Summer and the Light of Unity (coming soon)
03 May 2012 3 Comments
Greetings,
I’ve just arrived home from a two-week trip around Ireland & the UK, playing in a variety of homes, halls and coffee-shops. Even though the crossing of the Irish Sea and the roads of the UK & Ireland are becoming more familiar, I can’t help but feel there is still so much more ground to cover on these two islands, so many people to learn from, so many ears to play to.
12 days ago, as I arrived in the port of Fishguard in Wales, I posted ‘One Hundred Thousand Veils‘ as a limited-time free download. Since then, while I’ve been on the road, your response to the song has been so positive, so moving, so supportive, I’ve decided to keep ‘One Hundred Thousand Veils’ available as a free download, indefinitely, at onehundredthousandveils.com. Please feel free to share it with others as much as you like. I hope that this song might help to bring more attention to the subject of human rights, not only with regard to the Bahá’í community in Iran, but to all people suffering under oppressive regimes in the world today.
Last year, on March 21st – the first day of spring – I released ‘Create in Me a Pure Heart‘, a collection of passages from the Bahá’í Writings set to music. Now that I’m back home, I’m putting the final touches on the follow-up to ‘Pure Heart’ – a brand new collaboration with artist Shirin Sahba entitled ‘The Light of Unity’. This project has been particularly special as I had the great pleasure of working with a group of musicians of various faiths coming together to make music in a spirit of unity in diversity.
‘The Light of Unity’ comes out on Friday June 1st, the meteorological first day of summer.
Thanks friends,
Love is the secret.
Luke
OUT NOW – One Hundred Thousand Veils
21 Apr 2012 Comments Off
‘One Hundred Thousand Veils’ is now available.
You can see the video and download the song for free at onehundredthousandveils.com
The song will be available as a free download for twelve days only – from April 21st to May 2nd. I’d be so grateful if you might take a moment to share onehundredthousandveils.com with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or wherever they hang out.
Thanks so much, I hope you like it.
Luke
Click for Video and Free Download
One Hundred Thousand Veils – 21st April 2012
16 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
Hey there!
This Saturday, April 21st, I’ll be releasing a new studio recording of ‘One Hundred Thousand Veils‘, a song I wrote a few months ago to mark International Human Rights Day (December 11th). Many of you have been extremely helpful in sharing a YouTube video of a live performance of the song in Dublin back in December. Many many thanks for sharing!
One Hundred Thousand Veils will be available to download for free – for twelve days only – from Sat. April 21st to Wed. May 2nd.
As always, my utmost thanks for your support.
Luke
Fred
12 Mar 2012 Comments Off
Greetings!
March is a busy month of music. At the moment, I’m in the studio putting the finishing touches on some new recordings I’ve been working on for a release in the springtime.
After the recording session, I’ll be heading to Toronto to play a few shows as guest keyboard player with one of my new favourite bands, FRED. We’ll be performing together at Canadian Music Week to celebrate the Canadian release of Fred’s new album, Leaving My Empire. The dates are:
Tues 20th March @ 7pm – The Mod Club, Toronto – Supporting The Saw Doctors
Thurs 22nd March @ 11pm – The Rivoli, Toronto – ‘Music From Ireland‘ Showcase
After rehearsing with the band in their native Cork, I’m stoked to perform live with Fred, one of the most dedicated and hard-working bands I’ve ever met. In my humble opinion, Leaving My Empire, with its intricate arrangements and deeply meaningful lyrics that offer equally humorous and poignant observations on modern life, places them as some of the finest songsmiths in Ireland.
You can find out more about Fred at www.fredtheband.com and read their story on Wikipedia here. The beautiful video for their beautiful song ‘Somewhere Else‘ is below.
Toronto friends! Hope to see you at Canadian Music Week!
Best wishes,
Luke
Playing Piano with Damien Rice for Concern
15 Feb 2012 Comments Off
Many of you will have heard of U2′s most recent release, ‘AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered‘, a collection of songs from their 1991 album ‘Achtung Baby‘ covered by various artists with all proceeds donated to Concern.
Damien Rice covered the classic U2 song ‘One‘ and invited me to join him on piano for the recording.
Playing One with Damien was a challenge in how to use the piano to simply compliment a song without interfering in the sensitivity of the lyrics – sometimes simple chords, sometimes just single notes. We talked together about the best means of serving the song and recorded a few live takes with some sparse piano lines. The final take was compiled onto the album alongside other U2 covers by artists such as Jack White, Patti Smith and Nine Inch Nails.
All proceeds from the song go to Concern. If you’d like to purchase the song and support the work of Concern, you can buy it from the iTunes store by clicking here.
