Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Raving about Passion Pit!




As reported earlier, Passion Pit's new album Manners has officially arrived today, May 19th in the United States! Already, it has garnered some amazing reviews from fans and critics alike! Just came upon this amazing review/interview from Australia's very popular Rave Magazine. The reviewer AND Passion Pit's drummer Nate Donmoyer (who was at the studio when we recorded), had some incredible things to say about the kids participation on the record....

Here is the excerpt from the article that ought to make the PS22 Chorus very proud to read (It certainly made their DIRECTOR proud!):


Three songs on the album, including the glorious Little Secrets and The Reeling, feature the efforts of Staten Island’s PS22 Children’s Chorus, an elementary school choir noted for renditions of Crowded House and Tori Amos songs adored by their original composers. Donmoyer explains how they came to be involved.

"Michael’s idea was like, if we’re gonna take the leap to a major, we might as well wring it for all it’s worth and do all these crazy things, ‘cause who knows if we’ll get to do another one. At least we can say we got to do that once."

And as for the experience itself…

"It was amazing, like, humbling, to see these 56 kids come in… The director Gregg [Breinberg] is this amazing guy who figured out a way to explain and conduct these harmonies to really young kids. They broke out into something like a Keane a capella cover, and the arrangement was so much better than the original (laughs). We were soundchecking them and the levels were fine, but we just let ‘em go ‘cause it was so beautiful. They finished the entire song and everyone’s just staring at them, teary-eyed with their mouths hanging open, thinking, ‘what have we gotten into?’ Yeah, they were awesome."


Congrats to the chorus and, of course, to our friends Passion Pit! You can see the entire article (slightly edited for kid-friendliness) below.



4 comments:

A dad of four young children said...

I know why they were teary eyed. I was too.

Mr. B said...

thanks dad of 4! :)

Becky said...

Mr B. first of all, I would like to congratulate you and all of your students; past present & future, on a job well done. I love watching the videos of the kids singing, you can see in their expressions that they really enjoy singing. I am a figure skating teacher, so I get to see that look often too.
I'm sure you get tons of requests, and I know it is getting close to the end of the school year, but I would just like to make a suggestion for a song.
"You are the Best Thing" by Ray La Montagne. It is a beautiful song and great to sing along to (in my mind)

Best wishes for the future,
Becky

Mr. B said...

thanks for your extremely kind words for my kids and me, becky! i'll see what i can do about that request at some point in the future.... (you're not the first to make that suggestion, so you must be on to something....) :)