Local musicians team up for CD, concert of hope, healing for Haiti

by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 5, 2010

ROYAL OAK — Louis Canter can’t travel to Haiti and rebuild a house, or help heal the sick and injured. In fact, not many people can.

But what he and several other area musicians are doing is putting together a CD, and organizing a concert, that will benefit the people of Haiti through the funds they hope to raise.

Canter, the archdiocese’s coordinator of music ministries, and local musicians Susie and David Taylor, with the help of Detroit School of Rock and Pop executive producer Jason Gittinger, worked together last weekend to record a track to be played at the concert. They have several other pre-recorded tracks to add to what will be a four-song CD, “Songs for a Time of Healing.”

He’s hoping to fill St. Isidore Church, Macomb Township, and raise as much money for Haiti as possible. “The opportunity we have to minister to brothers and sisters that we don’t know and have not seen is incredible,” he said.

Canter said the project came out of a poem, written by Diana Macalintal, associate for liturgy in the Diocese of San Jose. As Canter was reading it, he thought that it needed to be put to music. “In two days, I had it,” he said. “It was right. It worked.”

Working against fast deadlines — writing music quick enough for performers to learn it, recording tracks in time for CDs to be pressed before the concert — they hope to have everything in line before the concert, and are working to have CDs available through the archdiocesan Web site, www.aodonline.org/haiti. A previous concert had been done earlier in the year, not long after the earthquake.

Susie Taylor, director of music at Our Lady of Hope Parish, St. Clair Shores, has worked with Canter before, lending backup vocals for him while he provides her with original songs, for example. “Louis is so talented,” Taylor said. “He gets a thought, and he can see the full picture in here,” she said, indicating her head.

Her husband, David Taylor, professor of music at Wayne State University, and who helps in parishes’ music departments, was also on hand Sunday to lend a musical ear, to make sure all the correct notes were hit. They named the song “A Prayer in Time of Hope, a Prayer for Haiti.”

“We don’t even know who is going to be ministered (to) by this,” Canter said. “It’s our gift. It’s what we do best. The disaster there is so complete — 200,000 people are dead. That’s a lot of futures, a lot of grieving, a lot of loss.”

The money will be given to Catholic Relief Services for them to distribute to the needy of Haiti.

Join us as we celebrate the second anniversary of The Detroit School of Rock and Pop Music.  If you’ve been a part of the first two years, come and share your memories with others. If you’re looking to be a part of the future here, come and check out what the DSRP is all about! Food, Music, and Fun will be had by all.

Stop Practicing… Start Performing®

Thanks for checking out our lesson on how to play the first riff of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple with your friends!

Be sure to have each instrument of your band watch the video for their instrument, then watch the final video to see how to put it all together!

1. GUITAR

2. BASS

3. DRUMS

4. KEYBOARDS

5. PUT IT ALL TOGETHER!

Teenage guitarists and a drummer from the Detroit School of Rock and Pop music gave the music at Royal Oak’s holiday parade a hip flavor, as they strummed and sang “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” this morning. (Bill Laitner)

Crowds greet Santa at Royal Oak Parade

BY BILL LAITNER

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Billed as Santa’s first stop in metro Detroit, downtown Royal Oak’s Holiday Magic Parade kicked off the region’s Thanksgiving-through-Christmas period this morning with a blend of yule tradition and electric guitars.

Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 20,000 that crowded sidewalks from 10 a.m. until noon on both sides of South Washington from Lincoln north to nearly 11 Mile, watching a parade whose date over the years has crept earlier and earlier on the calendar until this year it predates Detroit’s big parade on Thanksgiving Day by five days.

There were plenty of traditional sights and sounds, like the award-winning Ferndale High School Marching band and the Shriners making rapid circles in their mini-roadsters. But right behind the Ferndale marchers, with their shining brass instruments and pressed uniforms, was a float of vastly different notes — those of teen musicians from the Detroit School of Rock and Pop Music, located in a former bike shop on the same street as the parade.

There were seven electric guitarists strumming, one drummer pounding, and one generator electrifying on the platform draped with signs identifying the school whose aspiring rockers also have performed at Royal Oak’s Memphis Smoke nightclub and at the Detroit Zoo.

“We played ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ and the other tune was ‘Greatest Time of Year.’ It’s a Christmas song that was done by Aly and AJ, a Disney act of a few years back,” said Gittinger, who pulled a wagon-load of the school’s brochures behind their float, hoping to interest some newcomers in his school.

As the rockers rolled past, others waited their turn — including two performers who leaned against telephone poles, seated a full 12 feet over the pavement on unicycles. Doug Oliver, 16, of Redford Township and Bryan Alexander, 19, of Dearborn Heights towered over mounted police of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, who as they rode by said, “How’d you get up there? That’s a lot harder than climbing on a horse.”

Contact BILL LAITNER: 586-826-7264 or blaitner@freepress.com