Category: Articles

Life as a Mixing Board: The Diversification of Roles as a Composer

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Catherine Joy - Articles, Toolbox

I have come to think of my life as a mixing board. There are a number of different channels. Mine are labeled composing, score producing, entrepreneur, teaching, community work. But the levels on those different channels are constantly changing as I move through my life. Composing is currently at 11 but now, especially after completing my term as president of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, I have brought the community work down to around 2 for a season. Teaching is at 4, I enjoy my role as Adjunct Faculty at NYU but I keep it to a limited scope. For a long while I wasn’t teaching at all, my Masters degree in Music Education seemingly a waste of time and money. But the opportunity to teach film scoring at NYU came into my life at the perfect time and now it brings me a lot of joy.

This mixing board approach gives me room for flexibility and movement as I continue to explore who I am as a creative entity. The work and knowledge I glean from one line feeds into the other avenues I pursue. It allows me room to accept the ebb and flow, and continue to grow and change as I hope I will, throughout my life. But this approach didn’t come naturally. Like so many others, for a long time I was pursuing “the thing” – the one job that would define me. That search often led me astray.

It took me a long time to figure out I wanted to become a composer. I spent decades in different aspects of the music world, and the working world in general. I remember finally finding my place in the arena of film composing and feeling an overwhelming sense of relief. I was home. That feeling continues to sustain me, especially on those tough long days.

Once I decided to pursue the career of a film composer I looked into copying and orchestration. I had been a musician my whole life but I was new to the world of film composition and I wanted to get paid to learn. I wanted to be in the room where it happened; to observe and learn the language and the movements of every aspect of how a score was created. Every step of it.

As I took on these “support work” gigs I heard a fascinating and concerning mantra. “Be careful doing orchestration work,” I was told. “If you do that you may be pigeon-holed as an orchestrator and then you’ll never get composing gigs.” It struck me as a weird caution and I have always struggled to take on advice that is based on fear. Also, many of the people recommending that I stay away from orchestrating had orchestration credits in their very own IMDBs. Some had big ones! I became keenly aware of this pressure to become a composer – JUST a composer. If you were simply a composer, you were legit. If you were a composer plus something else? Less legit. Not the real deal.

This seemed problematic to me on a number of fronts.

1 Financial – what pays the bills?

Let’s get the money talk out of the way – the least fun but perhaps the most critical issue. The one reliable piece of information I have heard from a whole range of composers is that it takes about 5-10 years to begin to make a living from being a composer. To begin to make a living. That was certainly the case for me. If that is the reality, then how is one supposed to pay the bills in the meantime? And why is it so bad to spend that 5-10 years, not only composing, but being paid to learn all the different aspects of the craft, and in so doing hopefully becoming a better composer? Yes, you will receive credits that aren’t composer credits, but honestly, you don’t have to tell people about them if you don’t want to! You can remove those credits from your IMDB. You can decide not to put them on social media. And then, while making money in the very industry you want to be working, you can also hopefully learn a lot and become a better composer. Win, Win!

I think everyone has heard of the term “diversification of income streams.” It’s a simple concept: make money from many different areas, then if one dries up you still have other avenues delivering income. This is something that has definitely benefited me in general, especially during the pandemic, and even now, during the strike. But it hasn’t just benefited me financially.

2 Personal – what feeds the soul?

What if you like doing more than one thing? The concept of being solely a composer is perfectly acceptable and I know a number of people who truly thrive from that singular focus. But I also know a number of people like me. We thrive from wearing different hats. It fulfills us. We are excited to compose and then excited to switch gears to do something else: put out an artist album, play gigs, orchestrate, music edit, run a business, teach, manage a non-profit, write articles. Not everyone is the same. If you are someone who benefits from a diverse working environment then it is important to allow those different aspects of yourself to be fed.

But it isn’t just about the financial and soulful benefits.

3. Time – how you spend it

When you are a person like myself, you can find that wearing multiple hats every day can help you utilize your time more efficiently. When you do one thing for too long you can experience fatigue, quickly followed by diminishing returns.

To make this point, I am going to quote from three fantastic authors who regularly tackle the ins and outs of the creative existence in their writing: Steven Pressfield, Orna Ross and Cal Newport. I encourage you to deep-dive into their work but let me just dip in briefly to bring my point home.

Steven Pressfield, in The War Of Art, talks about how he only writes for four hours a day. In a recent interview he said, “I used to be able to put in four hours, but these days two and a half is my outer limit.” I have certainly experienced this. While four hours is not my limit, I do find that after very focused composing for a string of hours, I experience diminishing returns. It is best for the project if I stop and pick up again after some rest.

But this doesn’t mean I am necessarily out of steam for the day. I have experienced how moving from composing to teaching, or writing an article like this, or producing a recording session, is perfectly doable. The change of focus and pace feels good, re-energizes me. I do a lot in one day, and because I am not in just one gear but cycling through many, pulling on different skill sets, I don’t feel overwhelmingly fatigued. Instead of doing one thing and having to call it a day once I am fully fatigued, I can financially benefit from more hours of my day by doing different things.

Orna Ross writes about the business of creativity in an excellent examination of the challenge of diversification in her blog post The Indie Author’s Three Hats: Maker, Manager and Marketeer. This post explores these different “jobs” of an author. Even if your goal is just doing one thing – writing books in the case of Ross – you still either need to take on these multiple roles (or pay someone to do it for you) in order to be successful, especially as you are initially building your reputation in your industry. Those roles include creating, marketing and business management. My sister R.J. Amos is a fantastic author, and one way she has diversified her income is not only writing books but also editing the work of others. We have a similar approach: utilizing the skills we developed in creating our own work by helping others achieve their creative goals.

I believe this is not only a smart business model but also a generous way to approach your work. By giving to others, you receive so much. “Supporting” other composers as their score producer or orchestrator has incredibly enriched my life through both the building of relationships and the experience of shared creative endeavors.

