Local releases third CD

Published 10:07 pm Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Those who are missing the music of Mannheim Steamroller now that the Christmas season is over can find a local, year-round alternative in the music of Robert Weber, he says.

Weber

Weber

His third CD, “Moments with Him,” was released earlier this year and features music inspired by Mannheim Steamroller, Weber said.

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Weber, who records under the name Laus Deo, meaning “glory to God.”

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Weber is a Suffolk resident, and many of the people featured on the album — including the handbell choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church — are as well.

“They were really great people to work with,” Weber said. “It was a lot of fun to put together.”

Weber has been playing piano since he was a child and has been the minister of music at a number of churches.

Since moving to Virginia in 2011, he and his wife have attended New Branch Community Church in Windsor, where he is on the worship team and his wife does the children’s worship and works with a dance team there.

His first album, mostly solo piano pieces, came into being because church members often expressed a wish to “take me home with them to play piano for them in their house,” Weber said.

The second album is a live worship album with 12 original songs.

Weber used a crowdfunding website to raise money for expenses for this latest album. He gathered about $1,500 to pay for a mastering engineer, duplication of the CD and licenses for a couple of songs that are neither original nor in the public domain.

“It was a wonderful show of support,” Weber said, adding it was almost exclusively from people he already knew but included a couple of small donations from people he didn’t know.

The licenses were needed because of a medley of two of his grandmother’s favorite songs — “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” and “Let There Be Peace On Earth.”

“They were both requests from my grandmother,” Weber said. “I was asking her about some of her favorite music. She mentioned both of those, and they work quite nicely together.”

Weber said he’s working on a new project, a Christmas album this time, that he hopes to have out by Christmas 2015.

“It will be in a similar vein to the most recent project and will also be using lots of local artists,” he said.

Weber’s music website, where his CDs can be purchased, is www.lausdeomusic.com. He blogs about producing music at www.notesfromtheshore.com.