NederlandsI am proud to announce that my 3rd ‘officially released’ CD is ready. The CD contains songs and arias composed by my direct ancestor, the composer and opera singer Nicolas Ferdinand le Grand (~1660-1710). It is a tribute to his legacy and I am delighted to share this music with you.
It all started sometime in January 2022 when I was fine-tuning my translations (into Dutch) of Elvis songs for the CD recordings in February that year. To relax for a while, I turned once again to my great hobby; genealogy. I opened my Aldfaer genealogy programme and went to see if I could make some progress on various ancestors. I started with Catharina Lion and was curious to see if I could find her parents on the internet. To my surprise and immense joy, I saw that her husband, my ancestor Nicolas Ferdinand le Grand, had his own Wikipedia page. My surprise and enthusiasm grew even greater when I read that Nicolas Ferdinand le Grand was a composer and singer and “sangemeester” in Amsterdam, attached to Van Campen’s theatre, later Vingboons’ Amsterdam theatre, on Keizersgracht at 384. Now hotel De Dylan is located there.
You understand; I naturally had to follow up on this discovery. I was able to download part of Le Grand’s sheet music via the site: liederenbank.nl and copy another part at the library of the University of Amsterdam. I was impressed by the richness of the melodies and the beautiful, sometimes poignant and also sometimes funny texts by the poets Abraham Alewijn and Cornelis Sweerts in his songs and arias.
The CD features 16 compositions by Le Grand, which I recorded in collaboration with pianist, instrumentalist and arranger Jasper Swank at the Villa in Heemstede. The CD was pressed at The MultiMedia Company.