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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2010 /  Local musicians team up for CD

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

Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic Susie Taylor, director of music at Our Lady of Hope Parish, St. Clair Shores, sings to an arrangement by Louis Canter of a poem written by Diana Macalintal of San Jose in response to the earthquake in Haiti.

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.

Choir festival • Sunday, March 14, 4 p.m. • St. Isidore Church, 18201 23 Mile Road, Macomb • Free-will offering for Haiti earthquake victims • Contact Amy Righi at stiliturgy@sbcglobal.net or (586) 286-1700 ext. 210. • To purchase the CD, or donate online to Catholic Relief Services, visit www.AODonline.org/haiti

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.