Music Video
Charitable Organization featured in the 1999 LA Music Awards
Lullaby for Columbine is the name of a benefit CD released in 1999 shortly after the Columbine High School massacre where fourteen students and a teacher died in one of the deadliest school shootings in United States history. The name is synonymous with both the title cut featured on the album and the non-profit organization that produced it, whose full name is “The Lullaby for Columbine Project.”
The full title being, Lullaby for Columbine, Love Endures, the CD was produced by musical composer/producer Michael Tamburello through the organization, based in Littleton, Colorado that he cofounded with his daughter Nina Tamburello. The CD features several artists of notoriety including Rachael Lampa, Taylor Mesplé, and Adrian Belew, among others. Music from the CD has been aired worldwide and has been featured on NBC’s Today show with Katie Couric.
The project was launched a day after the tragedy by Tamburello and his daughter Nina—then about to begin high school. Together they wanted to dedicate a song he had written for her years earlier and produce a single of it with a name change from its original title, “Nina’s Lullaby”, to help raise funds to benefit the victims of the Columbine tragedy. Within days, other music artists learned of the endeavor and news of the project spread that attracted artists nationally.
By midsummer of 1999, the project mushroomed into a full CD consisting of 17 songs written and recorded by both local and national artists including Adrian Belew – (King Crimson, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads), and Christian artists Rick Altizer, Danny Oertli, and Rachael Lampa, whose singing career launched shortly thereafter. The CD also features the famed song closely associated with the tragedy, “Friend of Mine, Columbine”, by Columbine students Jonathan and Stephen Cohen. Produced by Jason Hickman, the song received much national airplay and alone raised nearly a half-million dollars for the Columbine victims. Christian songwriter and artist, Brad Richardson wrote “A Colorado Columbine”, also featured on the CD. The song was inspired by a blanket of snow that fell on the morning after the Columbine shooting and evokes a spirit of cleansing and hope in the aftermath of America’s deadliest school shootings.
Just as the Project’s production team was ending its talent acquisition phase, a final song titled, “We Will Always Remember” that had been independently produced by Taylor Mesplé, was added, which featured Christian artist Rachael Lampa, then 14 years old and undiscovered. Taylor Mesplé also sang with Lampa along with Sydney Hostetler and the late Winston Ford (Earth, Wind & Fire, The Drifters).
Within weeks of its inception, the Project garnered more than a quarter of a million dollars of support through in-kind donations from large corporations such as Sony Disc Manufacturing, Musicland and the National Digital Television Center to facilitate nearly all production, manufacturing and distribution phases of the record project. Additional firms contributed production and post-production services, and others donated professional services to meet the Project’s legal and corporate needs.