Beautiful Life, A Father's Album After Sandy Hook

Who can forget hearing about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary December 14th, 2012? Devastating is not a strong enough word to describe it. Out of that terror Jimmy Greene, father of six-year old victim Ana Márquez-Greene, has used music to heal and to help others heal. The outcome is an album, Beautiful Life, that is deeply-inspired and heart-rending. The first song on the album, "Come Thou Almighty King," was inspired by a version Ana often sang as her brother practiced the piece out of his piano book. That image alone depicts that nature of both music and the power of the voices of children, and Greene clearly does not shy away from that beauty and evocation. Listen to that song as well as others from the album at the Jimmy Greene's page on Mack Avenue Records website. For months, Greene said he did not play or even think about music. In an NPR interview with Craig Lemoult, Greene offers how eventually he was able to pick up his instrument and pick up the pieces; music came to be akin to "talking it out with someone." "Sitting in my basement where I have my work area by myself, and writing the songs and writing the lyrics, there was a lot of tears. There was a lot of anguish." The album also features a children's choir made up of Ana's former classmates; children she loved and who loved her. Greene says, "It was tough to be in the room while they were singing these lyrics I had written," in the interview with Lemoult, and he describes how some of the children simply could not sing but for choking back their tears. Proceeds from the album go to the Arts Collective music program for at-risk youth in Hartford, Conn. which will support school curricula for violence prevention, trauma recovery, and the teaching of empathy. The album ends with a simple, mournful echoing of, "Remember me, remember me, remember me..."