Richwood, West Virginia, USA

Fellow Classical Music Enthusiasts

Ezra Donner is a RICHLY-PAID university music instructor.  Okay, You know that isn’t true, at least the richly-paid part.  But Ezra is most-assuredly a fine composer, whose friendship I treasure.  He is the only person on our planet, who sent greetings to me, in a private YouTube posting, with some great piano music he played in live performance.  “Flattered” doesn’t come close to describing the feeling.

I wish that I could boast that I too am a composer; and that Mr. Donner and I travel the same, large-city classical music circuits–but alas, that is not true.  While I have written some simple piano and church pipe-organ pieces, they do not soar to the level “composition.”

For the last two years or so, I have plunged into the musical social-media world as an after-hours hobby.  I started by adding a few, admittedly-amateurish comments on YouTube, as the musicians and vocalists I followed then (and still follow) posted new videos.  One thing led to another, and soon I had more than 1,000 followers on Twitter, and many of my Facebook friends know I post a good deal of music, so another 1,000 followers became part of my musical family.  With a YouTube channel addition, I have quickly added nearly 800 people from around the world to my Google+ account.  I will, in later blogs, describe some of the new artists I have found and whose work I admire and promote.

Back to Mr. Donner.  It would be difficult to list all the music that he has freely shared with me.  A full opera, “Antigone” and several individual compositions (some from his album “Steel Sky”); and most recently “Mountain Suite.”  Mr. Donner and I share a love of the mountains, and his music of that title is so rich, so full of musical emotion, that even people who do not ordinarily listen to classical music (or those who knowingly avoid it) still would likely sense the powerful beauty of the composition.  I gladly wrote customer reviews for the work, on iTunes and Amazon.

I would encourage my classical-music-lover friends to sample Ezra Donner’s work, “Mountain Suite” at link:

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/mountain-suite-ep/id869026048

I additionally direct readers to Ezra’s YouTube channel and Facebook account.

Although I am a musician and songwriter for more than 50 years; and a chorister for 60 years, I stand in awe of the skills routinely displayed by Ezra Donner.  Check out his work.

–R. Johnson