As always, my sincere thanks for all your support.
Best wishes,
Luke
A Song With My Father
15 Jan 2012 Comments Off
Greetings! I hope 2012 is off to great beginning for all of you.
Looking back on 2011, one of the most profound musical experiences I had was when I was invited to record trumpet on an album that my father, Mike Nolan, had begun recording trumpet on 34 years earlier, but which was never released.
The Liffey Light Orchestra (www.liffeylight.com) had begun recording their album ‘Filaments‘ in 1977. Musicians such as my father were hired, studios were booked and the recording process was begun… But mid-way through the sessions, life led composer & bandleader Paul Egan along another path and the Orchestra’s unfinished album lay untouched for three and a half decades.
A generation later, The Liffey Light Orchestra re-formed and set about finishing the album. When Paul got in touch with me to see if I could finish the trumpet parts which my dad had begun, I jumped at the opportunity.
I arrived at the studio and sound engineer Philip Begley played the tape of one of the tracks that my father had begun recording 34 years earlier – a composition by Paul Egan called ‘No Road Back‘. As I listened to the louds and softs of his trumpet, the distinctive vibrato, the blasting confidence of his high register, my mind was flooded with memories of my father. Behind every note, I could ‘hear’ his qualities, his joys, his sorrows, each note like a mirror reflecting something of his spirit from his private inner world to the outer world we all share. It was almost like he was there in the studio with us.
After 34 years in the making, The Liffey Light Orchestra released their debut album ‘Filaments‘ (available on iTunes) in October 2011. Seeing my father’s name and my own name listed side by side in the credits has left me both proud and humbled. My father and I had often talked about playing together “someday”… But when he died in 2004, we had never had the chance. Apart from jamming with him during my trumpet lessons at home, I simply hadn’t yet reached a level of proficiency that was high enough to perform with him. Eight years after his death, ‘No Road Back‘ is the first time I have ever played with my father – his trumpet recorded before my birth, my trumpet recorded after his death. It’s amazing how music can sometimes be more than just music. Music can facilitate a closeness of souls, a kind of closeness that is beyond the limitations of time and place, even death.
I took a walk through the streets of Dublin – a city I love more and more as time goes by – and made a video to accompany ‘No Road Back‘. You can hear the song and come with me on a walk through the streets of Dublin here: Hope you enjoy it!
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I thought I’d also take this opportunity to share a video of my father performing on ‘The Late Late Show‘, Ireland’s premier talk show, with his jazz quintet back in the 90s.
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My thanks to Paul Egan for inviting me to be a part of The Liffey Light Orchestra. For more information see www.liffeylight.com
A Song for Human Rights Day
07 Dec 2011 Comments Off
Greetings,
Tonight I had the honour of performing at a special reception to mark the upcoming Human Rights Day (Saturday Dec. 10) here in Dublin. Colin Wrafter, the Director of the Human Rights Unit at Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs gave a moving address on the subject of ‘freedom of religion or belief‘ and I was invited to play a short set of songs after his talk. I wrote a new song especially for the occasion about the persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The reception was hosted by the National Assembly of the Bahá’í Faith in Ireland. Members of the Bahá’í Faith in Iran are being systematically denied one of the most basic human rights – the right to education. By denying young people the right to higher education simply because of their beliefs, the Iranian government is attempting to stifle the lives of an entire generation of its own people. Several Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Bishop Desmond Tutu and José Ramos, President of East Timor, have launched the ‘Education Under Fire‘ campaign to bring greater global awareness to this issue (www.educationunderfire.com). Rainn Wilson (best known as ‘Dwight’ from ‘The Office’) has voiced his concerns about the situation in an inspiring video posted below.
The song I’ve written for Human Rights Day is called ‘One Hundred Thousand Veils’ and is about the persecution of the Bahá’í Community in Iran. You can read the lyrics and hear the song – which I performed live for the first time last night at The Ruby Sessions in Dublin – below.
Rainn Wilson on ‘Education Under Fire’
‘One Hundred Thousand Veils‘ – performed for the first time last night at the Ruby Sessions in Dublin
Come down
and walk these roads around
the city of Tehran
where seven candles burn.
Follow me
all you who claim to be
possessed of charity
down to the Crimson Sea.
One hundred thousand veils have covered the sun
and darkest clouds have blocked and blackened the blue sky.
Did you hear the fate
of those who educate,
who even in the grave
find no respite from hate?
Have you seen the youth
who gave their lives for truth,
that girl who kissed the noosed
and welcomed all abuse?
One hundred thousand suns have fallen to earth
with blasts that block the ears from hearing the new song.
