Beth Nielsen Chapman: Keynote Speaker @ 10th Annual Congress of the Society for Brain Mapping Therapeutics
Beth Nielsen Chapman is heading to Baltimore to do a Keynote and performance at the 10th Annual Congress of the Society for Brain Mapping & Therapeutics! Beth will be sharing her story about coming through a brain tumor and it's effect on her perspective with regard to writing and creativity. Beth will also be presented with the "Beacon Award." Congratulations, Beth!
http://www.worldbrainmapping.org
REVIEW: Beth Nielsen Chapman – The Stables, Milton Keynes
Beth Nielsen Chapman began the first of two nights in Milton Keynes just as I expected, with an emotional piano driven recital of The Color Of Roses which hushed the entire auditorium. She continued in this vain with I Find Your Love, written with Patrick Doyle for the 2003 Calendar Girls film, and I settled in for an emotional roller coaster of exquisitely penned and sensitively delivered ballads. At that point it seemed the night, however enthralling, could hold few major surprises. How wrong I was.
What I hadn’t realised before the show is that the new album, The Mighty Sky, is a collection of astronomy and science themed songs for children. Marrying these tracks into a set with all of the old material was either going to go one way or the other – utter genius or total train wreck. Thankfully it was the former. Deftly switching between the two, from the emotive guitar driven Even As It All Goes By from 2009′s Back To Love, to the rapid bluegrass style of The Way That We Lean, remains to my mind a feat worthy of some admiration. Even the full frontal sense assault of The Big Bang Boom, a song she describes as “[the] Beach Boys meets Jimmy Buffet” seemed to go down well as the audience were encouraged to “BOOM” as loud as possible during the chorus.
Whilst the regular interludes of staged abandon, which Chapman and her accompanist Ruth Trimble relished with devilish smiles throughout and entwined with knowing banter about everything up to and including Terry Wogan, may not have been to everyone’s taste, there were points when turning away was all I could do to keep my tears of laughter in check. On any other night, I would surely have aligned myself with the rest of the audience in their applause for Sand and Water or Life Holds On. I did share their love of both, but perhaps I was a little distracted by the novelty of songs for children which didn’t, to put it crudely, absolutely stink. Because of that, Test Re-Test And Verify must be noted as my own highlight – a reminder that you should never judge a book, however cliched the phrase, by its cover.
Congratulations! The Mighty Sky receives GOLD
Congratulations to Beth Nielsen Chapman & the whole Mighty Sky Team! The Mighty Sky has won a Parents' Choice Gold Award, their highest honor and one of the most prestigious awards in children's media! Click to view the whole story!
The Mighty Sky Brings Songs Into Science
Courtesy SchoolScience.co.uk
International star Beth Nielsen Chapman sings about astronomy at Holmwood House school as part of the launch of The Mighty Sky science songs project.
Review: Beth Nielsen Chapman’s “The Mighty Sky”
Courtesy Americana Music News
By Ken Paulson – It’s the rare children’s album that delights adults as much as kids, but that’s certainly the case with The Mighty Sky, a new album from Beth Nielsen Chapman.The album offers lessons in astronomy through a wide array of pop songs written by Chapman, Annie Roboff and Rocky Alvey, giving parents the chance to play spot-the-genre while their kids learn about the moon and stars.
There’s the joyous pop of “Big Bang Boom,” the doo-wop of “The Moon,” the straight ahead “Rockin Little Neutron Star” (with Bill Lloyd and Steve Allen) and of course, the “Zodiacal Zydeco.” “You Can See the Blues” could have been written by Leiber and Stoller – if they had been astronomers.
Speaking of astronomers, the lyrics to The Mighty Sky were written by Alvey, the director of Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory in Nashville. They’re both informative and engaging, teaching in the most entertaining and low-key way
Highly recommended.
