The first time Amy Grant performed with a full orchestra she was sure her
pulse would drown out her voice.
As the Grammy-winning pop and Christian singer/songwriter stood before the
microphone, waiting for her cue to come in with the orchestra in a live studio
recording session in London, "I felt like you could hear my heart pounding in
the room with all these highbrow, exquisite players," she said in a telephone
interview.
"I just thought, 'Surely, you're picking up my heartbeat on this
microphone.'"
But it was her voice that rang through in the 1992 album, "Home for
Christmas," backed by a rich blend of strings, winds, brass and percussion. The
experience got Grant over her initial intimidation and helped her embrace the
symphony orchestra both in the studio and onstage in live performances like the
show she'll bring to Evansville tonight.
Nobody need feel intimidated by anything she and the orchestra will play in
The Centre, said Grant. "I'm not a fancy person. The way I think about these
evenings, it's like a barefoot symphony performance." In a program featuring
favorites from her nearly three decades as one of America's leading contemporary
Christian and pop crossover stars, Grant will sing with the Evansville
Philharmonic and her own ensemble. The music will range from pop hits including
"Baby, Baby" and "It Takes a Little Time" to contemporary Christian favorites
such as "El Shaddai" and "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee."
Her concert also will include covers of other popular songs "for people who
have no idea what I sing, but just want to come to a symphony show," she
said.
It would be hard to find anybody who hasn't heard Grant. Anyone who has
listened even casually to pop or adult contemporary radio in the last decade has
to have heard "Baby, Baby" and "I Will Remember You." Contemporary Christian
listeners know "El Shaddai," "Find a Way," "Saved by Love" and lots of other
songs.
And she's reached millions with Christmas albums, television specials and
touring shows such as the one she played with her husband, Vince Gill, in
Evansville three years ago.
At 45, Grant has sold more than 45 million albums and won six Grammy Awards
and 21 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards. She has the distinction of being
the first Christian music artist to have a No.1 pop song ("Baby, Baby") and to
get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Tuesday, she'll draw from her entire songbook to perform with piano, with her
band and with the orchestra in a concert designed to showcase all of its
elements, but to show how "sometimes the sum is greater than its parts," she
said.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2006/nov/14/orchestras-no-longer-unnerve-grammy-winner/