Cal Newport is an astoundingly prolific human. He is a tenured professor of computer science at Georgetown University, and a prolific author in both the commercial (New York Times Best-seller) and the research spaces. And yet he finishes work at 6 pm every day, puts the computer away and spends the rest of the day with his family. He says, “A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.” He explores how to do this in his book Deep Work. A great read, I highly recommend.

You can make the most out of the day when you are doing more than one thing. You can pull on different aspects of your skill set that may lie dormant when you are focused on one thing but become fully utilized when your focus changes.

While we are talking authors I also want to highlight the work of Gretchen Rubin. I have been reading her books and blog posts for years. She has a very interesting concept – The Four Tendencies. It is an examination of what makes you who you are and how that impacts the way you approach your work. One reason the diversification approach has been so successful for me is that it fits me as a person. To understand how best to build our working life, we have to understand who we are and how we work best.

4. Network – what brings in the work?

As a freelance creative, there is a network you develop throughout your career that brings work your way. When you are working in one area, like just composing for film, then you are building connections in that area. When you work in a number of different areas, your network is being built in all different directions. I visualize it as a web that broadens as I meet more people. More people in your network, means more real relationships, means more work. That is how it has happened for me.

I made a deliberate choice to take on multiple roles because it occurred to me that these different things I wanted to do had different audiences. I could promote myself as a composer to the film community, while promoting myself as a score producer / orchestrator / copyist to the composer community. To the education community I was a teacher with a masters degree in music education. I was very careful with my branding. Being known as a composer was most important to me, so my website reflected that work and only that work, except for perhaps a line or two in my bio. My orchestration work, which led to me founding Joy Music House (JMH), had no website for the longest time. I simply used word of mouth within that particular network. When we decided to brand as JMH, the choice of business name used part of my own name but also allowed the brand of “Catherine Joy” to continue to be composer focused.

We have so many different avenues to advertise and brand ourselves these days, with easy access to website creation and social media accounts. It gives us a lot of flexibility as to how we choose to represent ourselves to different audiences. When you use these tools mindfully, you can precisely take control of how you are branding all the different aspects of who you are and what you do.

While I have found diversification being discouraged in the composer community, in the film community at large it seems to be widely accepted. They even have a term for it: “multi-hyphenates.” I have been to so many film events where people introduce themselves as a multi-hyphenate: a writer-director, director-editor, writer-actor, dp(director of photography)-editor. This seems to be completely accepted. The challenges of the financial aspect appear to be fully acknowledged and there also seems a real awareness that wearing multiple hats can be beneficial to the production. There is often an overlap in skill sets, but even when that’s not the case the different point of view from a different role is also welcomed as a valuable change in perspective.

As I was writing this article, I decided it was probably wise to do some research. What does science say about doing multiple jobs? This has really worked out for me, but am I an outlier?

There were a lot of articles on the benefits of the gig economy (although some of them felt a little suspicious, making you wonder if it was capitalist propaganda) and an older memoir called The Elephant and the Flea from 2001 where the author predicted that working from home would become much more prolific. Then I came across this article in The Atlantic: “Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life.” Thompson talks about the research of Economist Dashun Wang, “In a deep analysis of the careers of scientists and artists, he found that their ‘hot streaks’ tended to be periods of focused and narrow work following a spell of broader experimentation. This is sometimes called the ‘explore-exploit’ sequence. The idea is that many successful people are like good oil scouts: They spend a lot of time searching for their space, and then they drill deep when they find the right niche.” I love this idea of oscillating between trying different things and then zeroing in once you find something that truly resonates with you. This is a fascinating article covering a lot of different aspects of the working existence; I encourage you to check it out.

I don’t have a lot of time left to delve into the intricacies of Thompson’s article but it did also talk about how younger people these days are much more willing to quit and move on. This idea of doing the one thing, forever, is going out of style, often to the benefit of the individual.

When we are young, many of us are often very sure of what we want to do with our lives. But that can change as we get older. We can feel like somehow we are betraying ourselves when we acknowledge that what once set us on fire now leaves us feeling stale. We feel like all that time, all that work, will be for nothing if we walk away. But that is not the case. As we move through our creative career lives, everything we have learnt feeds into the latest opportunity. In my experience, no skill I have developed has gone to waste and often it is utilized in a way I could have never imagined. But staying in a working environment that bleeds you dry is no way to exist.

I want to leave you with one final idea: rest. Rest is so important. Giving yourself time to think, or not think at all, to let your mind wander, to even get bored. We have been talking a lot about work, and all the different kinds of work we can do, but a life that is only work is not a life well lived. As many reels and memes have been constantly reminding us: you cannot pour from an empty cup. Cheesy and oversold but still completely true.

I do have a full life in which I wear many hats, but I try to leave time for long walks, for TV, for cooking (usually while also watching TV or listening to funk music), for drinks with friends, time with family, and time to travel and see new things. I am not sure a balanced life is possible, and I cannot say I have one. But recently I saw an Instagram reel (I love watching these reels) that encouraged us to pursue contrast instead of pursuing balance. This made a lot of sense to me, and it has been what I have been talking about this whole article: switching gears. Make sure you aren’t just shifting between different channels of work, but also between work and rest: changing from extreme focus to no focus; mind wandering, body relaxed. From in depth meetings – maybe an intense spotting session with your filmmaker – to you, on a long walk in nature, speaking to no one. From a four-hour composing sprint to zoning out in front of your favorite show while eating delicious food. From an intense recording session to an active workout session.

Find the path that fits you, who you are right now. It is important to listen to the advice of our peers, and to read about the journeys of those who have come before, but what is often so remarkable about the journeys that make headlines is that they were new, different and shocking. They were predicted to fail and a surprise in success. What often makes us successful is the very thing that makes us unique. I hope you will surprise yourself, explore beyond what you thought was possible, and live a life full of creative endeavors which bring you joy.

