Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens cover

Mark Palmer performing a cover of Cat Stevens' arrangement of the traditional hymn "Morning Has Broken"...recorded and mixed (with piano, bass, backup vocals, flugelhorn, and flute parts added) in my basement and piano room in Morgantown, WV on Pro Tools 11 April 11-18, 2020. The video was produced using Cyberlink Power Director 15. www.markpalmerm....
I have always loved this song and this arrangement. When I was a kid, my dad was a high school choir director and my mom was a piano teacher, performer, and church organist.
Mom also accompanied and arranged pieces for dad's choirs, and this was one of the pieces she had done for them. So my first exposure to it in the early 70's was hearing dad's choir performing it with mom playing piano.
Fast forward almost fifty years and I was set to play a benefit for the Strand Theater in my hometown of Moundsville, WV on May 2, 2020. I asked mom if she would play piano on this song. She agreed.
We both worked on our parts and were ready to go when the pandemic hit and the show was postponed indefinitely.
Having recently watched videos of The Analogues incredible recreations of full Beatles albums, I decided MHB's simple instrumentation made it a perfect candidate for me to try a recreation of this song in the same manner.
(If you didn't already do so, it helps if you go back and pronounce "recreation" in my last sentence in the same way Cat Stevens did at the end of the third verse of the song. I have no idea why my wife thinks I'm ADD.)
Anyway, this project gave me an opportunity to develop some recording and mixing chops that I always wanted to learn, but never had the time for. Win-win.
Everything was recorded either in my music room or on our Kawai baby grand. The guitar and singing was easy...the piano a little less so. Mom told me, "the parts are easy, they're just arpeggios."
Well, maybe for her. For me, not so much. Some of these licks took many takes.
I also had a pretty easy time with the brass parts because once upon a time, I was a trumpet major, though I had to play the low part on trombone because it was out of flugelhorn range.
The flute was another story. Lets just say I am comfortable with my decision to dial it back in the mix.
Unfortunately, my bass guitar output jack was cutting out, so I had to play the bass parts on a Yamaha CP-33 digital keyboard. Not ideal, but passable.
Regardless, this was definitely a fun way to the pass the time for a week. I hope you enjoy.
-Mark
April 19, 2020