Lopin' Along Thru the Cosmos (American Singing Traditions, November 2022)

Performed at the Free Key Choir Debut concert, American Singing Traditions, at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Oakland, CA on Saturday, November 20th, 2022.
Arranged and conducted by Derek Sup
Written by Judee Sill
Lopin' along thru the Cosmos
And sideways, I slide thru the square
I'm hopin' so hard for a kiss from God
I missed the sweet love of the air
A silver chariot soars
Through mercury ripples of sky
I'm lookin' so hard for a place to land
I almost forgot how to fly
So keep on movin'
Or stay by my side, either way
I'll tell you a secret
I've never revealed
However we are, is okay
Judee Sill was born in 1944 in Los Angeles and spent her early childhood here in Oakland. Her father imported exotic animals and owned a bar named Bud’s Bar for a living, where Judee would play piano. Her father died of pneumonia when she was only 8 years old and she moved back to Los Angeles, where her mother married the Tom and Jerry animator Kenneth Muse. Sill had violent fights with her mother and step father, and she got into trouble with the law in her teenage years, being arrested for armed robbery. She was placed in a reform school where she served as a church organist. Her mother died when she was twenty, and she developed an addiction to heroin and would forge checks and do sex work to support her addiction, for which she was jailed. Upon her release she started her recording career and released three albums, none of which garnered much commercial success. She died of a drug overdose in 1979 in Los Angeles when she was 35 years old. Her lyrics are often simultaneously romantic and spiritual in nature and she includes much Christian symbolism. She was deeply influenced by other musical genres, and was an avid jazz pianist and performer of J.S. Bach. She did all of her own orchestrations on her albums, and her compositions are often harmonically adventurous and contain technically demanding concepts such as time changes and fugues.
Filmed and edited by Jessica Friedman

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