The mixing board approach gives me room for flexibility and movement as I continue to explore who I am as a creative entity. But this approach didn’t come naturally. Like so many others, for a long time I was pursuing “the thing” – the one job that would define me. That search often led me astray.

Catherine Joy

As I took on “support work” gigs I heard a fascinating and concerning mantra. “Be careful doing orchestration work,” I was told. “If you do that you may be pigeon-holed as an orchestrator and then you’ll never get composing gigs.” It struck me as a weird caution and I have always struggled to take on advice that is based on fear.

Catherine Joy

If you were simply a composer, you were legit. If you were a composer plus something else? Less legit. Not the real deal. This seemed problematic to me on a number of fronts.

Catherine Joy

The one reliable piece of information I have heard from a whole range of composers is that it takes about 5-10 years to begin to make a living from being a composer. To begin to make a living.

Catherine Joy

If you are someone who benefits from a diverse working environment then it is important to allow those different aspects of yourself to be fed.

Catherine Joy

Wearing multiple hats every day can help you utilize your time more efficiently. When you do one thing for too long you can experience fatigue, quickly followed by diminishing returns.

Catherine Joy

By giving to others, you receive so much. “Supporting” other composers as their score producer or orchestrator has incredibly enriched my life through both the building of relationships and the experience of shared creative endeavors.

Catherine Joy

To understand how best to build our working life, we have to understand who we are and how we work best.

Catherine Joy

When you work in a number of different areas, your network is being built in all different directions. I visualize it as a web that broadens as I meet more people. More people in your network, means more real relationships, means more work.

Catherine Joy

We have so many different avenues to advertise and brand ourselves these days, with easy access to website creation and social media accounts. It gives us a lot of flexibility as to how we choose to represent ourselves to different audiences.

Catherine Joy

While I have found diversification being discouraged in the composer community, in the film community at large it seems to be widely accepted. They even have a term for it: “multi-hyphenates.”

Catherine Joy

When we are young, many of us are often very sure of what we want to do with our lives. But that can change as we get older. We can feel like somehow we are betraying ourselves when we acknowledge that what once set us on fire now leaves us feeling stale. We feel like all that time, all that work, will be for nothing if we walk away. But that is not the case.

Catherine Joy

We have been talking a lot about work, and all the different kinds of work we can do, but a life that is only work is not a life well lived.

Catherine Joy

GLFCAM — The Tale of Hillman Estates

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Matthew Evan Taylor - Articles, Commentary, NewMusicBox

Photos of Matthew Evan Taylor embedded in banner branded for the GLFCAM Guest Editor Series.

The green and white, two-story ranch house on Dandridge Road in the Hillman Estates neighborhood of Birmingham, AL was built by Herman (Steeplejack) A. Taylor Sr. and Earnestine C. Taylor in 1968. Steeplejack, a brick mason’s helper and the first black officer in the steel workers’ union for the US Steel plant in the Ensley district, and Earnestine, an art teacher in the suburban school district of Bessemer, AL, were the picture of the typical middle-class Black family – a two-income unit with a high school-aged son ascending the ladder of the American dream. The house they lived in prior to Dandridge Road was a mile away on what was then known as Avenue K. Herman Junior remembers that first house fondly, especially the Woods.

For this story to be told appropriately, it’s important to hear about the Avenue K house and then circle back to Dandridge Road. The Taylors lived on that street, also known as the Jefferson Highway, for most of Junior’s childhood. He remembers going into the Woods with the neighborhood kids to play, hunt, catch crayfish for pets at the Ditch, whatever else kids of the 50s and 60s would do. Rumor had it that the city would be building a playground there. Imagine the kids’ excitement when they started hearing trees being cleared and the land being leveled. The playground they found was filled with huge piles of concrete slabs, stacked somewhat haphazardly. What perfect structures to climb and roughhouse on. Then the flood lights were erected. Great for target practice for bats. Childhood resilience is truly remarkable.

The construction continued, the result being an industrial complex, serviced by the nearby railroad tracks, with a huge parking lot. New rumors began to circulate; the worst one being that there was an order to shoot-to-kill anyone who is shooting at the bats swarming the floodlights. Meanwhile, the very same floodlights pointed directly into the bedrooms of the families living along Avenue K.

Their homes now destroyed, and food sources eradicated, the rodents and other creatures in the Woods began invading the homes along Avenue K. Junior remembers that his father would set gopher traps for the huge rats that would forage in the house. He was especially impressed by the sound of the murderous snap of the trap and then the ominous scraping that told him that the rat was still alive and dragging the trap.

Clearly, the Taylors needed to find a new place to live. As the story goes, Steeplejack was on the train back from a meeting out of town, reading a newspaper. In the paper, there was a picture of a house. When he got home, he showed the paper to Earnestine and announced, “This is our house!” Steeplejack didn’t want to move too far away; some of the houses along Avenue K were occupied by friends of his from the steel mill, and he generally liked the area. Hillman Estates was nearby and offered many things, the biggest being a quiet street and little chance for industrial construction in their backyard. The plot he found was flat with three- to four-foot-tall fire anthills, “looked like [the termite mounds of] the Serengeti,” Junior recalls. The Taylor building project was soon followed by other new homes in Hillman Estates, and a vital bedroom community was established. The quiet streets of this neighborhood would eventually become the haven for Junior’s son. . . me.

My earliest memory is December 1982, my second birthday, which we celebrated at the Dandridge Road home. My grandmother, the art teacher, had made a banner and gotten a delicious cake. My father was there, too, on holiday from his work as a general practitioner in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, FL. The small gathering is the warm core of my happy memories of my childhood. A child of divorce, I often stayed with Grandmamá and Granddad. Eventually, I became friends with other kids in the neighborhood, who would always come by to check to see if I was in. The barbecues, summer fun, and Christmas were all quite idyllic for me. Hillman Estates was a come-home-before-the-street-lights-come-on type of neighborhood.

