History is Made

STORMWORKS 5:8...
Chapter V∞, Writings on the Wall
(photos below) | Recording Forces Memento PDF | More STORMWORKS CDs

A Message from the Japanese | Are you a veteran? |
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"I'm deeply touched and impressed and I don't talk only about the quality everyone has brought in. It's a long time ago - tears in my eyes - you did that to me. I hope we take lessons from the past as on view in your musical mirror. Your violin concerto is fantastic and Rieko Suzuki is absolutely 'top of the bill'." Mr. Lex van Diepen Senior, Holland

"Steve, words cannot express the soaring emotions which one experiences when hearing this monumental work. You deserve the Medal of Freedom for this piece of patriotism, especially for your success in having the spirited cooperation of a once-despised and brutal enemy. I salute you, Sir!" Joseph R. Priestley, LCDR, USN (Ret.) Served in WWII, Korea & Vietnam

“Your Music is so beautiful, but it is more than beautiful. It is not for European or America or Japan, but for whole world.” Ms. Satsuki Miya, Ms. Rieko Suzuki's agent... after recording the Concerto for Violin on 17 May 2005

Dear Steve! Thank you for sharing these special moments with us!!!! I think we captured emotions on a CD! When it is possible to get so many people in the same musical and emotional direction... I think that's a gift! Godspeed & Groeten" Lex Van Diepen, STORMWORKS Recording Engineer

"Steve, I have now listened to your preview gift for the third time and I am still soaking in all of the pain, grief, glory, heroism, and patriotism that you have captured. It is indeed a mind- event altering piece of work. I salute you my friend. Bill Etchison, Col, USAF (r)

"Stephen's new CD, Chapter 5:8 "Writings on the Wall" is indeed a historic groundbreaking album and a total artistic triumph. The Japanese military band and American voices superbly deliver a phenomenal performance of music that is at once gripping and spellbinding! From the moving mega work Kakehashi to the great uplifting rendition of God Bless America this double CD set is packed with masterworks. Cuba skillfully weaves music which creates two distinct atmospheres - one of the fun party nature of Tropicana - like casinos and the other of the oppression of the island's present dictatorial regime. Melillo migrates back and forth between these two moods with absolute musical mastery and with the full command of all his instrumental resources. The Violin Concerto, on the other hand, symbolizes the utmost in modern Romanticism. It is an outstanding expressive work which puts the violin through a myriad of expressive and technical paths. Bravo to Melillo on this fantastic achievement!" Aldo Rafael Forte, Composer

"Hello Steve, STORMWORKS...Chapter 5:8 WRITINGS on the WALL was heard. It was very wonderful. It is full of the gratitude for the thing that Steve thought of the thing of my hometown so much. Thank you really! KAKEHASHI was very impressed. The thing that there is no border in music has been transmitted very well through this music. The favorite my is best CONCERTO for VIOLIN and GOD BLESS AMERICA and MUSASHI. Impression was very received. This work collection will really become Steve's highest masterpiece. It is the highest masterpiece in me. Thank you really for the elegant gift: Shinya Tagawa, in JAPAN

"I don't understand how you can make something so beautiful out of such misery." Harold C. Hise, ex-POW of Bataan
...
"The spirit begins to well up inside, and then you remember, you remember a lot of things come passing by that you'd forgotten, and are very important to me." Jack Aldrich, ex-POW of Bataan

"Steve-san, I heard "FURUSATO" in a car today. I am very splendid! It was the atmosphere that a totally Japanese composer arranged. You understand Japan from the heart. Wonderful!!!" Taku Karasuyama, Nagasaki City Symphonic Band Conductor

"Stephen, Thank you so much for sending us the CD Chapter 5:8 Writings on the Wall... That was incredibly kind of you... After that phenomenal experience with our son playing in your New York Conference All-State Band last month in Rochester, I started listening to the other tracks on Wait of the World, A Walk on the Water and now the most powerful and epic Writings on the Wall... (That work is musical theatre in the truest sense!) I have to tell you that in as much as we enjoyed the very dramatic pieces that were played at all-state, I discovered that there are also dozens of other exquisite pieces in these three compilations... As a matter of fact, I want to order the whole Stormworks series! The more I hear the music, the more I hear it! It is beyond awesome!!! In this music, I hear a rare spirituality that has awakened me in a profound way. There is a soulful, poignancy in all of the melodies - an unfulfillable longing that leaves me breathless in its incredible beauty. The music is like a journey... It is a parallel to life... You never know what's coming next or when you will suddenly find yourself at the edge of the precipice...or at the gates of Heaven... It is all fresh, original and full of hope, glory, pain, sorrow, joy - all of the elements of life! You have made me a Stephen Melillo fan for life! I can't wait to hear what's coming next!!! All best wishes," Laurel Bern - "band mom", dancer and music lover

STORMWORKS...
Chapter V∞, Writings on the Wall

This 2-CD Set is offically released on 11 September 2005
. More than Music History...it is also WORLD History

See PHOTOS below. This happened.

