'SIDEMAN' Quotes

On certain singers

'At rehearsal, a few months [later], came Jazz Daughter, offspring of a highly respected local musician, to audition, carrying a tote bag of her own charts—fresh from her daddy's library. An obvious talent, if a little green at twenty, she was an unqualified hit as a singer. Dick was pleased, and the band was pleased; so she was asked to participate on a couple dates including our then latest debut at the Chamberlin Hotel.

Recall that Dick had this fetish about planting a singer in her chair near the piano for the duration of the gig, allowing her to rise only to sing one verse of the next ballad in the line-up or whatever? Jazz Daughter had never heard of such nonsense, of course; in fact, she was blessed with a delightful flightiness that certainly couldn't have been foreseen. She showed up at the Chamberlin with her beau, and they took a table in the audience, which became her nesting place for the night. As the band played on, Jazz Daughter and boyfriend danced away. When it came time to sing, she floated up to the stage like a champagne bubble summoned from the audience as a special attraction, did her thing, then returned to the attentions of her date. Dick was apoplectic.'

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Musical Quotes

What we seem to be getting to is a hypothesis that would confirm another famous clich´ – namely, Music is Heightened Speech. After all, what causes such a heightening? Intensified emotion. Hunger. Impatience. Certainly the deepest universals we all share are emotions, or affects; we all have the same capacity for passion, fear, anticipation, aggression. We all display the same physiological manifestations of affect; our eyebrows go up with anticipation; our hearts pound with passion; and fear affects us universally with goose flesh. And in the sense that music may express those affective goings-on, then it must indeed be a universal language.

Maybe even a divine one, to invoke yet another clich´. I have often thought that if it is literally true that In The Beginning Was The Word, then it must have been a sung word. The Bible tells us the whole Creation story not only verbally, but in terms of verbal creation: God said: Let there be light. God said: Let there be a firmament. He created verbally. Now can you imagine God saying, just like that, “Let there be light,” as if ordering lunch? Or even in the original language: Y’hi Or? I’ve always had a private fantasy of God singing those two blazing words: Y'HI-O-O-O-R! Now that could really have done it; music could have caused light to break forth. But all I've done is prolong the ictus [again]; what I've created is simply heightened speech, which would seem to corroborate yet another cliché about music beginning where language leaves off. In other words, if the theory of monogenesis is valid and speech indeed has common origins, and if the heightening of that speech produces music, then music may also be said to have common origin – and is therefore universal, whether the notes issue from the mouth of God or from a hungry infant.

Leonard Bernstein
Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Number 1
Harvard University, 1973

Welcome to Michael Hassell Music

First, some housekeeping thoughts: THIS is a web site mostly dedicated to church music…that’s right, tunes and arrangements one is likely to hear, usually, on Sunday mornings.

There are other people named ‘Michael Hassell’ on the web: one nice chap is a renowned biologist and professor from Great Britain with serious publications to his credit about bugs and such. He may be found at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/m.hassell

Another ‘Michael Hassell’ is an insurance man in Nashville, Tennessee; he also is ranked in the upper altitudes of the American Libertarian movement! His URL is http://www.manta.com/c/mm08g62/mike-hassell-assoc

Still another is a lawyer – or barrister, if you prefer, practicing in Toronto, Canada http://www.hassell-law.com

An American lawyer named Michael Hassell practices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for the firm of Post & Schell, P.C. Reach him by pointing your browser to: http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1138764_1

Need eyeglasses? Check out my namesake, the optometrist, from Carthage, Tennessee at http://www.eyeglasses.com/eye-doctors/tennessee/carthage/michael-r-hassell-od?locationID=20850

There are namesakes of mine that are – not so strangely – musicians. One is a bass player in Texas; another is band director at Scituate High School (Massachusetts).

Others that share my name are property assessors and politicians (in America, the U.K., and the Caribbean). Then there’s Commander Michael Hassell, an executive with the Waco, Texas police department.

Should you enjoy grazing Google for hours on end to find a Michael Hassell associated with published jazz piano solos, choral anthems, hymn arrangements, liturgies and all that,
STOP!
You’ve found the correct web site right here.

Having hopefully taken care of the issue that neither I nor any of the other folks named Michael Hassell are originals in our Twenty-first century world solely because of our given name, let’s concentrate on what might have brought you to THIS web site in the first place: an interest in written and published music of a certain Michael Hassell, along with his other writings and activities.

Our site has been visited
church music, arrangements, choral arrangements sacred arrangements, church arrangements
since 1/23/2011