It was also a convenient neighborhood. There was a butcher shop and great grocery store within 3 miles of the house, and the swanky Western Hills Mall another half-mile beyond that. It featured Sears, JC Penny, and Parisians (a Macy’s-style Birmingham-based clothing store that eventually merged with Saks 5th Ave.) Grandmamá could do her holiday shopping, pick up meals for the week, and catch a movie within a 5-mile radius. Within the community, the neighbors spoke across their lawns as they watered their plants, and invited each other over to grill or watch a game. My grandparents’ house became a hub of activity, especially when my grandfather started helping his steel worker pals with their asbestos class action settlements.

As the years passed, the residents got older and the kids went off to college or elsewhere. I still loved going there, it was where I felt safest, but troubling things started happening. By the time I was in college, the butcher shop had closed, meaning the local Piggly Wiggly had to pick up the slack. The meat and fish was often rancid by the time my grandmother was finally able to cook them. Western Hills Mall started losing business and slowly died. There would be fits and starts of development, but never anything that was sustainable. Soon, the only viable food options were fast food restaurants; the only stores were pawn shops, and the only entertainment was what we could see on cable.

What I describe here is not all that surprising. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that this is the common life cycle of communities of color: built during a time of prosperity, eventually it is depleted of tax dollars and services and stores run away. What interests me about this are the subtle impacts on the climate this process represents.

That area of Birmingham is under a regime of apartheid – food, employment, and services. It is primed to become the next area involved in regentrification. But for the residents that are still there let’s consider what this all means. What used to be a 3-mile drive, is now an 8 to 10-mile drive that involves driving on the interstate, just to get good groceries. The same increase in mileage applies for anyone that worked in white collar jobs near the mall. Clothes/gift shopping, and entertainment are now 10-15 miles away. All of this adds up to more gas consumed. Gas prices fall, encouraging more gas consumption. Residents in this area, through no fault of their own, have now seen their collective carbon footprint increase significantly. Of course, this process isn’t just happening in Hillman Estates and surrounding areas, it occurs throughout the Birmingham metropolitan area, mostly in Black neighborhoods. And in each of these neighborhoods, the process is a feedback loop, until property values are rock-bottom and new development is encouraged, often by the city.

To me, this story of the house on Dandridge leads to a question: how do we ask communities to change their behaviors to be more environmentally conscious when doing so requires a complete reordering of protocols families implement to survive, let alone thrive? As I see it, this is a particularly U.S. American issue, and one that is often met with condescension, microaggressions, and gaslighting. In this scenario, the people most effected by the cycle I describe have had their agency stolen from them. How can they prevent the trickle of businesses leaving the area? What is an achievable and sustainable model for encouraging local business to provide viable alternatives to national brands? Where can these people turn for answers?

My posts always seem to raise more questions than answers. What I hope is that I am able to provide another perspective, somewhat outside the mainstream. The coalition we have to build has to be able to answer questions like what I ask for the residents of Hillman Estates, before it’s too late.

Childhood resilience is truly remarkable.

Matthew Evan Taylor

Hillman Estates was a come-home-before-the-street-lights-come-on type of neighborhood.

Matthew Evan Taylor

What used to be a 3-mile drive, is now an 8 to 10-mile drive that involves driving on the interstate, just to get good groceries. ... All of this adds up to more gas consumed. Gas prices fall, encouraging more gas consumption. Residents in this area, through no fault of their own, have now seen their collective carbon footprint increase significantly.

Matthew Evan Taylor

How do we ask communities to change their behaviors to be more environmentally conscious when doing so requires a complete reordering of protocols families implement to survive, let alone thrive?

Matthew Evan Taylor

What is an achievable and sustainable model for encouraging local business to provide viable alternatives to national brands?

Matthew Evan Taylor

Naming The Future

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Donna Lee Davidson - Articles, Commentary, NewMusicBox

A list of names going in multiple directions

My name has a few different meanings, depending on who it is that knows it. My mother told me I was named after her doctor, Donald Lee. I was the last baby Donald Lee delivered before retirement and it felt fitting to my mother. To him, my name might have meant the end of an era, or the beginning of one.

I had a hard time accepting my name when I was younger because it felt so White and so old on my young, Black frame. Amongst my classmates—Brittney, Takeisha, Kimberly, Latoya, Michelle—I felt like an oddball. I’d only met old White women named Donna. The day I met a young Black Donna at an IHOP was the day I met with a major symphony orchestra timpanist to talk about an unfair situation that affected my career as a percussionist. It was January 2020, and I wouldn’t be able to follow up the conversation with a former teacher until after the worst of the pandemic. I was stuck for two years in an unfinished-business limbo, two years evenly split.

A lot happened the day I met my first Black Donna. Facing for the first time a conversation that I had been needing to have for ten years—a conversation with an old, White man about how I felt he had derailed my music career, and why me being a woman and Black was at the center of it. Meeting Donna, my waitress at IHOP, meant that the name Donna existed in more ways than one.

To the musician, my name can mean music. It can mean Charlie Parker, or it can mean be-bop. It can mean a time in history that meant something to so many people. It could mean Miles Davis depending on one’s religious beliefs (I believe in the Bird). When I tried and failed to play “Donna Lee” for the first time in 4th grade on a set of bells, I began to think that my name meant something intricate, something people can’t do without practice, not even me.

Or it can mean a literal translation. The translation of Donna in Italian is “an Italian lady.” It is a nobility title, a reference to the lady’s class: Donna is in the aristocracy. If I were in Italy, I would be called Donna Donna Lee. In all honesty, I found refuge in that. It made me feel better when I was treated like an inferior, like I didn’t have enough class to be in the spaces classical music placed me.

