This time last year, I made a resolution to post a new ‘Piece of the Week’ every week – and that was a resolution that I largely kept (the only reason I didn’t get to no. 53 is because some weeks I posted newsletters instead). Piece of the Week no. 1 was my New Year Carol, and this year I’d like to celebrate the New Year in a different way.
For me, as doubtless for many of us, the past year had its joys and its sorrows, and almost everybody I spoke to yesterday hoped that 2024 would be ‘a better year’ than last year. So I thought that my song Rainbow might be an appropriate way to welcome in the year. This song originated during the Covid lockdown, and you will recall the rainbows in front windows all over the country, in thankfulness for the tremendous work done by doctors, nurses, and carers during that time of isolation and loss. But the rainbow has a wider meaning – healing, treasure (the ‘pot of gold’), birth, hope, good fortune, diversity, rain, fertility, new beginnings, ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ and more…
My ‘rainbow’ was a way of bringing family and friends together who were at that time scattered across Southern England, only able to communicate with each other by digital means, so I wrote this song for them to sing and record remotely while I got to grips with the delights of iMovie, NotePerformer, and Audacity – a skill so many musicians acquired during lockdown.
It is for SATB choir, or SA (or unison) voices, all with keyboard accompaniment. You can see and hear the result here, and you can see detail of how to obtain the music here, where there is also a link to a longer blog that I wrote at the time.
The image is of the display made by my granddaughters for their front window.
I hope that this rainbow song might bring us new joy, comfort, healing, and good fortune as we celebrate new beginnings in 2014. Happy New Year!