Amanda of the Choir - Stars on the Wind

'Stars On The Wind' began as a personal research project on children's lullabies in the United States around the time that Brahms Lullaby was originally published in Germany in 1868. These were the Civil War years in the United States and children seemed to hold a very special place for the songwriters of the time, possibly because they represented hope for the future of a weary nation at war. Many hours were spent over months online at the Lester S. Levy Music Collection contained at Johns Hopkins University, downloading and reading pages and pages of sheet music from the Civil War era and beyond. A pattern seemed to emerge in the general themes of children's lullabies from both the North and the South. The Northern lullabies were much more prone to represent children as Angels and gifts from God and Heaven, where the Southern lullabies seemed to view children more as part of nature with many references to birds, bees, and the natural environment. Some of the best works of the time from both sides of the conflict have been recorded for this project along with a collection of original works. As much as the title track, 'Stars On The Wind', is a wonderful lullaby about everything going to sleep, the title is also a metaphor for the work as a whole. Many of these lullaby 'Stars' have been lost to the general public and are now only accessible as sheet music in dusty old libraries or those that have been digitized online. Hopefully, a whole new generation of children will enjoy these current recordings of very old lullabies and find them indistinguishable from their modern counterparts contained on the 'Stars On The Wind' Children's Lullaby CD. Sincerely, Geoff Szabo.