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Darwin Jazz Suite available on iTunes, eMusic and Amazon

Singtastic's first album - The Darwin Jazz Suite, performed by the Sue Kibbey Jazz Quartet - is now available on iTunes eMusic and Amazon.

The songs featured are : Living Light, Mister Darwin, Mutate, Reptiles, Swallow, Taxonomy, Amoeba, Eras, Four Billion Years, Hedgehog and Lake.

David was absolutely delighted when distinguished jazz musicians, singer Sue Kibbey and pianist Lewis Riley agreed to develop jazz interpretations of some of these Lifetime Songs (aka Darwin Songs) last summer. The album was recorded with bassist Mike Thorn and drummer Dave Sheen in September 2008.

David remarked, "I was amazed at the way Sue and Lewis discovered the jazz potential in so many of the songs. I was aware that my music had been influenced by many styles from Bach to Beatles, Britten to Bacharach, but to hear the jazz emerge so naturally from numbers that I thought I knew inside out was an extraordinary experience." Sue loves the songs, "They're full of passion, wit, lyricism and truly wonderful melodies," she says, "and there's a huge range of jazz styles amongst the eleven songs, including samba, blues, ballad, swing and jazz waltz." To hear Sue Kibbey and David interviewed about the album - and hear a couple of the tracks - just follow this link: Walter Love interview on Radio Ulster.

The superb album cover was designed by Mike West of One Stop Design Shop.

Sue Kibbey and Lewis Riley will be premiering the Darwin Jazz Suite at Newcastle's Centre for Life on November 25th as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the publication of "Origin of Species" - though actually they did a sneak preview of the songs at the Carlton Theatre, Teignmouth some months ago to a very enthusiastic audience.

New Space Songs

2009 is International year of Astronomy, 400 years since Galileo first pointed his telescope to the skies.

We are celebrating this event by making seven space songs available.

David has spent the last month beavering away on updating and producing portfolios for six of his space-orientated songs.

Now he is about to embark on composing a brand new song celebrating the life and work of Galileo.

David observed, “There are certain thinkers in the history of science that stand head and shoulders above all the others for their passion, originality and sheer audacity of thought.
Newton, Einstein, Curie and Galileo are obvious examples and I’m really looking forward to celebrating Galileo’s discoveries in my new song.”

Several of the space songs were originally composed for David’s children’s musical Granny Galactica.
The songs vary greatly in style: jazzy to folksy, factual to reflective, manic to meditative.
David has no idea yet what the Galileo song will be like - we’ll just have to wait and see!

All the songs should appear on the website during June and at least two will be completely free to download.

Find out more about Granny Galactica at www.DavidHaines.co.uk

The photograph shows two of the stars from a past production of Granny Galactica.

The Great Plant Hunt Song

David and Sue were very excited when the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew agreed to fund the filming of the Botanical version of the song Mister Darwin for inclusion on the Great Plant Hunt website.

The song was perfectly performed by a talented group of youngsters from Hunters Hall Primary School in Dagenham.

The filming took place in the beautiful surroundings of the Temporate House in Kew gardens and was a truly memorable day for everyone.

Watch the recording on page 20 of SingTV or download the whole portfolio for free on Song page 3.

Inspired by the Kew experience David wrote The Great Plant Hunt Song which is also available free on Song page 3.

As David explains in his Composer's Note, "The Introduction and Bridge summarise some of the main aims of Kew/Wellcome Trust’s Great Plant project, that is to get children from all parts of the UK out into their locality hunting down and identifying common plants.

The verses act as a mnemonic or aide-memoire for the nineteen species chosen by Kew for their ubiquity throughout the UK, and the Refrains act as a simple rousing chorus – a call to action"...'Get out into the great outdoors!'

Note: Alice and Elise, the young singers on the video, are wearing floral garlands of dandelions and cleavers, two of the 19 chosen plant species.

Singtastic in the USA

This spring David’s songs have featured at Science Festivals across the USA, in San Diego, Cambridge and Chicago.

San Diego

San Diego’s month-long, very first Science Festival was by all accounts a great success.

David’s new song San Diego Science Festival was available on the official website (click on ‘Play the SDSF song) and a recording of the song was relayed to a capacity crowd of more than 50,000 people on April 4, Expo Day at Balboa Park.

At 11am scores of youngsters gathered in the Museum of Man to sing seven of the Darwin Songs:

Hedgehog, Bats performed by San Diego Children’s Choir
Habitats, Reptiles performed by Boys’ and Girls’ Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral
Cetaceans, Living Light performed by Canyoncrest Academy Choir

As a finale, the three choirs combined to sing David’s award-winning song Mister Darwin.

