Michael Jackson Dies

Michael Jackson Dies

TMZ posted the news first from what I can tell. The link above will take you to the TMZ site.

Though I am not a fan of Michael Jackson the person, I am a fan of Michael Jackson the musician. Mostly, his contribution to the music world.

Why I Teach Music

Today I want to share with you something that was given to me some time ago that I found the other day while organizing my things. I'm not sure who gave it to me, most likely my Uncle Andy. If anyone knows where this might have originally been posted, let me know!


Why Teach Music?

Music is a science
It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

Music is mathematical
It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked ouit on paper.

Music is a foreign language
Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English--but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

Music is history
Music usually reflects the environments and times of its creation, often even the country and.or racial feeling.

Music is a physical education
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Music is all these things, but most of all music is art
It allows a human being to take all these dry technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

That is Why I Teach Music!
Not because we expect you to major in music
Not because we expect you to play or sing all your life
Not so you can relax
Not so you can have fun
Not so you can trot around the football field in uniform

BUT--
so you will be human
So you will recognize beauty
So you will be sensitive
So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
So you will have something to cling to
So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good--in short, more life.

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless we know how to live?

That is Why I Teach Music!

"Orange Is In" needs your help!

Orange Is In (official site)

help steve replace his stolen gear!

On Thursday night, June 28, some jerkwad broke into drummer Steve Salazar's van and lifted all of his gear including all his drums, cymbals, hardware...even his freaking stick bag.

Steve is a fantastic drummer, a hard working musician and an even finer person. If anyone did not deserve for this to happen, it's him. While his gear may not represent tens of thousands of dollars, being a working musician with a family to support makes it difficult to replace gear on the fly, so we are asking for your help.

First, if you have ANY information regarding the theft that took place at Steve's home in south Houston last Thursday, PLEASE email us as soon as possible. You can click here to see a full list of all of Steve's gear and information about where the theft took place and the HPD case number.

Second, you can click the button below and contribute through PayPal either by using your own PayPal account or by clicking the "continue checkout" link to pay with any credit card. Every little bit helps.

click now to contribute

For all you bloggers and MySpacers, we'd appreciate all the help you can give in passing this info around to others via links, email, etc.

Thank you very much for reading this and helping to support live, local music!

Local Houston band "Orange Is In" needs your help!

What's Up...
HELP! Steve's Drums STOLEN!!!
What a crappy thing it is to be a thief. Last Thursday night, some jerkoff broke into Steve's van and lifted ALL his drum gear - drums, cymbals, hardware, even his freaking STICK BAG!!!
We're trying to help him recover his equipment or raise money to buy new gear. Steve is a working musician, so you can imagine how tough it would be to lose your work tools!!!
For more information on how YOU can help Steve and his family, visit the special page on our website. THANK YOU!!!

We'll have more info later this week on our CD release party and much more on our new disc, Come and Take It. Have a great Fourth of July and thank you again for your help!

I'm Not Ashamed

"I'm not ashamed to let you know
I want this light in me to show.
I'm not ashamed to speak the name
of Jesus Christ."

I believe the above lyrics from "I'm Not Ashamed" by the Newsboys says it all.

It speaks volumes about who I am as a Catholic, as a Christian, and as a Disciple of Jesus Christ.

It is my belief that anyone who has accepted Christ as their Lord, and has chosen to fully give themselves to Him should have this same attitude.

DO NOT be ashamed to let people know you are a disciple of Jesus. So what if they laugh? Is there anything funny about it? NO! There is nothing funny about being a disciple of Jesus! Their laughter, then, is nothing short of misunderstanding exactly what being a disciple of Jesus means.

Shout it out today, tomorrow, and forever...

"I'M NOT ASHAMED TO LET YOU KNOW
I WANT THIS LIGHT IN ME TO SHOW.
I'M NOT ASHAMED TO SPEAK THE NAME
OF JESUS CHRIST!"

Lissa SO Rocks

Need I say more? I mean, look at her. Isn't she just the hottest thing ever when she has a mic in her hand and she's singing? Pictures/situations like the one you see pictured above is just one of the many reasons why I love that girl to death. Lissa SO Rocks!

Love you sweetheart!

Matt Maher

Matt Maher has become one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed Catholic artists in the country. Since his 2002 debut release, The End and the Beginning, the rise of Matt and his music has been remarkable. At World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, Matt’s "Litany of the Saints" was sung at the official Papal Evening Prayer, with the Holy Father singing the lyrical prayer along with 700,000 young pilgrims from around the world. Matt’s songs “Just Like You” and “Love Has Come” were recorded by Christian artist Kathy Troccoli for her album, The Heart of Me, which received a 2002 Grammy nomination for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album of the Year.

In October 2003, Maher received the Unity Award for Best New Artist of the Year from the United Catholic Music and Video Association. In 2004 he received the Unity Award for Praise & Worship Song of the Year for “I Love You, Lord.” Matt’s music has received glowing reviews form major Catholic and Christian music publications, and he has also become a popular performer at youth ministry conferences and rallies.

With the release of Welcome to Life in 2003 and his third album, Overflow, in February 2006, Matt continues to explore the wonder and challenges of this life that God calls us to.

