Music Notes – Sunday, December 12th:
This Sunday’s musicians are UUCC Music Director Mike Carney, UUCC Pianist Karin Tooley, Aaron Burkle, Gary Aprile, and members of the UUCC Chancel Choir.
Gary Aprile is an accomplished guitarist and bassist who frequently collaborates with Brazilian singer-songwriter and friend of UUCC Moises Borges. After returning from New York City in the early 1990s, Gary has had the opportunity to work with many of the great musicians and musical organizations in the Cleveland area, including Joe Hunter, Jack Schantz, Kip Reed, Dominick Farrinacci, Jackie Warren, Paul Ferguson, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and Grupo Brasil. In addition to working as a freelance musician, Gary also is a Clinical Social Worker and co-owner of the private practice Clinical Counseling Associates in Rocky River.
UUCC’s own Aaron Burkle has worked professionally as a percussion performer, educator, clinician, and adjudicator since 1995, primarily across Pennsylvania. He studied briefly at Berklee College of Music, and serves as the Commander and Conductor of the 28th Infantry Division Band of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard where he holds the rank of Chief Warrant Officer Two. Outside of music, Aaron is an adjunct professor of Geography at John Carroll University and Notre Dame College.
Most of the music in this Sunday’s service was written or arranged by American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976), more specifically from Guaraldi’s soundtrack to the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. Although lightly regarded by most critics when it was first released, Guaraldi’s soundtrack has gone on to become one of the ten most successful holiday albums of all time, with well over 4 million copies sold to date. The soundtrack was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2012 the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” American sound recordings.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director