The spacious Beverly Hills room was nearly claustrophobic with rival singers/songwriters, a reality TV camera crew, a childhood idol, and a neglected grand piano the colour of French vanilla ice cream.
“I said, ‘I’ll play,’” Jacob William recalls.
He sat at the piano. William was about to sing “You Make My Home,” an original composition of love and regret. Listening was Walter Afanasieff, the songwriter and producer best known for co-writing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
But for William, Afanasieff was best known for producing the CD his mother kept in the car: Celine Dion’s eponymous album.
“Being a geek,” William was compelled to pore over the liner notes, learning about the studio hands who made Celine Dion sound “as awesome as she could.”
He followed Afanasieff’s career for years until, “on a whim,” he discovered the songwriter’s role with Isina Academy, an international music mentoring company prepping a reality show designed to be “The Voice meets Big Brother.”
“I just applied to it, thinking it’s probably a scam,” William laughs.
He was flown to Los Angeles and put up at a Beverly Hills mansion, but the real appeal was Afanasieff.
“I got to meet my idol.”
They met in that Beverly Hills room with the grand piano. And after the other performers hit play on their recordings, William played the piano.
“I can remember every little second of every little note,” he breathes.
His idol turned to him and called the emotion he put into his music: “breathtaking.”
“Next thing you know I’m sitting outside having a private word with Walter,” William crows, not seeming to believe it. “And when I say private word, I mean there were also three cameras watching.”
As the grand finale, William and his fellow musicians played in front of 1,500 music fans and industry professionals at the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles.
“It was a dream, the whole six weeks.”
But after the last volley of applause dropped to a hum, life got quiet, Williams says.
While he’s hopeful the show will air on Netflix before the end of the year, the producers have been “quite quiet,” since the Belasco concert.
After meeting some of the producers and songsmiths who shaped the music of Carey and Dion, William was back in Deep Cove, applying for a job at Cactus Club.
“Sometimes I think about it and I get quite heartbroken,” he says.
He’s a bit torn over whether what happened in Los Angeles was “the start of something,” or “a really incredible one-off.”
While wondering about the future of his career, he also wondered about focusing too much on himself, and whether that might almost breed “a kind of narcissism.”
He talked with Liam Sturgess, the founder of West Vancouver independent music label Four Destinations. The two decided to do something “that really wasn’t about us,” William says.
They came up with the idea of a choir open to all.
With 15 singers ranging from five years old to 82, the choir started their first rehearsal as a “quiet murmur.” After an hour, William provided the singers with cake and turned them loose on one of an original ballads and William’s more up-tempo “Superhero Heart,” a tune about how some men grow up like their fathers, strong and proud, “and some grow up like me,” William says.
Born deaf in his right ear, William aspired to be a singer and pianist, “And I could barely talk,” he laughs. “I was a little bit of a precocious, delusional child, really.”
The song also references his childhood feeling that, despite being Clark Kent-ish, “I thought someday I could be Superman if I work really hard.”
The choir is set for a second rehearsal this Sunday, and anyone interested in celebrating music is welcome, William says.
The plan is to record a single and donate profits from iTunes sales to the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. The choir may also perform a Lonsdale Quay concert in May, William says.
By the end of the first rehearsal the 15 disparate singers seemed to get comfortable singing with each other, William says.
“It was quite victorious,” he says, noting the profound change over two hours. “Imagine what we could do in six weeks.”
