Angeles, Ca. – This all-female a cappella group, which includes members from the first two seasons of the series, has been singing across the country, but still carry an unfulfilled desire to conquer “The Sing-Off” stage.
THE DELTONES – Newark, D.E. – Founded in 1991, The University of Delaware Deltones, pride themselves on their smooth tunes and their motto – friends first, singers second. They focus their energy towards singing on campus and in the Delaware community, as it is important for them to give back to those who support them.
FANNIN FAMILY – Hortonville, Wis. – The Fannin Family’s mother was almost a nun and their father was a rock musician. The outcome was 11 extremely well-behaved musicians and eight of them will be taking the stage to show the nation their Midwestern swag.
KINFOLK 9 – Los Angeles, Ca. — A nine-piece professional vocal group from Los Angeles in which everyone can sing lead, with all members coming from very strong musical backgrounds.
MESSIAH’S MEN – Minneapolis, Minn. – Originally from Africa, these unofficial brothers survived the war in Liberia through the power of song and are on a mission to sing their hearts out while serving the Lord.
NORTH SHORE – Boston, Mass. — For the last 30 years, this refined street corner group has entertained thousands of listeners throughout the Boston area with an experienced blend of harmony, rhythm, and tempo in songs from the 1940s to today.
PENTATONIX – Arlington, Texas – The five-member group has a modern style and draws influences from several eclectic electro genres, including dub step and garage house.
SONOS – Los Angeles, Ca. — Formed in 2006 as a recording project that grew into a vocal band, the group blends their voices together in perfect harmony through years of experience. The live electronic effects they are also known for will not be part of the competition.
SOUL’D OUT – Wilsonville, Ore. – This award-winning mixed a cappella group from Wilsonville High School is comprised of students from all grade levels, musical backgrounds and vocal types.
URBAN METHOD – Denver, Colo. — The group, which includes a rapper, was formed by eight musicians whose individual sounds gravitate toward urban music. Each has extensive studio session work but has never previously performed together.
VOCAL POINT – Provo, Utah – The all-male group is Brigham Young University’s premiere contemporary a cappella ensemble. Their nine-man vocal firepower continually invigorates audiences and entertains fans with inventive arrangements, humor and remarkable vocal percussion.
THE YELLOWJACKETS – Rochester, N.Y. – Formed in 1956, the University of Rochester YellowJackets are anything but old-fashioned and half the members are enrolled in The Eastman School of Music at the university. This fun loving group’s mark of distinction is their bright yellow blazers and distinctive sound.
In the documentary Young @ Heart, we saw how elderly people singing rock songs gave the music a resonance and power that even its platinum-record-selling originators could not have imagined. And now we see the way that children led their sweet, sincere voices to rock and pop songs thanks to a talented music teacher at New York’s PS 22. Their touching renditions of songs like “Landslide,” “Don’t Stop Believing” (coincidentally also featured in the new television series “Glee”), and “Viva La Vida” have become a YouTube sensation that has led to appearances on Good Morning America and the Bonnie Hunt Show.
Many thanks to Kyle Osborne for bringing this beautiful choir to my attention. It reminds me of the wonderful Innocence and Despair, recordings made in 1976 by an elementary school music teacher who had his students sing classic rock/baby boomer music.
Tea thrown overboard. Freeing the prisoners. Knocking over a statue. Every revolution has a moment when the people say that they will no longer tolerate tyranny. In the case of Estonia, the Baltic nation that suffered under two of history’s most brutal and oppressive regimes, the Nazis and the Soviets, it was a song.
Laulupidu, the Estonian song festival held every five years that features 30,000 singers on stage In November 2003, UNESCO declared Estonias’s Song and Dance Celebration tradition a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In 1988, 300,000 Estonians in Tallinn sang national songs and hymns that were strictly forbidden during the years of the Soviet occupation, as Estonian rock musicians played. It signaled and hastened the end of Soviet domination.
I was delighted to see this film because my family has been to Estonia and we heard a little bit about the Singing Revolution when we were there. I began by asking Maureen and James Tusty how they came to make The Singing Revolution documentary.
MT: We never get tired of talking about it. We spent four years in production and the past year in distribution and promotion and we are still excited about it.
Jim’s father was born in Estonia, in Tallinn. We had a chance to teach in the first media program in the Baltics. We were teaching filmmaking and people started telling us stories. We asked ourselves, “How could we not have heard of this?” If we were ever going to take on a personal project this would be it. They came up with the name “the singing revolution.” It is central to the Estonian nature. It is such a small country and they are quite modest. People would talk about these events and we would say, “You did what?” “Oh, well, I told my mother and the babysitter to come,” they would say it so casually, and here was this event that was so transforming.
JT: The Estonians in particular dislike bragging and as a result they did not boast about what happened.
How did you shape the story as you filmed and edited?
JT: We shot about 40 days over about 3 months, February to July 2004. We pre-interviewed about 200 people, then interviewed about 40 on camera and of those maybe half of them ended up in the film. We wanted not only the leaders but also those who simply participated. One of the interesting things is that there was no one character to focus on, no central hero in the film. It is easier in one way because the entire nation is the hero. But it is a challenge in another way. How do you make that a personal story? The film gave the nation a personality.
The first singing protest was in 1988 after a rock concert. There was no one person saying, “Here’s what we do.” Everyone just came together. It was one of the pivotal events and the leaders emerge after the will of the people is evident.
How did the Estonians respond to the film?
JT: The film premiered in Estonia on December 1, 2006. We were concerned that they would feel, “Who are you to tell our story?” but we got an unprecedented standing ovation. I think it was good to have someone who cared about Estonia but who also had an arm’s length view and some objectivity. What they did not even really have a name at the time but now everyone thinks of it as “the singing revolution.”
