Mountain Music

2008-10-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

Mountain Music is an educational music project by Dan Lieberman and Friends. The 14 original compositions on the Mountain Music album were inspired by the Olympic Mountains of Northwestern Washington and are intended to be sung by people everywhere to celebrate music, nature, and education.

Please explore this website, listen to and sing along with the music, and be in touch at mountainmusic@hotmail.com. Thanks! - Dan Lieberman.

Mountain Music Performances

2008-10-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Performances:

None Scheduled

Recent Performances:

Procession of the Species (http://www.paprocession.blogspot.com/), Jul. 29, 2011
Andy Mackie Music Festival, Sep. 6, 2010
Procession of the Species (http://www.paprocession.blogspot.com/), Aug. 31, 2010
Juan de Fuca Festival, May 31, 2010
Procession of the Species (http://www.paprocession.blogspot.com/), Aug. 30, 2009
Andy Mackie Music Festival, Sep. 7, 2009
Sequim Open Aire Market, July 4, 2009
Juan de Fuca Festival, Chamber Stage + Family Fun Zone, May 25th, 2009
Streamkeepers Annual Celebration, Clallam County Courthouse, Mid-January, 2009
Opulent Art Show, Sequim, Sep. 13, 2008
Procession of the Species - Streamfest, Port Angeles, Sep. 6+7, 2008
Sequim Open Aire Market, Jul., 2008
Port Townsend Farmer's Market, Jun., 2008
Mountain Music Celebration, Port Angeles, Apr. 26, 2008

New Mountain Music Song!!!

2008-05-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Procession of the Species happens in Port Angeles!!!!

North Olympic Land Trust's StreamFest hosts the procession in late-August or early-September each year.

Dan Lieberman and Friends recorded a new Mountain Music song called "20 Million Reasons" that accompanied the procession. This is an interactive song celebrating any and all species on Planet Earth. People are encouraged to write and sing verses for their favorite species following a simple template.

To hear the song, go to Mountain Music's MySpace page (www.myspace.com/olympicpeninsulamountainmusic).

To learn more about the Port Angeles Procession, write a verse for your favorite species, and listen to "20 Million Reasons," visit http://www.paprocession.blogspot.com/.

For more details about StreamFest, visit http://www.northolympiclandtrust.org/.

Read more about the Procession of the Species at http://www.procession.org/.

Mountain Music CD Now Available!!!

2008-04-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

Listen to all the songs and buy the CD at this website:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/danlieberman

List of places where the CD is available:

Budget CD, Port Angeles, WA
Port Book and News, Port Angeles, WA
Olympic National Park Visitor Center, Port Angeles, WA
Dungeness River Center, Sequim, WA
Crossroads Music, Port Townsend, WA
Quimper Sound, Port Townsend, WA
Olympic Park Institute, Port Angeles, WA *
Yosemite National Institutes ((415) 332-5776, ask for Kasha Friese) *
http://cdbaby.com/cd/danlieberman (order online, get it shipped anywhere)

Or, email MountainMusic@hotmail.com and request a cd from the source.

* All proceeds from CDs sold through Yosemite National Institutes (Olympic Park, Headlands, and Yosemite Institutes) will go to support music in educational programs at those sites.

Other Mountain Music Merchandise:

There are some beautiful Mountain Music T-shirts that you can waltz away with (please see photo below) for $15. These are the finest red/white weave American Apparel cotton shirts featuring Gabriel Bernier's album cover art. Available sizes are men's L or XL. Email MountainMusic@hotmail.com if you're interested.

Mountain Music Songbook and Curriculum (Inquiry + Climate Change)

2008-04-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Music Songbook is an educational resource that contains lyrics and chords, educational tools and strategies, and history and evolution for all the songs on the Mountain Music cd. There are also pages containing full-color songboards for some of the songs.