The photograph shows the crowds thronging Balboa Park on San Diego Science Festival's EXPO day.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge’s Science Festival gets bigger every year and David’s music has featured in all three! In previous years David and some lucky members of Teignmouth Community Choir have joined the North Cambridge Family Opera Chorus to perform his science oratorios Lifetime [2007] and Powers of Ten [2008].
This year, David was unable to spare the time to go to Cambridge to witness seven of his songs being sung by the North Cambridge Family Opera Festival Chorus as part of their patchwork science oratorio Naturally Selected - A Darwin Bicentennial Revue.

The performance featured songs by four different composers. The seven songs by David were:

Mister Darwin, Mutate, Extremophiles, Lake, Taxonomy, Eras and Extinction.
Extinction - chosen as the encore for the concert - is one of several songs in the Lifetime set that were collaboratively-written by David and participants in songwriting workshops.
His co-writers in this case were children from Kenton Primary School in South Devon.
Naturally Selected was performed three times in various venues including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Museum of Science.

Extracts were also performed at the opening ceremony for the festival in the grand surroundings of Cambridge City Hall.

Chicago, Illinois

What’s the connection between a 1973 mobile phone-call, a tent on a squash court, the D-Day landings and chromosomes?

Stuck?!

Try going to www.sciencechicago.com/content/city-dreams-david-haines and you’ll get the answer.

They’re all mentioned in David Haines’ new song for Science Chicago, the year-long celebration of science currently ongoing in the Windy City.

Some years ago, the city held a vote to decide which were the ten most important science innovations connected with science, and David has featured half of them in his song, now featured on the Science Chicago’s website and easily downloadable from there.

The full portfolio for City of Dreams will be available soon on Singtastic.com.
The photograph shows David Haines admiring Anish Kapoor's stunning Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago in October 2008.

Message from Kew...

'Mr Darwin' aims hits to hit right note with UK primary schools

 Singtastic songwriter David Haines will soon see a special "botanical" version of his song 'Mr Darwin' produced for an ambitious new project from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew).

To coincide with the 200th anniversary year of Charles Darwin's birth, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has teamed up with the Wellcome Trust to create The Great Plant Hunt, a project that aims to get primary school children out and about and excited by nature.

In spring 2009, RBG Kew will send UK maintained primary schools a treasure chest full of free resources to be used in the classroom, online and in the great outdoors. The resources are clearly mapped to the primary science curriculum and include activities for children aged 5 to 11.
You can find out more by visiting: www.greatplanthunt.org.

They will be supported by a rich online resource featuring fun activities for each year group, including the newly-revised version of David's song.

David and his Singtastic co-director Sue Blake met up with Khairoun Abji and Megan Gimber, both from Kew, at the amazing new Wellcome Trust building in London where they workshopped the existing lyrics of Mister Darwin and conjured up a new version especially tailored to the project.

David said afterwards: "I've led hundreds of song-writing workshops in the UK and USA where I've collaborated on writing new songs with children and adults of all ages; but to work with such knowledgeable, committed people as Khairoun, Megan and Sue on re-writing these lyrics was a real thrill. I love the new version and hope that children around the UK will enjoy it too."

 "Photo by Graham Mathers (www.graham-mathers.co.uk) shows David at the Association for Science Education conference in Reading, January 2009, holding a copy of the Great Plant Hunt Teachers' Handbook and standing next to the Darwin Box.  To see a video of David teaching the new version of "Mr Darwin" to conference delegates, go to Sing TV

Two Festivals, Two Songs!

Singtastic songwriter David Haines has been asked to write songs for two American Science Festivals celebrating the achievements of their respective cities.

 Chicago, Illinois, is holding a year-long science event during 2008-2009, promoting the awareness of science in its schools, especially amongst 9-18 year-olds.  Jean Westrick of Science Chicago has suggested David come up with a catchy science song celebrating  discoveries and inventions as diverse as the first portable mobile phone (1973), the discovery of the top quark (early '70s), and Carbon 14 Dating (1950s).  David says "This is the sort of challenge I absolutely love - to find a way of incorporating lots of wildly varying information into one fun, lively song.  I can't wait to have a go!"

Link to Science Chicago - www.sciencechicago.com

Meanwhile, San Diego in California is holding its very first Science Festival in March-April next year.  David's "Darwin Songs" will receive their West Coast premier there at an outdoor performance on 4th April in the spectacular surroundings of Balboa Park - home to some 15 world-class musuems and the famous San Diego Zoo.

 Over lunch at a restaurant right on the beach overlooking the Pacific, the festival's instigator, nanotechnology entrepreneur Larry Bock, asked David to write a kind of anthem for the festival that could be used year after year.  David's comment?  "It's so exciting to be in at the beginning of what I'm sure will be a great science festival.  To think my song might be used every year to promote and celebrate the annual San Diego Science Festival is tremendously exciting.  That's going to be quite a task, coming up with something worthy of the challenge, but I know I can do it and I'm really looking forward to it!"

Link to San Diego Science Festival www.sdsciencefestival.com

You can download a draft version of David's San Diego Science Festival Song here.

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