After a classmate of mine told me that I am also a Donna (in spirit) in addition to being named Donna, that my name fits me, I was joyful. Not because of what is Italian in it, but because of what is Black in it.

My classmate is a Chiambeng. Chiambeng means “sound the bell,” he explained to me. A writer currently getting his MFA in fiction at Columbia University, Thomas Chiambeng explained to me the Cameroonian legacy of his name—how he is identified as it, by it.

“In the beginning, before the invasion of words, they studied music,” he began.

Families had their own identities specific to the music they played. They might be gifted in healing, or experts over roots and herbs. One family knows the plants, another family knows the animals—raising the animals, domesticating them. All these skills were passed down, and everyone knew what a family was good at. To generations growing up in a family, skills became natural. There weren’t schools to learn music so those ordained, in a sense, to pass it down—the composers—they played during village festivals over bonfires and other public events, passing down both the music and the natural ability to play and hear it. A child could find themself playing the harp or inventing an instrument from the back of a tree—a hollow log—and start playing. The patterns played and the emotion of one’s voice mixed with the tone of the music to pass their message, it changes accordingly.

Passing the message of someone’s death is different than passing the message of someone’s birth, similar to how we intone our voices. People intoned the music differently. And there is hierarchy in the music. Personality, status—a princess, for example, is born, and the sound of the music indicates a royal birth. A king’s message has its own tone, and a queen or prince just as well. There were bright, joyful rhythms and melodies for wedding announcements, grief-stricken music for funeral announcements. They communicated with swells of emotions massaged into a strum of a harp, a striking of tom-toms, or a rhythmic yet melodic wooden keyboard.

Houses weren’t compacted together, but spread across large expanses of farmlands, and by bushes, and by narrow paths. A gong is heard from the path to send a message in such a way that those on their farms and far away bushes knew exactly what it meant, even if they didn’t necessarily hear the inflections of the voice singing along with it. Through the rhythmic and melodic patterns, neighbors heard their voice.

The beauty of it is how people got to understand it. There are so many languages that divide Africans, meaning inter-kingdom communications depended on the compositions of Black composers in the past. Chiambengs are the family of the gongs, their name rooted in this music of the past. That hypersensitivity of the music meant that it was more than sound, more than who they were identified as (family of the bells), and by (playing the gong)—this hypersensitivity meant what instrument their family identified with (the name itself).

“They don’t do any of this anymore,” Chiambeng says, but he knows this was custom because he was taught the family history of it. Being taught has given my own name new meaning just as well. Imagine my elation when I came to understand that my name is the title of a Charlie Parker tune. After growing up listening to the jazz of my father, a saxophonist, and of my brother, a saxophonist, encompassing four decades of jazz. Even more, that the be-bop era is my father’s favorite. Add the complexity of then learning that I wasn’t named after that tune, but after my doctor who delivered me last as I was the last child of my mother, the youngest of 8—intentionally.

And yet despite these impactful meanings, the one that meant the most was meeting another Black Donna—both the timing of it and the shared identification of it. I wasn’t alone anymore.

But sometimes I learn names too late. It wasn’t until after leaving the conservatory I attended in New York City pursuing a B.M. in Classical Percussion Performance that I learned the name Julia Perry (1924-1979). I learned about both her and the percussion ensemble piece she wrote, and that the Manhattan School of Music percussion ensemble played and recorded it under the director Paul Price in 1965. I learned that at Spelman College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. Homunculus, C.F. for 10 percussionists (1960) is the piece, which means there were 10 highly trained percussionists most likely not of color performing repertoire by a Black woman. Duncan Patton, the recently retired principal timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and faculty member at Manhattan School of Music (MSM) for over 30 years says that of the small handful of Black percussion students who apply to MSM each year, three have enrolled in his 30 years of teaching.

Perry’s 5-minute Homonculus sneaks up on you, starting with what could be a percussion version of strings tuning on stage. Snare drum and woodblock softly tussle with one another, both trying to tune to an evasive A440. The piece grows—matures, matriculates—from scrapes on cymbals, a hide-and-go-seek marching of the timpani, and tom-toms to plucked strings on harp introducing the melodic: xylophone, vibraphone. Celeste and piano drive snare drum and woodblock to a determined end.

Yet while I was at MSM, I didn’t feel as though I belonged, hadn’t felt that way for over a decade. Not because I didn’t love it, wasn’t one of the best, didn’t live and breathe it every day for most of my life, but because oftentimes (not all the time), I stood to the side and watched close relationships amongst percussionists rather than having any, treated like an outsider, sometimes aggressively as inferior.

At Interlochen Arts Camp when George (let’s just call him George for now) put his mouth to my ear and whispered a chant while I played a Bach partita on marimba in the practice room.

“You suck. You’ll never be able to play this. You’ll never be any good,” his lips occasionally brushing the black skin of my earlobe in repetition. “You suck. You’ll never be able to play this. You’ll never be any good,”—the sharp sting on the ‘s’ of suck and ‘n’ of never.

I kept playing, remaining locked into the only two lines of the piece I could play without needing to stop just to drown him out. Up until then, I hadn’t yet learned how to play a fugue, layers unfolding what it means to feel free. What first seems like a melody trapped in repetition opens and opens like a surgeon cutting into a chest cavity. First skin, then tissues—fat tissues padding and protecting—then rib cage, heart, blood vessels. Each more complex than the next.

Classical music, and even more, Johann Sebastian Bach, wasn’t supposed to belong to me, but I had made it mine. I had forced it into my hands, those first two lines, the only two lines I could play and didn’t know I memorized until my mental practice room built a fortress all about me. George had invaded my only refuge. He tried to take it, colonize it, gentrify it: he came, he saw, he attempted to conquer, but failed. Failed because Black composers like Julia Perry existed and Black composers exist in the future.

