After hours, and years, of planning, practice, concerts, and recording, the Arapahoe Community College Music Department is releasing their first ever CD, named “Ambient Domains.”

Dr. Charles Haarhues is ACC’s program chair for the music department, he produced and oversaw the making of the CD.

“I felt that because we had done so many recordings over the years and had so many good performances, that it would be great to make our own CD,” said Haarhues. 

The CD has already been released and includes 14 tracks with songs by both students and staff.  The album is also available for streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other streaming services. 

James Bonieski is one of ACC’s students who performed on 6 of the 14 tracks of the CD. He played guitar on “I Will Survive” and “The Scientist”, did vocals on “Come Together” and “Got the Time” and did both guitar and vocals on “Miami 2017” and “Kissing My Love”. 

“Definitely excited to be a part of ACC’s first kind of CD. And first, like, output of the music program into the world. It’s definitely a lot of fun,” said Bonieski.

For those wondering about the meaning behind the CD’s name, Haarhues explained, “I felt that ambient, right, that it’s dealing with sound and domains would be different. I mean, usually think of a domain as a physical location. But here we have ambient domain. So different songs have different styles, each in a different domain.”

The music department will be having a release party for the CD on May 3 from 4-5 p.m at the M2900 Waring Theatre at the Littleton Campus. They will be showing a documentary on the making of the CD, and there will be CDs for sale, as well as a limited supply of T-shirts, for a suggested donation to the ACC Foundation. 

“The whole idea behind this project is to make this based on sort of real world music business practices. So if you have a release, you have to have merchandise, too. So we actually have had T-shirts printed up of the CD cover,” said Haarhues.

According to the ACC website, the music on the CD was recorded between 2019 and 2022 in the ACC Waring Theatre recording studio and the Music Audio Technology classroom. Performers on the CD include ACC music students, instructors, a couple of alumni, and other special guests.

“I wanted to feature both our students and our instructors. So it’s really a combination. Some performances are student only, some performances are instructor only, some performances are instructors and students playing together,” said Haarhues.

Bonieski enjoyed collaborating with Haarhues on the songs. 

“It was great to actually play with him, like sit down and play outside of what we would do in lessons,” said Bonieski. “You know, pop rock is something where, you know, everyone’s a student, so everyone’s learning. So, we spend the whole semester kind of getting everything tight and ready for the concert or the recording at the end of it. And then with the instructors, you know, they’ve been playing for a long, long time…So it’s very much just showing up and you’re kind of expected to just know the parts, and we have three hours to get it done. So, definitely a much different experience and more intense experience. It was a lot of fun,” said Bonieski.

Haarhues’ goal with the CD was to display ACC’s music student’s talents to a bigger audience. 

Haarhues said, “I want to showcase the people that we have here. I think that’s the main thing that I got out of the experience is to showcase what we can do in the ACC music program.”

“I think that it’s a great program that [sic] ACC and music programs in general, especially in public schools and that aren’t really paid attention to or focused on or thought of as important by a lot of people. So I think having something that demonstrates the talent that’s at ACC, and also gets to highlight the program in itself is super important and good for the music program going forward,” reflected Bonieski. “I don’t think a lot of people necessarily consider going to school for music. School is kind of seen as something to get a degree so you can find a good paying job, but it can also very much be about following your passion. And I think that, hopefully, they’ll continue to do more fun stuff like this and attract more people to the program.”