Please click here to download the Mountain Music Songbook in .pdf format (please note that this is a 28 megabyte file and may take a while to download):

Click here to download Curiosity Crab's Story and Inquiry-Based Learning Educational Curriculum:

The following documents are climate change educational resources presented at the 2009 Washington Alternative Learning Association (WALA) conference:

WALA Climate Change Presentation Overview

Facing the Future's "Climate Change: Connections and Solutions"

Material World + Food for a Week

Student Material World Presentation

Student Food for a Week Presentation

Climate Change Photo Project

NASA Dungeness River Project:
Weather Data Trends and Trendlines
Port Angeles Weather Data

Weather and River Flow Trends and Trendlines

Weather Predicting Flow

Flow Predicting Turbidity

Port Angeles Weather, Flow and Turbidity Data

Cool School Challenge (www.coolschoolchallenge.org)

Surfrider Foundation Photo Monitoring Project (www.surfrider.org)

Mountain Music Story

2008-04-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Mountain Music, like a river, has its source high in the mountains at one of many places where dreams first take form and begin to flow downstream: their flow shaping the past, the future, and this present moment in a process of molding, feeding, nurturing, and inspiring. For many rivers as for Mountain Music, the source is the Olympic Mountains. The Olympic Mountains are my home and source of creativity. The Olympic Mountains are what inspire me to listen to, create, and share nature’s music. Music exists in every high mountain spring, whistling marmot, and falling leaf. Just as strongly, music resonates in us all.

Mountain Music mirrors the journey of a river. Both have their source in the mountains where the inclination to travel downstream is first realized. Both follow a winding and often unpredictable course, as they progress through difficult terrain. Ultimately, both have their end with great connectors of all things on this planet – a river has its end in the ocean, and Mountain Music with you. This end is also a beginning as these songs travel to other ears and inspire new journeys.

All of the 14 songs on this album have two things in common. They were all inspired by my home, the Olympic Mountains, and they were all written to be educational songs.

The music and words of Mountain Music were written over the past six years that I have lived and taught on the Olympic Peninsula. These songs have been sung, adapted, personalized, and changed by many voices over many years. Students have sung them while hiking through the forests of Olympic National Park, families have sung them on annual camping trips to Lake Crescent, teachers have sung them to remind students of valuable lessons, and friends have sung them around many campfires.

It was a great challenge for me to capture the snapshot of these songs that you hear on this album because to me, these songs and music are an ongoing process. The voices on these recordings are but some of the many voices that could be here. The present versions of these songs are part of an evolution that continues in time. A snapshot of a river struggles to capture the essence of change that a river embodies. As they are, these songs are missing something vital – your voice.

Mountain Music is an adventure in music, an adventure that now includes you as an essential player. Together, let’s do our part to learn, teach, share, sing out loud, and especially, to enjoy our home, each other and music.

- Dan Lieberman

Mountain Music Celebration

2008-04-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Mountain Music Man Teaches through Song

By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News

"The Olympic Mountains are what inspire me to listen to, create and share nature's music. Music exists in every high mountain spring, whistling marmot and falling leaf. Just as strongly, music resonates in us all." -- Dan Lieberman

PORT ANGELES – Without this guy, science education could be a drag, a dry heap of doom and hard concepts. But then Mr. L arrives, with a guitar, a smile and a little soft crab. "This is Curiosity," he says, holding up the toy crustacean. Then he proceeds to teach "Curiosity," one of the songs he's written to turn environmental education into a sunny, melodic frolic for kids of any age.

Looking at Mr. L – aka Dan Lieberman – you may not immediately peg him as a science teacher. A better label: Mountain Music man for all seasons. After six years of incubation, Lieberman has hatched a CD of original songs inspired by life under and among the Olympic Mountains – and this Saturday he and a flock of other local singers and players will host a free CD-release celebration at the Sons of Norway hall in Port Angeles.

