All Around and Deep Within

March 31, 2021 By Stanton Lanier 4 Comments

The new single All Around and Deep Within released March 23rd and has already been enjoyed in fifty countries, with some of the top listener cities being in Brazil, Australia, Taiwan, Finland, and Spain. You can stream from your favorite music service including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Pandora.

The ethereal piano, harp, and symphony orchestra are rich with emotion, expressing the breadth and depth of God’s great love toward us (1 John 4:14-16). This is the overall idea, and down below are more insights into the meaning behind the music.

There are two themes. At first I thought the opening Theme A was the verse, and Theme B was the chorus. However, during the creative process each section became a chorus of its own. Theme A is the “all around” and Theme B is the “deep within” of God’s love for us.

Theme A symbolizes the time period from eternity past all the way through the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. It begins all the way back in the dark void of the universe, before Creation. Musically God begins to paint His creative “brush strokes” across the universe. He ultimately breathes life into Adam and Eve, who live in the midst of His pure love and presence before they disobeyed and sinned against Him. The big, low bass strings are constant like the “all around” of God’s great love, which has existed all the way from eternity past. The melody on the harp and ethereal piano represent the simplicity and purity of God’s love, and the innocence of Adam and Eve receiving it. Theme A is expressing the “all around” breadth of God’s love surrounding Adam and Eve before the Fall, when their original sin separated them from God.

Theme B’s “deep within” takes us on a journey from the Fall to the end of the Old Testament. The melody is more complex to represent the complications Adam and Eve brought to their relationship with God and His simple love after they first sinned against Him. Their original sin was passed down to us as the Scripture says in Romans 3:23-24, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” There is beauty in Theme B, yet there is tension and complexity. God’s perfect holiness encounters our imperfect brokenness. This tension and complexity is a result of my sin and inconsistency in fully trusting God’s unchanging love, grace, and patience toward me. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says, “God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated.”

There are three significant musical rests in the piece, with the first one happening after the opening Theme A and Theme B. This long pause symbolizes the four hundred years of God’s silence from the end of the Old Testament (book of Malachi) to the beginning of the New Testament (book of Matthew). Theme A returns with a bigger and more wonderful version of God’s pure love, adding instruments and melodies for the birth of Christ and His gift of salvation through the New Testament up until the book of Revelation. Theme B follows with its grander version, as we receive more of God’s saving and transforming grace during our lives. This carries us from the New Testament until today, with the “all around and deep within” of God’s love through the centuries.

The second rest represents the waiting time between Jesus ascending to heaven (Acts 1:9) and His second coming to take all who have believed and do believe with Him to heaven to be with Him forever (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). In the final, shorter section, Theme A and Theme B interweave and overlap musically to signify our sanctification and unity with God through what Jesus has done for us. The third and final shorter rest happens just before the ending chord of the piece. This symbolizes our waiting for the new heaven and new earth to be fulfilled, and the final chord signifies all who are saved being in fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for eternity.

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:14-16).

How does “All Around and Deep Within” speak to you?

The Outlaw Ocean Suite

February 18, 2021 By Stanton Lanier Leave a Comment

I hope you enjoy the promotional video clip below featuring An Unseen World. This is one of my orchestral compositions from The Outlaw Ocean Music Project with award-winning New York Times journalist, and best-selling author Ian Urbina.

The Outlaw Ocean Suite EP has eight tracks (four with journalism audio and music, and four music only). This 2021 release is now streaming on my Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Pandora channels and more. Here is some of the story behind the music…

When God stirred my heart to begin composing instrumental music twenty-one years ago, I wanted to be surrendered, and to listen. This meant moving forward by faith, obeying His voice, asking Him for inspiration, and trusting Him with the results.

Johann Sebastian Bach is my favorite composer. I played a lot of his timeless pieces (composed three hundred years ago) during my twelve years of piano lessons, and high school recitals. Bach’s quote about music may be my favorite too. He said, “All music should be unto the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” I didn’t know what the future held, but I began to see that writing instrumental music would be an adventure.

In February 2020 Ian Urbina emailed me to introduce himself and share he was a big fan of my music. He also invited me to be part of a project he had been working on. Ian’s invitation was for me to compose some pieces for The Outlaw Ocean Music Project, which combines music and journalism. This was very exciting for me, and I was inspired and challenged to use my learning from the Berklee School of Music film scoring program to write orchestral pieces for the project.

Composing what became The Outlaw Ocean Suite EP in August-September 2020 was a fantastic musical and spiritual experience for me. Because music is such a universal language, my heart is for listeners to have their own unique encounter with what I create. And hopefully to be inspired in their life. When I write music there is a sense that the melodies are coming down from heaven. Sometimes this happens quickly, and sometimes very slowly. The process is similar each time, but never the same. The only consistent ingredient is the feeling I have when the music is revealed. Here are some thoughts I had as these tracks came together…

An Unseen World. My commitment to Ian and his team was to write three to five pieces. With three completed, I could have stopped, but there was a nudge to attempt a fourth piece. This became An Unseen World, which is an epic theme song for the whole project. It is filled with drama, tension, rhythm, and haunting beauty. The full orchestra contributes to the musical journey, which expresses these attributes of life on earth. When life brings moments of drama, tension, beauty, and rhythm (finding my stride) into my story, God is faithful. He surrounds me with His love as I trust in Him, and helps me receive His gift of peace (Psalm 32:10, John 14:27, NIV).