George was competitive, as we were all trained to be, but George had something extra, something personal. Winning something ahead of him was like a personal offense to him. He could have lost to someone to whom he would bow gracefully and accept his defeat, but he lost to me instead, treating it as though I made his mother cry and maybe I did. Maybe his line of ancestry, maybe the mitochondria only traced through the line of mothers going genealogically back to wherever they came from were pained to see me taking what they had already taken from me.

Interlochen wasn’t just about enjoying our crafts. We were given a window to see and understand that there were people all over the world who were better than us, and who we were better than. Every week we competed for chairs in the orchestra, drilled to focus our craft on triumphing over someone else. But to win the international concerto competition was the goal, the ultimate prize, an uncontestable recognition of superior skill that George wasn’t being trained to accept. Instead, he wanted to train me to not feel deserving of my achievement.

George was jealous. We all were in one way or another. George was also filled with rage for not just that he was beat, but by whom he was beat—because he was beat, like everyone else, in a myriad of ways. Did he taunt everybody?

I didn’t know Julia Perry’s name for over a decade after this collision with superiority. Imagine what it meant to learn that Donna is an Italian lady, an aristocrat—of noble birth. Then imagine what it meant to learn Julia Perry’s name, that she composed for percussion, that my percussion ensemble, the one I played with for two years before transferring to Spelman College—imagine what it was like for me to learn that I am of noble birth as an African American rather than as a translation for an oppressive aristocrat in Italy.

I did, however, feel like I had been translated. Take the name Donna out of time, put the genealogical name on a new me, then translate my translated name and what you end up with is a Black composer in the future. It was through my instrument that I found new meaning in my name like my classmate Thomas from Cameroon described to me. Just like what my name might have meant to the doctor that birthed me, the end of an era or the beginning of a new one, learning Julia Perry’s through my instrument was the beginning of a new era for me.

I am be-bop. I am classical. I am the daughter of a mother who is trained in classical flute and a father on jazz saxophone. I am the sister of a bassist, a trumpeter, a saxophonist, and a guitarist. I am a family legacy—third time soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I am a percussionist and as a writer, a Black composer in and of the future.

Amongst my classmates—Brittney, Takeisha, Kimberly, Latoya, Michelle—I felt like an oddball. I’d only met old White women named Donna.

Donna Lee Davidson

To the musician, my name can mean music. It can mean Charlie Parker, or it can mean be-bop. It can mean a time in history that meant something to so many people. It could mean Miles Davis depending on one’s religious beliefs (I believe in the Bird).

Donna Lee Davidson

Families had their own identities specific to the music they played. They might be gifted in healing, or experts over roots and herbs. One family knows the plants, another family knows the animals—raising the animals, domesticating them. All these skills were passed down, and everyone knew what a family was good at.

Donna Lee Davidson

There are so many languages that divide Africans, meaning inter-kingdom communications depended on the compositions of Black composers in the past.

Donna Lee Davidson

It wasn’t until after leaving the conservatory I attended in New York City pursuing a B.M. in Classical Percussion Performance that I learned the name Julia Perry.

Donna Lee Davidson

Classical music, and even more, Johann Sebastian Bach, wasn’t supposed to belong to me, but I had made it mine.

Donna Lee Davidson

Interlochen wasn’t just about enjoying our crafts. We were given a window to see and understand that there were people all over the world who were better than us, and who we were better than.

Donna Lee Davidson

Just like what my name might have meant to the doctor that birthed me, the end of an era or the beginning of a new one, learning Julia Perry’s through my instrument was the beginning of a new era for me.

Donna Lee Davidson

I am be-bop. I am classical. ... I am a percussionist and as a writer, a Black composer in and of the future.

Donna Lee Davidson

Different Cities Different Voices – Louisville

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Multiple Authors - Articles, Listen, NewMusicBox

An introduction by Teddy Abrams

Teddy Abrams (photo by Chris Wietzke, courtesy of Louisville Orchestra)

Louisville’s exceptional and dynamic music scene has always flown a bit under the radar from a national perspective. This is a microcosm of life in Louisville generally; we are deeply proud of the talent in our own backyard but somewhat baffled by the lack of positive attention to our city from outside media. Similarly, the broader Kentucky landscape contains the generative center of much quintessential American culture but doesn’t often receive commensurate recognition for the role our state has played in helping define our country’s musical history. I think this dual sense of pride and omission has had the perhaps unintended effect of inspiring Louisville and Kentucky musicians to develop an endemic, unique approach to their art. Due to limited music industry infrastructure or a lack of excessive outside influence, our local musicians have built a particularly open and creative environment for music-making; unusually porous cross-genre collaborations and consistent support for young talent may be two of my favorite Louisvillian cultural characteristics.

Thus I am honored to introduce you to these spectacularly talented musicians, all of whom are as equally committed to the health of their community as they are to the excellence of their musicianship. I chose these folks to represent Louisville (although I regret that I couldn’t extend this invitation to the dozens of other brilliant artists in town!) because they espouse what I consider to be our highest calling as artists – a desire to make music in a way that bridges divides, heals wounds, and allows us to confront our challenges as a strengthened society. Jecorey, Rachel, Tyler, Diane, and Carly exemplify this mentality and have made life far more musically inspiring for our city – and for me! I hope you will have a chance to visit our beautiful city and see these artists perform live and in person. You will leave town with a similar dual sense of pride that art is being created like this in our nation, and bemusement that the rest of the world hasn’t quite realized it yet.

Due to limited music industry infrastructure or a lack of excessive outside influence, our local musicians have built a particularly open and creative environment for music-making; unusually porous cross-genre collaborations and consistent support for young talent may be two of my favorite Louisvillian cultural characteristics.

Teddy Abrams

Louisville, a friendly, mid-sized, midwestern/southern town has a rich and complicated cultural history and a swift current of creative people who make and support local art.

