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I sang with my a capella group in concert last Saturday, and here’s the video.
Very glad that my face is overexposed (totally unintentional) so you can’t see who the soloist is for the first song :P.

My friend told me about this “little” Starfield concert that is happening up north, 20 minutes from Seattle. Tickets were $10 and since Starfield just released a new CD that I like, I figure I’d go and check it out. It ends up the concert is held at this semi-big Korean church in their gym – and there were a lot of Korean youngsters (high school or college, I can’t tell) attending, so it felt a little bit like… high school :P.

Anyhow, Starfield is stellar (har har) in their performance, although I have a feeling since it is a smaller venue they were taking it a little easy. I think they opened some of their new songs in a much lower key than their album version, and there were definitely some wrong notes here and there (hehe that’s how well I know their material). It was a shame that their projector wasn’t working out so they couldn’t display the lyrics and get more people to sing along with them (which might have been why they dropped the key in the first place), but they did manage to do a bunch of older material and other worship songs so everyone could participate.

I haven’t taken much photos with my SLR lately, so this was a good chance to practice; but I didn’t want to spend too much time editing and processing (and I wanted to enjoy the concert), so I only took a selected few. They seem to turn out quite nicely still with minimal processing – I’m quite happy with them (minus some mic stand focusing challenges, and expected graininess from high ISO). Here are some highlights:

Oh and as a bonus! We saw a local band called “New Heights” that opened for Starfield, and I noticed their guitarist looks a bit like sadd3j – maybe young sadd3j 😛 so I took a quick snapshot:

From the new Passion record – the title track is written by Chris Tomlin and Reuben Morgan – two giants in contemporary Christian music!

Friend introduced me to Melody Gardot this past weekend on the way to snowboarding… I don’t listen to a whole lot of vocal jazz (primarily because I can’t listen to it at work since it’ll put me to sleep, and its not exactly applicable to worship either), but she’s definitely quite talented. Just 2 samples of her work live.

I’ve been holding off on posting this since Burton was at the top and he was too cute to bump down :P, but its OK now!
This week’s recommendation is Starfield’s new album, “The Saving One”. Starfield has went more mainstream alternative (compared to their more acoustic/indie sounding debut album) over the years, but IMO this has been their best album since Tumbling After.

My favourite track from the album is “Something to Say” – one of their softer acoustic songs, and simply arranged and carried vocally. Love the simplicity and the rawness – link below.

I’ve got something to say
It’s been one of those days
When I’m finding it hard to believe in You

I’ve got something to say
Right now it feels like You are slipping away
Like I am drowning in a crisis of faith
Like I was found, but now I’m lost in the fray

Other noteworthy tracks on the CD include: The Saving One, Rediscover You, No Other Saviour… actually the other tracks aren’t bad either :P.