An Interview with Matt Maher

Matt Maher is in my opinion, one of the best worship leaders in the world today. He's still pretty new to the scene, but his work with programs like Life Teen has produced results that continually increase the number of young people who passionately live for Christ. Not just young people, but people of all ages! Here is an interview with Matt Maher that I came across through http://christianmusic.about.com/

Matt Maher
From Kim Jones,

Unity comes through dialog through relationships
Matt Maher is a contemporary worship leader in the Catholic faith. Since most people outside of the Catholic faith find “contemporary worship” and “Catholic” to be two things they would never associate as going together, I asked Matt to describe himself and what he does for me. Here is what he had to say …

“I’m a worship leader out of Mesa Arizona. Primarily I work full time at a church. I’ve done some touring and traveling over the years, but I work 20 hours a week as a worship leader and 20 hours a week as young adult minister. I lead a college Bible study. It’s a Catholic Church, which kind of surprises a lot of people. The joy that I really feel, as part of my ministry, is that I’ve been kind of going out more and traveling and working with different people breaking down those stereotypes because people have a lot of Catholic stereotypes.

I’m just letting them know that there is a generation, now rising, of Catholics who recognize the gift of Salvation that’s been given to them and that see the need for a daily relationship with Jesus and pursue it. And pursue Him actively in His Word, and also pursue it in the Sacrament. Primarily, I think the way that God has been using me to reach out to people is through worship. I think there’s kind of a format that’s developed. I lead worship every week. I do a mass every Sunday night at 6 PM at my church, Saint Tims, and on Tuesday nights we do a thing called XLT. Basically what it is is a gathering for high school and college students. It’s consistent with about 40 minutes of worship, 20 to 25 minutes of teaching and about 25 to 30 minutes of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It’s been really powerful to see that happen and to see these different elements kind of from post-modern culture and Christianity, not clashing, but colliding with something as ancient and ritualistic as the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And it’s been phenomenal to see the fruit come from that. I just got off the phone this morning and found out that I was asked this fall to Atlanta to the NCYC, which is the National Catholic Youth Conference. It’s the largest single Catholic youth conference in the world, or maybe it’s just North America. I mean, there’s World Youth Day, but a straight-up conference for high school students, I think this is the largest one in the world. We’re going to do a XLT worship night in an auditorium that seats 15000 people. It will be sometime in November or December. So I’m already excited. I’ve done a lot of work throughout the country with a ministry called Life Teen, which is a parish based youth ministry program that’s designed to help provide and develop resources for youth ministers to reach their teens and lead them to Christ. I’ve mostly just done music with them. I’ve also worked with the Franciscan University of Steubenville at the summer youth conferences. I’ve led worship at a couple of those. So that’s kind of what I do. It’s kind of a big myriad or a smattering of things.

What I’ve realized too is that the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. The reality is that because of the denominational barriers that exist, there are so few laborers in the Catholic Church. You know, I think it’s a move that God is doing. It’s not about me, it’s about unity and not just playing at unity by basically saying, “Well, we’ll let Catholics come here and hang out with us.” There’s a guy that I’ve been developing a friendship with whose name is J. D. Walt. He’s the Dean of Chapel at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. He’s just a phenomenal preacher, a great man, a great husband and loving father. He and I have just been dialoging and he said something really profound. He said that unity comes through dialog through relationships. I was like that is really true.

Finding a new ways to dialog
For me, growing up, I always had a cross section of friends from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. So the thing I’ve witnessed is that there has been a lot of misrepresentation out there. A lot of people have been poorly educated about Catholicism. They’re just taking what their pastor said when they were 10 or 11 or a teenager in high school and they give a quick track on 10 things to refute your Catholic students. I was never taught that, through all of my Christian upbringing. There’s this whole buzz-talk now about the “emerging church”. What is that look like? A friend of mine asked me that once and I said, “Well, it starts with candles and creative music!” (laughs) No, seriously, I’m only 30, so what do I know, but I think it starts with solid community, regardless of the denomination, and depth of teaching.

It’s about re-presenting, which I think Catholics need to do a better job of, dogmas or doctrines, not as these set rules or laws, but as deeper expressions of God’s love, for God and God’s love of humankind. Not so much as alternate ways to God like a 12-step program. It’s not about that. It’s interesting that people could look at creation and see how God used that to worship Him, and yet look at a 14 year old girl who said “yes” and could have gotten killed for being pregnant outside of marriage 2000 years ago, and not honor her. So I think it’s trying to find new ways to dialog with other Christians to re-present these ancient ideas that I see people stumble on or find out on their own. We have a history or a fascination with the ancient church and I think it’s our job as Catholics to … not to protect it … but for us to know about it and be in dialog with it. I always say that I feel like we’re like the spoiled, adopted kids of God. We have all of these toys and we don’t even know it.”

Newsboys Concert!?

Well, I may or may not be going to see the Newsboys in concert next Saturday in the Woodlands for KSBJ's 24th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT.

Why it is still a maybe is a long story that only involves me very very slightly. But hopefully, all truths will be revealed, understood and believed and I will be able to go.

However, there is a chance that the truth will never be listened to and thus I will not be there...

Anywho, I'm off... Got to do something besides type all night!

God bless you all!

Mele Florez-Avellán

Ok, so again in this post, I am not putting up a link to my girlfriend's blog because I'm too lazy to look up the link right now...

But, I am putting up a link to her mom's website. This site features everything from her artwork to recordings of her music from back in the day.

Here it is! Enjoy!

http://meleflorez.com/