"Mountain Music" strolls, swims and sings all over this place: "The Forest is a Chorus" came from the Enchanted Valley in Olympic National Park, "Morning Meeting Suite" from Lake Crescent, "Step It Up" from the city of Port Angeles and "See You in the Spring" from a hike along Boulder Creek. Lieberman, a science teacher at Lincoln High School in Port Angeles and a former Olympic Park Institute educator and Olympic National Park interpretive ranger, has lived on the Peninsula since fall 2001. He's been writing songs about the mountains and waters ever since.

In the liner notes, Lieberman sums up his hopes for what his new disc can do."Mountain Music is an adventure in music, an adventure that now includes you as an essential player. Together, let's do our part to learn, teach, share, sing out loud and, especially, to enjoy our home, each other and music," he writes.

One morning this week, Mr. L did all of the above with the young singers at Stevens Middle School. He taught them to sing "Curiosity," and brought even the most blasé students to their feet. "This is Curiosity the crab, who teaches us that it's all about asking questions," Lieberman began. "Being successful in life and in school comes from being curious." From there he went to "Take a Drink," a call-and-response romp about the circle of water and life. "Drip, drop," the students chanted. "H2O boogie," Lieberman sang while playing an ebullient guitar riff. "In fact, we're made of water – three-quarters our weight – without it we'd be in a sorry state," they carried on together. "The truth about water shouldn't go unspoken: The cycle is a circle, may it be unbroken." After urging the kids to "give yourself a round of applause," Lieberman invited them to join the singing this Saturday during the party. Anyone who arrives around 4 p.m. can make a "forest mask," and then wear it when partygoers get together at 5 p.m. to sing "The Forest is a Chorus," "Nurse Log" and "Tree Fallin.'" "There's going to be a lot of music ... and we'll have the words up," on big boards so it'll be easy for everybody to participate, Lieberman promised.

"I'm going," announced Krissy Marvelle, 12, one of the morning singers at Stevens Middle School. Her classmates also perked up when they heard about the potluck dinner. "That means there will be a lot of food," one said.

The party will also feature Andy Mackie, the renowned Jefferson County music teacher. Lieberman used the Andy Mackie Music Stick, a simple wooden instrument used to teach youngsters, on several Mountain Music songs. "I love this instrument and the man who has brought [it] to hundreds, if not thousands of kids in Northwestern Washington," Lieberman writes in the "Mountain Music" songbook.

A year ago Lieberman was awarded a $3,000 Yosemite National Institutes grant that helped him produce the CD. His mission: make music that teachers and students can enjoy together, not only in science class, but also in language arts, chorus – anywhere people can learn through song.

Copies of the "Mountain Music" songbook, which contains song boards to ease teaching, will be available at Saturday's celebration for a donation, and can be downloaded free from www.OlympicMountainMusic.com. Saturday's event will be a convergence of local musical groups – Shades of Green, the Renaissance People Choir, Rate Limiting Step, Perry Spring – with a kind of snack bar of mountain-oriented educational activities, such as plant-potting with the Washington State University Extension Master Gardeners and other crafts. The party will wrap up around sunset, but of course Mr. L doesn't want people to quit celebrating.

When he set out on this "Mountain Music" adventure, Lieberman said, he hoped to inspire his listeners to express themselves, through song or any kind of art. He hopes too that the music will move people "to deepen their connection to their own home, and to connect with each other." Making the CD "taught me the power of working with other people, of sharing ideas and creating moments, musical moments that enliven."

Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.

Schedule of Performances
Mountain Music Celebration April 26, 2008

4:00 Perry Spring and PT Songlines
4:30 Forest Sing-Along with Ranger Greg
5:00 Dry Creek Elementary School 6th Grade Choir
5:15 Stevens Middle School Choir
5:30 Shades of Green
6:00 Andy Mackie and Friends
6:30 Black Diamond Fiddle Club
7:00 Songs and Stories with Dunbar and Alice Susong
7:30 Claire Samuel and Ryan Hilperts
8:00 Renaissance People Choir
8:30 Rate Limiting Step