Rachel Grimes

Louisville is the city of Muhammad Ali—the greatest human example of using gifts for good. He used his boxing platform to call for change while I've used my music platform to call for change. All artists, but especially Louisville artists, have that hometown responsibility.

Jecorey Arthur

I've stayed here because I am in complete awe of the love that people of Louisville have for music. Louisville cultivates such a wide range of musicians and actually shows up to support them.

Carly Johnson

Louisville has an energy and comfort to it that I haven’t quite experienced anywhere else. I also identify with Louisville’s refusal to be easily labeled.

Tyler Taylor

To me, Louisville is an easy place to live. It has a lot of quirkiness, too. Louisville is the largest producer of disco balls in the world. Benedictine spread was invented in Louisville. The Happy Birthday song was composed by 2 sisters in Louisville.

Diane Downs

Rachel Grimes

Rachel Grimes at Loretto Motherhouse, Marion Co, KY, 2016 (Photo by Ted Wathen)

I was born and raised in Louisville, with multi-generational roots in central Kentucky. As a young child I learned piano by ear playing tunes, from ragtime to standards, alongside my father and grandmother. I took piano lessons to learn to read and to love Chopin, Bach, and Brahms, but it was as a teenager that I excitedly dove into the thriving Louisville underground post-punk scene. I attended the University of Louisville School of Music, earning a degree in composition with piano as my principle instrument. While there I also explored jazz combo, Renaissance harpsichord, and medieval a cappella vocal music. Over the next many years, I wove all of these musical threads together into chamber and orchestral music, scores for theater, film, and museum installations, recording and touring genre-defying albums with several bands, and pushing the boundaries of collaboration with many fellow creatives from my hometown.

Louisville, a friendly, mid-sized, midwestern/southern town has a rich and complicated cultural history and a swift current of creative people who make and support local art. It is known around the world for musical legends such as Lionel Hampton, Slint, My Morning Jacket, Jack Harlow, Valerie Coleman, and the Louisville Orchestra. It is an affordable place to live, work, eat, and create with access to beautiful natural spaces and rivers. After the spring of 2020, it is also known around the world for the murder of Breonna Taylor by the local police, and the killing of David McAtee by the National Guard. Our community experienced shattering pain during these events and subsequent protests, which was compounded by the intense fear, loss, and grief brought on by the pandemic, economic destruction, and tragic loss of health and life around the world.

All of my scheduled performances in 2020 and beyond were cancelled by the pandemic, projects put on hold and into limbo. At that time I was caregiver and guardian for my father and his brother, and in light of all of the strife and chaos happening around us, I focused on managing the circumstances the best I could. My husband, along with so many educator peers, was juggling many new stressors for keeping teachers, families, and children safe while ensuring learning. As a creative musician, I wrestled with many conflicting feelings of uselessness. I played the piano for my hurting heart – that helped. For fun, I played covers with my husband playing bass. I talked with my friends and held hands over the phone. After years of not getting to it, I updated many of my older pencil and digital scores and opened up a web shop for my digital sheet music – that was satisfying. In late 2020, I encouraged my fellow composers Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider to salvage our hopes of recording our co-composed work for mezzo-soprano and strings The Blue Hour and co-produced that album with Shara Nova throughout 2021. The album, performed by Nova with the commissioning ensemble A Far Cry, was released by New Amsterdam/Nonesuch Records in late 2022, and was included in the Top Ten Albums of 2022 by NPR, The Nation, WNYC’s New Sounds and more.

Music heals, music unites, music is essential to our lives and our hearts – now more than ever.

Rachel’s Music Picks…

Rachel Grimes: “The name” from The Blue Hour

<a href="https://newamsterdamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-hour">The Blue Hour by Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, A Far Cry</a>

Harry Pickens: Meditation Music

Harry Pickens · Meditation Music

Jecorey Arthur

Jecorey Arthur (Photo by Savannah Philpot)

Louisville is the city of Muhammad Ali—the greatest human example of using gifts for good. He used his boxing platform to call for change while I’ve used my music platform to call for change. All artists, but especially Louisville artists, have that hometown responsibility. This led me to run for city council, win, and become the youngest legislator in city history. So I’m not just here for my artistry but for my ancestry—continuing our fight for freedom, and music has been the main medium throughout my career.

Our music scene is so eclectic you can hear live jazz, hip hop, classical, soul, rock, bluegrass, and more all in a single weekend. Louisville composer, Mildred Hill, used to send transcribed “Black street cries” to Antonín Dvořák, who later influenced American culture by composing with Black music and claiming it was the future of our country. When you hear popular American music today, it was all influenced by Black Americans, likely from right here in Louisville. So our eclectic music scene today is tradition. Since the pandemic I’ve been overwhelmed with technology—virtual concerts, virtual meetings, virtual everything. Being back in school with my music students and concerts to hear live music has been healing.

Jecorey’s Music Picks…

Note: Kanye West is not from Louisville, KY. The featured artist on this song is—Vory

Carly Johnson

Carly Johnson (Photo by Mickie Winters of Winters Photography)

I’ve lived in Louisville since I was 8 years old and it has absolutely become home to me. After living in Philadelphia (which I also loved) while getting my jazz degree at The University of the Arts, I was lured back home after graduation due to feeling a little homesick…and truth-be-told missing a boy…who–thankfully–was worth the move back, as he eventually became my husband. I was still battling a bit of stage fright and it was such a comfort to get my footing and my jazz chops up in my hometown. As it turns out, I’ve stayed here because I am in complete awe of the love that people of Louisville have for music. Louisville cultivates such a wide range of musicians and actually shows up to support them. As a full time musician, I am forever grateful for this city’s love and passion for music and the arts and I’m truly grateful to the Louisville audience.

Other than the complete love and support of live music, Louisville has a real quirky small town feel, while still maintaining the highest caliber of the arts–our orchestra, our ballet, our jazz and indie rock scene, our art museums–and of course our food and drink. Our farm-to-table, modern, down-home and outside-of-the-box-creative bars and restaurants can absolutely stand-up to the best well known foodie cities and then some.

