PASSION PROJECTS
“In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”
― Flannery O’Connor
Holiday Jazz Single
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Creating & Restoring: I’ve been making something new from something old…
(Which is Christmasy in its own way…)
I don’t like throwing things away. I don’t believe anything in God’s commodity is wasted, even things we make we think irredeemable. I believe the act of reconciling and restoration among the highest and most worshipful works of creativity afforded to humankind. And I want what I believe to be evident in my own life.
💫New: Collaborating with drummer, producer, and sound engineer, Max Dearing; he’s laid some Mediterranean hand percussion on it (sitting in the groove spaces I believe my arrangement has always needed)…
💫Also New: Collaborating with innovative Inkscape Artist, @kyra_hinton_studio; she found the most perfect visual for the new recording (working with this artist is something I have wanted since our meeting in 2018)…
💫Old: An arrangement of the nativity hymn ‘What Child is This’ (itself a new lyric written to the ancient tune of Greensleeves), that has been flowing naturally from me for a very long time…
💫Also Old: A live recording I made in 2014 produced by Jacob Danieley in Whitley Auditorium, Elon University...
Stir it all up * Say a prayer * Throw it to the digital wind, and on ✨December 1✨watch it be delivered to all major outlets.
💫BE BLESSED!💫
Click Below to View on Spotify and Apple Music
Carolina Bluebird Jazz Project
CAROLINA BLUEBIRD JAZZ PROJECT is a live performance collaborative intersection of Hope’s vocals with combo powerhouse UNC-Chapel Hill Jazz Studies professors. Produced by Hope Kemp Music, and featuring Grammy nominee Stephen Anderson on Piano, Jason Foureman (Branford Marsalis, René Marie) on Bass, and Dan Davis (Paul Jeffrey, Conrad Herwig) on Drums, Hope makes a nod towards Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney and brings her dynamic charisma home as the carefree locus of Carolina Bluebird’s trad jazz sound. The album showcases the band's monstrous chops, in styles ranging from Hard Swing to ECM free syle, including a clever mashup of two well loved Blues ballads. The end result reveals an intelligent and reverent selection of standard songbook tunes to be delivered to Jazz devotees and new enthusiasts alike.
Newest album out NOW and available for Download!
Hoping for Real
HOPING FOR REAL is a song-cycle exploring the longing of becoming, and the unexpected sacrifice of self for transforming love. Inspired by the well loved book, “The Velveteen Rabbit” (Margery Williams), the album is sensitively produced by Ben Hardesty (The Last Bison) and features his whimsical folkestral style. Although a beloved children’s book, this series of songs is decidedly grown up in heart and mind, and includes a booklet of quotes to help the listener follow Rabbit’s journey. Hope also performs a live version supported by her 6 piece band and 2 actors readers called: Hoping for Real: a songwriter’s retelling of “The Velveteen Rabbit” as a Musical Reading.
An additional Musical Theater version is being developed now, and will arrive 2022!