SKU: A0.1300078

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is a song released by the Bee Gees in 1971. It was written by Barry and Robin Gibb and was the first single on the group's 1971 album Trafalgar. It was their first US No. 1 single and also reached No. 1 in Cashbox magazine for two weeks.

The Bee Gees were a musical group formed in 1958 by brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio were especially successful in popular music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and later as prominent performers in the disco music era in the mid- to late 1970s. The group sang recognisable three-part tight harmonies: Robin's clear vibrato lead vocals were a hallmark of their earlier hits, while Barry's R&B falsetto became their signature sound during the mid- to late 1970s and 1980s. The group wrote all their own original material, as well as writing and producing several major hits for other artists, and are regarded as one of the most important and influential acts in pop-music history.

 Bee Gees Lyrics:
How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?

I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do
I could never see tomorrow
But I was never told about the sorrows

And, how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go 'round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again

I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees
And misty memories of days gone by
We could never see tomorrow
No one said a word about the sorrow

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go 'round?
And how can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again

La la la la la la, la la la la
La la la la la la, la la la la

Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again
Da da da da
Da da da da, da da da da da, da.

SKU: A0.859686

Contact: sydneystevenspianostudio@gmail.com

Dawn: Beautiful, dreamy instrumental that evokes compassion, comfort and warmth. Arranged for solo piano. Includes chord symbols above the staff. Composed by Sydney Stevens (ASCAP).

Sounds like: Paul Cardall, John Fluker, Jennifer Thomas, Jim Brickman, Michele Mclaughlin, Greg Star, Doug Hammer, Steven Cravis, Rachel Currea, Laura Sullivan, A la Windham Hill

From Album: Seasons

Theme: Music that portrays the peaceful hour of dawn.

Mood: Peaceful, romantic, meditative.

Musical Traits: Left hand rhythm is a repeated broken chord pattern throughout the piece. The right hand plays a strong, but simple melody. Contemporary Classical (tonal with strong themes), New Age acoustics, Romantic, Easy listening.

Performance Time: 6:42

Sydney Stevens music is available on: Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Whisperings Solo Piano Radio, AllMusic

More Links:

https://sydneystevenswatermusic.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-stevens-532a113a/

Review of Seasons CD by Kathy Parsons (mainlypiano.com):

Seasons is a beautiful collection of original pieces by pianist/composer Sydney Stevens. Some of the pieces are solo piano and others feature duets with Mitch Iimori on English horn, oboe, and guitar (but not all at the same time!). The two musicians are obviously exceptionally comfortable and in tune with each other, and the results can be stunning. Very classical in scope and structure, the music is reflective of the natural surroundings of Ms Stevens’ home in the Colombia Gorge region of northern Oregon. The first eight of the fourteen tracks make up the Seasons Suite, a group of lyrical compositions inspired by the various times of year in a remote area of eastern Oregon. The other six pieces also have themes of nature and serenity.

The Seasons Suite begins with Colors Change, obviously about the transition of summer into fall, but also about the concept of change as we grow. Reflective and subdued, the interplay between Stevens’ piano and Iimori’s oboe is effortless and flowing. Autumn Wind picks up the pace a bit, but continues the easy flow, bringing images of leaves swirling in the ceaseless wind of that area. Signs of Winter is a bit darker and more mysterious. Iimori is a big fan of Paul McCandless, and that musician’s influence is very strongly heard in these first three pieces - a very good thing!

In Clouds, Iimori switches from oboe to English horn. This duet with the piano is a dramatic musical depiction of the gathering clouds and anticipation of a coming thunder storm. I really like it a lot! Snow is tranquility set to music. Sparrow’s Song brings us to the beginnings of spring - the freshness in the air, and the joyful songs of birds in the yard. July reflects the laziness of a hot summer day. Season’s Reprise brings together the themes from the various seasons, creating a lovely closing to the Suite. On Summit, Iimori trades his woodwinds for guitar in a gentle, sweeping duet with the piano.

Waning Star is a gorgeous piano solo that has a peaceful grace and quiet serenity - a favorite. Reach For the Stars is a piano solo that has an uplifting sense of moving forward and reaching out. Dawn closes the CD with a warm and soothing confection. The piano is accompanied by light percussion, bass, and washes of synth strings. Full of hope and optimism without being sugarcoated, this piece is spellbinding in its gentle way.

SKU: A0.987083

This piece is a free adaptation and a complete reworking of a study by Felix Le Couppey (1811-1887), from his L'Agilité, Opus 20, 25 Progressive Studies for Mechanism and Light Touch. In its original form, this study was a charming little piece of musical fluff. But getting it up to speed reduced me to tears! It also gave me an epiphany of immense power that transformed my technique. Suddenly I could play faster than I had ever thought possible, and I could do so with a thrilling ease! This epiphany emerged from the spluttering frustration I felt over my inability to play these sixteenth notes at Le Couppey's metronome marking of 144. It dawned on me that I couldn’t play fast enough because I was tripping over my own fingers when I used the overly articulated technique of moving the fingers by the lift, throw, relax method. This superfluous motion creates an impenetrable barrier, a speed wall, as does playing legato scales by passing the thumb under the palm, when shifting hand position up and down the keyboard. So I found another way-which I’ve since learned was known to every pianist who ever achieved prodigious speed. Here’s how to bring this piece up to speed with ease: Be sure to practice this piece with each hand alone. For each group of sixteenth notes, gently place the four fingers down simultaneously, to get the feel. Think of your arm, from elbow to fingertips, as something like a kitchen utensil, such as a spatula. Moving your right arm as a unit, place your finger tips down into the key bed, depressing all four notes at once, as a block chord. Make sure that all the fingers remain stiff (not rigid with tension, but just stiff enough to resist collapsing upwards.) Slowly lift and then play each group by placing all the fingers down with a rotation of your forearm, calm and relaxed, with the fingers rolling through the notes at the speed of a brief snare drum roll: Rrrrip! To rip through this group of notes like this takes no more effort than to place those four fingers down, calmly, all at once! Then, with a quick shift up or down the keyboard to get into position for the next group, that’s the whole trick for playing such passages with astonishing speed and ease! It takes time and effort to get the knack here, but the result can be transformative and thrilling! As for my adaptation of this study, I believe it offers intermediate advanced players the chance to enjoy a great leap in technique like the one I experienced, and also offers a piece of music that one might not blush to play outside the practice room-perhaps bringing it at least into the living room for a soirée, if not into the concert hall. To make this adaptation, I wrote a grumbly bass line with lungs, and nice fat chords to flesh out most of the skinny little triads that accompany the original study’s fast passages. I added a brooding, chromatic introduction that features as a melody the accompanimental figure of a broken triad that Le Couppey wrote a few times on the second page, in various inversions. I employed this broken chord figure several more times in both hands, and also added a little coda, sprinkled with sparkle. Playing time is about 1 minute and 30 seconds.

SKU: S9.Q47140

The President of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, asked me to compose a piano work which should relate to the German anthem and was to be performed for the first time on the occasion of his retirement from political activities in autumn 2017. The title Variationen mit Haydn [Variations with Haydn] illustrates that Haydn's own variations on his hymn are part of the work, yet are modified immediately upon appearance. The piece consists of the theme as set by Haydn, four groups of four variations each, with the first of each variation being audibly close to Haydn, while the others gradually move farther away from him. The theme reappears in the coda very softly and pensively – damaged, yet not broken. Stefan Heucke.