Bella (single)
Neil Tatar
2024 / Tatar Associates
5 minutes
Review by Kathy Parsons
"Bella" is a new acoustic guitar single by Neil Tatar, and what a story it tells! Recorded at Will Ackerman's Imaginary Road Studio, the album also features Premik Russell Tubbs on soprano sax, Tom Eaton on bass, and Jeff Haynes on percussion. The inspiration for the piece came from reading a book called We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter, which tells the story of a family's World War II experiences while trying to survive in Nazi Germany. Neil was baffled by the similarities in this book to the stories he had heard from his own family as a child. "Bella" is one of the main characters in the book, and it turns out that she was Neil's cousin. The piece was composed in her honor.
Quoted in the promo materials, this statistic is particularly disturbing:
"By the end of the Holocaust, 90 percent of Poland’s three million Jews were annihilated; of the more than thirty thousand Jews who lived in Radom, fewer than three hundred survived.
"We can never take our freedom for granted."
The piece of music called "Bella" is smooth and deeply heartfelt, and serves as a very personal tribute to a brave and resilient cousin as well as a reminder that we can never let anything like the Holocaust happen again.
"Bella" is available from Amazon and Apple Music/iTunes as well as streaming platforms including Pandora and Spotify. Don't miss this one!
October 19, 2024