At the Center

At the Center is an album by Meat Beat Manifesto, released in 2005 as part of the "Blue Series" of Thirsty Ear records fusing jazz with electronica.

Jazz elements had been featured in occasional Meat Beat Manifesto songs over the years. But At The Center is the first outright jazz album in the Meat Beat Manifesto catalog, with bandleader Jack Dangers's collaborators being a trio of prominent jazz players. The album is mostly funky and fusion oriented, with a few abstract or free-jazz leaning songs. It's entirely instrumental apart from scattered vocal samples, notably on two songs featuring vintage recordings of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading newspaper classified advertisements (the album's notes misidentify Ferlinghetti as Kenneth Rexroth).

At the Center earned mostly positive reviews from critics of both jazz and electronic music, but Dangers opted to not continue his exploration of jazz on subsequent Meat Beat Manifesto albums.

Credits

Musicians

The Center

The Centre (Chinese: 中環中心) is the fifth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong, after International Commerce Centre, Two International Finance Centre (88 storeys), Central Plaza and Bank of China Tower. With a height of 346 m (1,135 ft), it comprises 73 stories. The Centre is one of the few skyscrapers in Hong Kong that is entirely steel-structured with no reinforced concrete core. It is located on Queen's Road Central in the Central and Western District, roughly halfway between the MTR Island Line's Sheung Wan and Central stations.

Background

The Centre is notable for its arrangement of hundreds of neon lights arranged as bars in increasing frequency towards the top of the building, which slowly scroll through the colours of the spectrum at night. During the Christmas season, the building's neon arrangement follows a festive motif and resembles a Christmas tree.

The direct translation of the Chinese name of the building is "Central Centre" or the "centre of Central", even though the building is in fact near the boundary of Central and Sheung Wan (Wing Kut Street).

Darlene Zschech

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Darlene Joyce Zschech (/dɑːrˈliːn ˈtʃɛk/; born Steinhardt on 8 September 1965) is an Australian Pentecostal Christian worship leader and singer-songwriter who primarily writes praise and worship songs. Described as a "pioneer of the modern worship movement", she is the former worship pastor of Hillsong Church and is currently a member of Compassionart, a charity founded by Martin Smith.

Life and career

Zschech started on television at the age of 10, as part of an Australian children's show, Happy Go Round. When she was 13, her parents divorced and the emotional stress of being on television and her parents' divorce resulted in her having bulimia for about four years.

In 1980, when Zschech was 15, her father rededicated his life to Christ and began taking her to church, where she also became a committed Christian and met her future husband, Mark Zschech. When they married, her husband suggested that they move from Brisbane to Sydney, which was confirmed at a small church they were visiting one Sunday when the guest speaker said in the middle of his sermon, "This doesn't happen to me very often, but whatever it is you two prayed last night, God says do it now." They began attending Hills Christian Life Centre, which would become Hillsong Church.

Israel Houghton

Israel Houghton (pronounced, hoh’-tin) (born May 19, 1971) is an American Christian music artist, worship leader and singer-songwriter. He is known for his cross-cultural style of Christian music that fuses elements from gospel, jazz, rock and reggae. Houghton is usually credited as Israel & New Breed. Houghton is a worship leader at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. "All Around" is on the Digital Praise PC game Guitar Praise.

Career

Production

Houghton produced an album by Michael Gungor called "Bigger Than My Imagination". This album was described as "one of the year's best worship albums" in a 2003 Christianity Today review.

Other performances

Houghton has served as worship leader for the Promise Keepers and Champions for Christ events, as well as the Hillsong Conference 2006–10, and Hillsong Conference Europe 2008–10. Israel currently serves as a worship leader (alongside Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff, Steve Crawford and Da'dra Crawford-Greathouse) at Lakewood Church in Houston, pastored by Joel Osteen.