One hundred thousand veils have covered the truth.
How many mothers’ cries are lost in the tumult?
There is no war to fight
You have no sacred right
No holy book to cite
To make these wrongs seem right.
Does it so offend
to want this world to mend,
to walk in hope to the end
and see each man a friend?
Come down
and walk these roads around
the cities of Iran
which boast so much to man.
A look back on the road
29 Nov 2011 Comments Off
Midway through November, I finally arrived home to my own bed for the first time in 6 weeks, and after catching up on a backlog of emails (and sleep!) I’ve been settling back into life in Dublin and reflecting on the joys and lessons of my recent UK ‘house-concert’ tour.
When I first began coordinating this tour, I didn’t really know that many people around the UK, but I started off by contacting some friends in England and Scotland, and with a little bit of networking and a whole lot of goodwill, 5 dates turned into 10 dates, and 10 dates into 20 dates, and 20 dates into a grand total of 42 dates – from Dublin to Northern Ireland, then from Scotland to the South… and then from the South to Scotland again.
When I think back on the logistics of a ‘self-managed’ tour, I marvel at how little went wrong, or I should say, how much went right. Apart from that one night when I locked myself out of my car (with all my equipment inside it) and, after an hour of trying to jimmy the door open with a coat hanger, I finally had to put a brick through the window and drive to the venue with the cold October breeze blowing in my ear – apart from that, things went miraculously smoothly. Each day flowed softly into the next, and each evening, as I drove from one city to another, I found my smiling concert hosts waiting with open arms and kettles boiled.
A part of me wished I could have just kept on going in my little blue Nissan Micra, perhaps across the water and on into France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and why not all the way up and across Russia and China?!?!? But perhaps that kind of tour can wait a little while. Besides, there’s plenty of work to get back to here in Ireland. Speaking of which, I’ve been immersed in practice since I came home, preparing some new songs to be released in the spring of 2012. Tomorrow morning, I’ll head into the studio to start recording the piano parts.
My heart is filled with gratitude to all my dear friends – old and new! – who so graciously hosted my humble house-concerts on this tour, and to all the lovely people who attended the concerts for giving me the great privilege of sharing my music with your precious ears. I wish I could reach out to each one of you to let you know what a delight it was to meet you all, to visit your towns and cities and to play in your homes, but hopefully the likes of Facebook will enable us to find each other and keep in touch for many years to come. You are all a precious part of my own musical/spiritual/four-wheeled journey.
Luke
Homeward bound…
12 Nov 2011 Comments Off
After an extended tour of six weeks on the road around the UK, I’ve made my way back up to Glasgow for a day of rest. Today was the Birthday of Bahá’u'lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, born on 12th November 1817 – whose prayers and writings I sang on last March’s release, Create in Me a Pure Heart…. a good day to finish this tour and have a quiet moment to reflect on the last 6 weeks on the move…
I had the pleasure of singing ‘Create in Me‘ today at a friend’s home in the hills overlooking Glasgow, followed by fireworks and much cake.
It’s just about time for the drive home…
A Few Honest Words – OUT NOW
01 Oct 2011 Comments Off
Today my new E.P. ‘A Few Honest Words‘ comes out.
And today I hit the road for a month-long ‘House-Concert-Tour’ of Ireland & the UK. I’ll be spending the month of October driving around Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, performing in the living-rooms, parlours, barns and chicken coops of friends and friends of friends. I can’t wait to be on the road.
A few brief words about A Few Honest Words…
The title song on this E.P. has had a curious little life so far. It was produced back in 2007 by my dear friend Kelly Snook. At the time, Kelly was a well-established astrophysicist at NASA who spent her spare time recording local musicians. But that part of the story just got more interesting… Earlier this year, Dr. Snook left behind the world of space exploration at NASA to become a full-time music producer, sound engineer and officially indispensable right-hand woman to one of the UK’s most prestigious artists, the Grammy award-winning Imogen Heap. Go Kelly!
After we recorded ‘A Few Honest Words’, the song made a brief step into the world via a cardboard box of CDs in a small town in Connecticut, but when the cardboard box was empty, the song disappeared and hasn’t been available since…
So I’m just a bit ecstatic to announce that ‘A Few Honest Words’ (along with some new tunes) is now available on CD and download from lukeslott.bandcamp.com and Tower Records, Dublin.
As I set out on this grassroots house-concert tour, I’d like to express my utmost thanks to you all for your support in the process of making this little CD. I hope you enjoy it, and perhaps I’ll see you in someone’s living-room somewhere along the road…
Click the pic to listen or buy
