A Child is Born is a collection of Mother Goose poems set to jazz music by Professor Rik Pfenninger. The compact disc is dedicated to seven-year-old Alex Scott who has been battling neuroblastoma, a particularly aggressive form of cancer, since she was born.
Pfenninger reports that last summer Alex started a lemonade stand to help raise money to fight cancer. He saw Alex and her lemonade stand on television and was inspired to write the music for the CD. One half of the profits from A Child is Born will be donated to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, in care of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“We are thrilled—Alex and I have tears in our eyes,” Alex’s mother, Liz Scott, told Pfenninger. “What an honor that you would dedicate your CD to Alex.”
The CD features Pfenninger on saxophones, PSU student Kathleen Kolman on vocals and adjunct faculty Don Williams on bass, Tim Gilmore on drums and percussion, Paul Bourgelais on guitar and Scott Grant on trombone.
A Child is Born is published by SandStorm Records and can be purchased online at www.rpjazz.com or www.cdbaby.com, from the Plymouth State University Bookstore and at the Plymouth Book Exchange in the town of Plymouth, N.H. For more information on Alex Scott and her lemonade stand (now a donor-advised fund through the Philadelphia Foundation), visit www.philafound.org/Alexslemonade.html.
—EC