There had been other versions of the story focused on all three of the major events, but this is the first one to show how these three movements interwove with one another. It was released theatrically in Estonia and became the most successful documentary ever shown there. The history of the song festival is a possible project for us in the future. It always had a political aspect – it was founded with a view against tsarist Russia.
MT: Part of the challenge was the way we represented the leaders. Many are still involved in Estonia today. We spent quite a bit of time to make sure we had the balance and accuracy of the events. We finally had all three of these different factions agreeing, “Yes, this is how it happened.” Each knew only what they had been talking about.
JT: We did that independently so they could each make sure we had their part right. It would be like getting Al Gore and George Bush to agree on the Florida recount!
And what about in the US?
MT: It was released just a year ago in NY and LA. We wanted to go for a theatrical run, but the majority of distributors were discouraging. We just felt this story would so resonate with people that we decided to go for it. It was held over for five weeks in NY. We were able to play in over 140 cities across the US and Canada and it is still playing even though the DVD is out.
JT: Part of what makes our film unique is that we had a regular theatrical release; it was not just an event film. We got to experience the film in many different cities. It brought in several different kinds of audiences: Baltic-Americans, singers, people interested in non-violence, and people in the freedom movement. It began with those four constituency groups in particular, and we would narrowcast our marketing, but then word would get around town and by the third week the general community would find us.
MT: Estonian choral music is quite known in the community of people who sing in choruses, so they really supported this film.
JT: And they are already organized, so they would come in groups.
What else have you done to help people understand the extraordinary events of the singing revolution?
MT: We have developed a three-DVD educational set for high schools and colleges with teacher materials, maps, and PowerPoint, so that schools can use this story to teach students not just about Estonia and this particular struggle but about non-violence and freedom fighting. To accomplish what they did without violence is really remarkable, especially with what they had lived through, an amazing human story.
JT: Ironically, the Estonians are quite an independent people, as they said, “The miracle is not that we beat the soviets, it is that we got hundreds of thousands of Estonians to hold hands together.” We have done dozens of films, but this one is highly personal and unique. We feel there are millions to reach with this story because of the grace and elegance of the protest and how effective they were. We think we have it hard sometimes, but look at the Estonians and see how they prevailed.
Rated PG for some mild language and thematic elements.
Profanity:
Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drug references
Violence/ Scariness:
Sad deaths, loss, illness
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
April 21, 2008
In School of Rock Jack Black taught a classroom of 10-year-olds that rock and roll music is always about one thing: Sticking it to The Man. A new documentary about a chorus of performers in their 80’s and 90’s shows that no one has more reason to stick it to The Man than people who are most defiantly not going gently into that good night.
This is not your grandfather’s choir. Instead of singing songs from their youth like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” or “Sentimental Journey” these old folks tap their orthopedic shoes, tug along an oxygen tank, and slam into the music of their great-grandchildren’s generation. They’ve gone straight from 78’s to iPods, literally without skipping a beat.
It sounds cute. Old people are settled, conservative. They are The Man, aren’t they? There is something deliciously incongruous about very old people singing the songs of very young people.
But it is not cute. Their set list is not soft or easy. No Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, or Beach Boys, no gentle harmonies or catchy melodies. This is raw and angry. They sing hard rock (Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”), punk rock (The Ramones’ “I Want to Be Sedated”), and blues (“I Feel Good” by James Brown). This is real rock and roll, written to be shocking, provocative, subversive. It is stirring, and deeply moving, finally transcendent. Music videos for songs like Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia†and the Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere†have a surreal, dream-like quality, good-humored but poignant as they add moments of fantasy and release. The Man they are sticking it to is loss of all kinds.
The movie takes us from the first rehearsals to a sold-out performance in the chorus’ home town of Northampton, Massachusetts. Continually frazzled but continually optimistic choir director Bob Cilman makes no concessions, artistically or generationally. This is not occupational therapy; it is art and it is show business. He insists on a top-quality professional production.
Cilman presents the chorus with Allen Toussaint’s tongue-twistingly syncopated “Yes We Can Can,†which has the word “can†71 times. Form equals content and the medium becomes the message as they struggle to master the intricacies of the song.
Director Stephen Walker’s interviews occasionally seem intrusive, even condescending, but perhaps he, like Cilman, gets a little flustered at the inability to maintain any sense of control over the feisty singers. Early in the film, 92-year-old soloist Eileen Hall flirts with Walker – probably just to keep him off-base, at which she is entirely successful. Hall’s elegant British diction makes the opening lines of the Clash song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go†sound as though she is asking whether we want cream or sugar. But then the song turns into a goose-bump-inducing negotiation with life and death.
Two members who have been very ill, Fred Knittle and Bob Salvini, return for a duet, the Coldplay song, “Fix You.†But Salvini dies before the show. The chorus gets the news as they sit on a bus, about to leave for a performance at a local prison. No one knows better than they do that the show can and must go on.
They stand in the prison yard singing Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,†voices quavering perhaps just slightly more than usual as they remember their friend. The prisoners are transfixed. Then, at the concert that concludes the film, “Fix You†is performed as a solo by Knittle, his oxygen tank beside him. He sings “when you lose something you can’t replace…I will try to fix you…lights will guide you home†and it is impossible not to feel that these performers understand those words better than the young men who wrote them. And when they nail “Yes We Can Can†it becomes an anthem of defiance, survival, and, yes, sticking it to The Man.
, recordings made in 1976 by an elementary school music teacher who had his students sing classic rock/baby boomer music. 
Jack Black taught a classroom of 10-year-olds that rock and roll music is always about one thing: Sticking it to The Man. A new documentary about a chorus of performers in their 80’s and 90’s shows that no one has more reason to stick it to The Man than people who are most defiantly not going gently into that good night.