New book, new albums for musician
Composer also slated to release two new albums in 2021
SYDNEY — While most of us buy toasters and TVs on Black Friday, musician Adam Young put his money towards something a little classier.
In 2019, Young bought time with a symphony orchestra during an internet Black Friday sale and he got them to play on two compositions in his latest endeavour, a tunea-day project that he began in 2018.
“I had purchased time with an orchestra during a Black Friday sale the November before and they played on a tune and a half,” said Young. “I had never arranged for an orchestra before — it was fun.”
The tune-a-day project resulted in more than 365 new pieces of music. From that, he took the best 189 melodies to be published into a book of sheet music, Yearbook, that will come out Dec. 18. And from that, he whittled it down even further to the best 39 tunes that will be performed over two albums, a traditional (guitar, piano and fiddle) one and an album of non-traditional music that features the Prague-based Musiversal Orchestra. The traditional album features fiddlers Colin Grant, Chrissy Crowley and Dara Smith-MacDonald and has been already completed although not yet released.
Work is still being done on the non-traditional album but he hopes to have both albums ready for release in 2021.
In addition to local musicians, there will also be performances from people in Wyoming, Ukraine, Prince Edward Island and Halifax.
“It’s neat. I know I’ll never do a project like this again so I figured if I’m doing it, I’m going to do it right. Take my time and go all out with it.”
It’s been quite a year for the French Road-based musician who is best-known as an accompanist for traditional Cape Breton fiddlers. He’s also the creator and director of the Louisbourg Playhouse’s music and comedy revue Cape Breton Lyrics & Laughter show which has had almost 400 performances since it began 18 years ago.
He’s normally employed at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Park but back in February, he took a leave of absence to join the band Coig on tours of the United Kingdom and Scotland. While the U.K. tour went OK, concerts began getting cancelled in Australia due to COVID-19 so they came home a week and a half early.
“We just cut it short and rearranged the flights and took a 37-hour trip back home,” said Young. “It was a great trip but it could have been a whole lot worse.”
Even with the tour problems, Young still had a productive year — not everyone can claim they’re ending 2020 by releasing a book of sheet music to be followed by two albums in early 2021.
“I’m finally starting to see light at the end of the tunnel for the whole project,” he said. “I’m still working on the second of the two albums but that’s getting closer and I’m actually getting kind of excited about it now, seeing how everything is coming together.”
The books are available at https://www.adamcdyoung. com/shop.