About the CD Set

Deeper & Deeper into the History leading up to this Historic Recording.
Follow this link to the Photos, PDFs and Reactions to THAT WE MIGHT LIVE.
There is Much! Enjoy!

In May of 2005, during the 60th anniversary celebrating the end of WWII, 143 Musicians of the Japanese Military joined by 67 University Choral Students from Old Dominion and Shenandoah Universities recorded 146 minutes of Music demonstrating not the theoretical, but rather the actual climb toward the Brotherhood of Man.

Here now, to better sum the special Gift of the Japanese, please enjoy my opening comments for the Chapter 5:8 CD Set:

“Remember the Future for Truth is Timeless . . .”
A Personal Message from SLM 2004
STORMWORKS Chapter V∞, Writings on the Wall

It takes a photon 38 million years to escape the forcible, unforgiving gravity of the sun and blast its way to the surface where eight minutes later it bathes the earth in the Light by which you find yourself reading this libretto.

In the Timestorm of that 38 million years and eight minutes, give or take a few hundred years... a mere and tiny moment of imperceptible dancing on the cosmic stage... the Human drama has seen unthinkable violence, pain, hurt, self-inflicted suffering... emptiness and longing. And with it? Untold Love, Sacrifice, Giving and Heroism.

Without Warning we are cast into the epic adventure. In the hollow of the heart, sense must be made of the constantly swirling storm, the unraveling of the mysterious. Free will. Choice? Fate? The seemingly endless succession of useless, inevitable, somehow destined to be traversed catastrophes as Man brutalizes his Brother... and then... steps forward to rise above such folly.

In your hands is a recording, the meaning of which escapes the moment of your listening. It leaps across Time... past, future, possible future and present. Rising above our mutual and many sins of the past, the Vision of Brotherhood is not merely written about... but finally, in a way only Human History could have produced... demonstrated.

We are a part of the convergent Moment. History is made.

Though all should be self-evident, allow yourself to contemplate the document in your possession. It is the first Recording to be released outside of Japan by the The Central Band of the Japanese Air Self Defense Force. With the Good graces of the Japanese government, the JASDF Band offers this document in the 60th year marking the end of World War 2. In the Music, we encounter an historically accurate and by our current view, a tragic and unfortunate Past. As Japanese Musicians render KAKEHASHI: That We Might Live, A Documentary in Music with American college students from Old Dominion and Shenandoah Universities, one cannot help but see an unchained intersection of time and culture-crunching dimensions. Have we done it? Have we laid strong the path by which Man exercises His greatest gift... the ability to short-circuit the needless predetermined march into more suffering? Has a new blueprint been established where, instead of embracing the False, the fleeting, and Art of the State, we have taken that lofty right-face into the Brotherhood of Man? Have we collapsed evolution into the moment of our combined Will and chosen to live by Love inviolate, an evolved position which must... after all... be our True Destiny?

Answers reside within. The document you hold is now History, a History of the Future. It is made possible by an important reality which can never be taken for granted. The Heroism that is "talked about", and written about and urged for and hoped for rises far above all former cliches. Music as a "universal language" is exposed for the many times it was mere hyperbole and its sentiment inappropriately invoked. The Heroes portrayed in this Recording, immortalized once again in the Living thing we call Music, are represented, indeed demonstrated by the Japanese Musicians who render it. They have become, in their transcendent DOING, the role models of a new generation of Heroes. A new JIDAI. It is impossible to thank them enough... for only THEY, at THIS Time, in THIS circumstance with our combined Histories, could have heroically donned the mantle of message bearer.

And their message is profound indeed.

In the spirit of eternal Brotherhood, ALL of us are honoured and humbled to be a small part of this Triumph! Through Time and Space, geography and culture, language and History, ALL of us who have made this Music, ALL of us alive and sacrificed who have lived and inspired it, ALL of us who have drudged through our brief moment like a struggling photon in search of Light... join with you in the Now and share with you a message of Forgiveness and Love... of Giving and Sacrifice, of facing the Storm and rising above it.

History is made. May you make it well.

Into the hope-filled Adventure... Godspeed! Stephen Melillo

Already a PAD Bass comment from the Concert master: Takahashi Masaka

PHOTOS

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