Another addition to my instrumental piano portfolio but this song has a deeper personal meaning to me than the previous covers I have performed.
Moon River was composed by Henry Mancini with words crafted by lyricist Johnny Mercer. It first appeared in the golden age of cinema classic 1961 ‘Breakfast at Tiffany's’ as a diegetic song being performed by the film’s star Audrey Hepburn. Her character Holly Golightly performs the song as part of the plot of the movie in the iconic scene below.
There's a whole story behind the history of this song but I’m not going to get into it here. The reason it means so much to me and my family personally is because this was my late maternal Grandad’s favourite song. The Andy Williams version was played at his funeral and for a LONG TIME I couldn’t hear it without breaking down into tears because it reminded me of him so much. For the same reason, I never learned to play the song on guitar or piano either for the longest time.
It wasn’t until the end of my third year of university that I did learn it because my sister, who was also studying music at the same university, wanted to sing a cover of it in her final performance and dedicate it to our late grandfather. I was the pianist for her final performance so I had to finally learn it.
It took me a few weeks but I eventually managed to play it without crying anymore. I essentially had to desensitise myself to it through exposure. (There’s a valuable life lesson in there somewhere).
The version I ended up playing as accompaniment to my sister was just legato block chords as I had only just learned it at the last minute and was still quite raw. The left hand arpeggios I play in the above version is the result of the piano practice I have put in since graduating university.
I tried recording my performance of this song to a click metronome to keep me in time, but I found that in the rigidness of keeping to a set tempo, I lost some of the expression I naturally put into it. So this performance is recorded in free time.
That does mean that, on occasion, my timing is slightly rough. A few of the left hand arpeggio notes land a little late or early throughout which I find is very noticeable when playing in 6/8, particularly on the 4 beat.
I’m still practicing this left hand method (along with others) and improving incrementally, one day at a time. I may revisit this song in another post in a year or so to see how much tidier and more disciplined my playing will become in that time.
For now, I hope you enjoy this early effort.
I dedicate this post to my late grandfather John [below], my little sister Sass and my little brother Ethan.
‘Oh, dream maker. You heart breaker’.
Thanks for listening… Pete Brennan (Musician- Singer/Songwriter)
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