Beauty Beneath. As I read Ian’s book I realized The Outlaw Ocean captures “an unseen world” most of us are not familiar with. I wanted to contrast the illegal and harmful things happening on the world’s oceans with music about the innocent beauty of all the sea life under the surface. For me the melodies reflect the beauty of God’s creation, and a more intimate beauty He offers through His grace and love toward us (Psalm 8, Romans 8, MSG).

Sailing Too Close to the Wind. This seafaring phrase means being on the verge of doing something illegal or improper. It applies to literally sailing too close to the wind (in its direction), but can also refer to taking an ill advised risk with a life decision. The music expresses adventure on the high seas, and the pursuit of ocean outlaws. I was not aware of all the injustice and illegal activity happening on The Outlaw Ocean every day, including lives being enslaved at sea, ships breaking international fishing laws, and worse. Spiritually this track represents my faith adventure with God, and the risk of trusting Him when something seems impossible (Luke 1:37, Philippians 4:6-9, MSG). As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Chronicles of Narnia, “Aslan is not a tame lion… He isn’t safe, but He is good.”

Lost on the Seven Seas. This piece is a sad and mournful tribute to lives being abused or killed at sea because of the injustices happening on The Outlaw Ocean. Pain and suffering are part of life, sometimes preventable and sometimes out of my control. These are difficult times when they happen to me personally, those I love, or even a stranger, when circumstances pierce my heart and prompt me to pray. I describe my life and music journey as a God-Story because I cannot imagine life without Him. I have seen Him come through for me, and I have experienced His silence when I longed to know His presence. He always lets me know He is there even when it doesn’t feel like it. The sadness of this composition implies God’s care for the brokenhearted. It also symbolizes hearts who are rejecting God consciously or unconsciously, even though He loves them and is reaching out to them (Psalm 34:18, John 3:16, NIV).

Which track is your favorite or speaks the most to you?

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata

January 26, 2021 By Stanton Lanier Leave a Comment

My performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata released worldwide on January 26, 2021. Sample and stream on Spotify above, or any music service including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Pandora, or listen directly below.

I hope you enjoy my thoughts down below as I share a little about the history of this timeless classic, my experience with the music, and how these inspired my version…

This popular Ludwig van Beethoven composition for piano was composed in 1801 in Vienna, Austria. Moonlight Sonata became part of my life at age fourteen. Its full name is Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia). When the first movement, Adagio sostenuto, entered my story this classical piece became one of my favorites in high school as I learned and memorized it to play in some recitals and as part of a program to be judged and critiqued. J.S. Bach is my all-time favorite composer, but I also enjoyed playing famous pieces by Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and more.

Over the years, every now and then, I would get out my original, classical piano book with tattered pages and play through Moonlight Sonata just for fun. The idea of recording my performance was in the back of my mind for a while, and came to the forefront in the early fall of 2020. In November I was ready to take this project on, and now the world gets to hear the result.

I had forgotten Beethoven composed this in Vienna. My family and I took our first overseas trip together in December 2014. Our favorite movie is The Sound of Music, so we wanted to visit Salzburg and tour several of the filming locations. We landed in Vienna on Christmas Eve, and attended a standing room only Christmas Eve service at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the heart of the city. Even though the speaking was in German, we could feel the miracle and hope of Christ’s birth in the air. The symphony, choir, and organ music was breathtaking to hear as we soaked in the moment. The favorite photo I captured inside the cathedral became the above artwork for this new single.

At the opening of Moonlight Sonata’s first movement, Beethoven included the following direction in Italian: “Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino” (“This whole piece ought to be played with the utmost delicacy and without dampers”). The way this is accomplished (both on today’s pianos and on those of Beethoven’s day) is to depress the sustain pedal throughout the movement, or at least to make use of the pedal throughout, but re-applying it as the harmony changes. The modern piano has a much longer sustain time than the instruments of Beethoven’s time, so that a steady application of the sustain pedal creates a dissonant sound, and can overdo what he intended. Also, later in the 19th century the grand piano sounded even better than in 1801.

My unforgettable Christmas Eve inside St. Stephen’s Cathedral and Beethoven’s directions for the performance of this piece converged into the idea to play and record the piece as though I was all alone at concert grand piano in the center of this historic cathedral (construction began in the 12th century, with towers and spires added over the centuries). In my studio I was able to combine a 1951 Steinway D concert grand piano with gentle hints of an old upright piano to recreate an “older” grand piano sound. I wanted the piece to sound like what Beethoven might have heard as he composed this in 1801 in Vienna (he did not fully lose his hearing until later). He would have frequently seen the cathedral in all its grandeur, and I imagined him playing inside. His directions inspired me to be generous in using the sustain pedal, and to use a cathedral sized reverb, which would further provide and enhance the “blur” effect which he intended for the piece.

Emotionally, the music is very sad, yet it is also hauntingly beautiful at the same time. Beethoven’s genius in creating this fantasy world in the key of C-sharp minor has and never will be duplicated. It is magnificent, and for me symbolizes God’s beauty and hope in my life even when I am sad, or going through a difficult time. I pray you are touched and moved in a meaningful way as you listen to my version of Moonlight Sonata.