Chris Mortimer | Musician, Songwriter, Pianist

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News 2020

Hello again and welcome to the chrismortimer.com website for 2020.

As I move towards the future, the more it seems I drag up the past! This isn’t ever intended but the 2000s were a productive and busy time for me being a player, educator and entrepreneur. 2002 yielded 3 original CDs and there are 9 all up.

I have heard many speeches over the last few years with many an inspirational quote included, so I wanted to include my own which is: “To innovate is to truly create”. I have been reminded of this quote that stems from my university days at Newcastle Conservatorium by friends, who consider it to be my mantra.

All my compositions have been creations based on mood and context. Simplicity is an ingredient that is like food. If the basic ingredients are of quality, then the meal stacks up and works. As a favorite foodie of mine Rick Stein once said with reference to music, sometimes there can be “too many notes”. How true.

The only new work for 2019 is “Life”, a very minimal instrumental which will appear soon on the demo page.

On the listening pages which are the heart and soul of this website, there are album tracks for all to hear and hopefully appreciate, plus 9 demos that are rough and ready on a separate page.

Some of the album tracks go way back to the Peter and Dennis Gerolymatos days of home production and VHS mastering, with sounds drawn out of a Roland U20 module and a $50 mic! The tracks from Roll Over Now! are Soft Star and The Rain Is Falling Down, both simple and two of my most significant songs. Soft Star forms a songwriting tutorial produced by Martin Mueller that became a DoE educational tool accessed via TaLE. The Rain is a large power balled, that typifies my style of writing, influenced strongly by The Eurythmics, that became a Hot Not Bothered signature tune.

Recently, I fulfilled an ambition of mine, singing a song to a group of students I work with in education, and after hundreds of gigs at conventions centers, clubs, hotels, bars, churches, function centers, halls, libraries, homes, courtyards, streets, railway stations, on the back of trucks, in studios, on sidewalks, art galleries and the list goes on……singing to my students was amongst the most memorable things I have done. Another great gig I planned extensively for was with Mollie King for the opening of an art exhibition at a small art gallery, unpaid, but it really enabled the focus to be purely on the music, with no other distractions and I won’t forget it.

On the listening page, I have also included a demo track Birds/ All I Ever Wanted, which comes off Piano Sessions 2, an exclusively piano/ vocal album mastered by Danny Golightly at Red Ferrett. The record is a series of tracks that are both side A and B, many of which date back to my childhood, the oldest being Sacred River, I penned at 12 years of age.

Updating the chrismortimer.com website is always energizing and fun and my long-term goal is to return to the world of live performance. This to me is essential and like and athlete, makes me stay on form keeping my playing and singing up to scratch. There is nothing like an audience sitting in front of you and the feeling of pressure to deliver, that brings out this level of performance and professionalism.

The demo page from 2018 is unchanged at this point, as there are some pretty, new tracks included including War, In a Cold Place, Heartland, Happiness and Shepherds. I will include some older works on this page, and more tracks from the Piano Sessions records (1 & 2) that are unexplored, captured for what they are when played and just sung and not produced.

Have a great 2020, happy musical listening and I hope you enjoy the content of the site and remember all the lyrics are tales and stories which mustn’t be over analyzed and read into too much.

Love and best wishes,

Chris Mortimer