I found out I was pregnant less than a month before the pandemic came down in Louisville, and it quickly became very apparent that me and my husband would be going through a lot of these first-time experiences alone, instead of being surrounded by our amazing community. On one hand, having the time to be more in the moment and without the daily distraction of the grind that we all endure, was a gift. On the other hand, as a musician, I don’t think I fully understood the sense of self and sense of emotive expression I experience through making music with an audience on such a regular basis, until it was taken away. I was so grateful for any online streaming or outdoor performance opportunity that our community made happen, but they were still very few and far between compared to the 5-6 weekly gigs of singing I’d been doing for years.

Thankfully, Louisville unsurprisingly didn’t disappoint, and despite so many financial challenges that all of the venues faced during the pandemic, everyone got back to live music as soon as possible. I’d venture to say my schedule is the busiest it’s ever been. During the pandemic, I also took that time to release my first solo album and make a music video (of my tune “Burn Your Fears”) about that loss of human connection that we were all feeling, to show how strong we are as people and that, though things might look different on the other side of the pandemic, we’d be able to get to a place where we could see the beauty of life where we were then and now, again.

My own music pick was a tough choice, since my record is mostly a soulful 13-piece band…but I went with “Burn Your Fears” since it ties into the pandemic experience. I originally wrote it for a dear friend of mine, Marisa, shortly after she was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of lung cancer (ROS-1), as a 30 year old non-smoker. She really beat the odds and was able to live 5 full years after being diagnosed, but she passed away last November, just a month after being honored by the American Lung Association as a Lung Force Hero. This song was an anthem for her, in the sense that it’s about facing something incredibly difficult in your life, allowing yourself to embrace and feel every emotion it brings your way and deciding to find beauty and live your life fully in a different way than you had planned. It’s always had a universal theme to it that anyone living with trauma has been able to relate to, but now more than ever, it feels immensely poignant and more relatable than before. Right now, we’re all afraid, experiencing intense emotions and we’re trying our best to navigate this new way of life; we’re learning to find joy and beauty and live our lives in a different way.

Whitney Hall is so important. It represents a longstanding beautiful mecca of the arts in Louisville, and it’s locally owned and supported by its patrons (not Live Nation!). At a time when music and the arts are really struggling, when Whitney Hall is sitting empty and the future is so uncertain, it feels like an impactful message to include the towering gorgeous hall as the background for new art being created—a new way for Whitney Hall to be showcased and seen by everyone who misses it. It’s even more personal for me…I was on stage at WH with Teddy and the LO Friday March 13th, probably the last rehearsal that took place there before the shutdown…and I’m dreaming of when we all get to be back up there again.

The vision…The video is simple in the sense that it’s mostly just myself singing and playing piano in the middle of the WH stage to a massively empty house. But as the song continues, 4 string players would gradually appear in the audience (very very spread out far apart from each other) and they’d pick up their instruments (viola, 2 violins, cello) when the strings start in my song and play from their seats. As the song builds, 2-3 ballerinas would join the stage dancing around the piano (very very far apart from each other and everyone else).

What the viewer is experiencing during the video is a reflection of feelings/emotion…the great big beautiful empty WH house–representing the loneliness we’re all experiencing (and that many people have experienced through trauma), myself playing alone on stage despite being alone– representing our strength as humans to continue and endure, the appearance of the string players and eventual ballerinas–representing humanity, hope for the future and a sense of community in our shared feelings as people.”

Carly’s music picks…

Carly Johnson: “Burn Your Fears”

Kiana & The Sun Kings: “True American”

Tyler Taylor

I was born and raised in Louisville but wasn’t born into a musical family. I didn’t develop an interest in “classical music” until my older brother started playing the trombone when he was in elementary school. I took up the horn when I was in elementary school and by middle school had developed an intense curiosity about how music was put together – it seemed the only way I could get answers was to try and put it together myself. Fast-forwarding, I went to the University of Louisville as a composer and horn player, then Eastman, and finally IU. I was dumped out into the world during the pandemic with no prospects. I got a job at a coffee shop and worked until I could get my own place. 2021 was the year when things picked up – I was getting significantly more work as both a performer and composer. Even then I had a plan that I would only stay in Louisville for two years after I moved back and then figure out a way to get up to Chicago or New York. However, I realized that I could sustain myself artistically in Louisville – the city I know and love and where I want to stay.

I’ve now lived in three cities in my adult life – Louisville, Bloomington, IN., and Rochester, NY.. What makes Louisville different is its size – it’s not so big that is overwhelming but is also too small to provide the same amount of opportunity that you might associate with a bigger city. Like some other cities, Louisville has a tendency to value what comes in from the outside more than what they already have, so it might take people coming in from other places to validate your artistry or for you to leave and thrive somewhere else to prove your worth. All that said, if you can make it in the scene you can find some really amazing and talented people.

Louisville has an energy and comfort to it that I haven’t quite experienced anywhere else. I also identify with Louisville’s refusal to be easily labeled. For instance, people often argue about whether or not we are a southern or midwestern city. (Though, in my opinion, we are undeniably southern!) We are also situated in a state whose social-political ideologies, by and large, are in stark contrast to our own – we are part of Kentucky but sometimes feel like we don’t always have the most in common with the rest of our state.

During the pandemic I observed some people thrive in their isolation, in some cases creating more than they ever had in their lives. In my case, I stopped playing the horn and writing music entirely – I simply had no reason to do either. I quickly learned that those are two of the most important activities that contribute to and sustain my happiness. I was also faced with transitioning from being a semi-pro student to a professional during the “unprecedented times.” I don’t find my struggles unique but nevertheless difficult. Since then, I have established a fairly healthy freelance career and have made significant strides with many thanks to Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra. I think I’ve finally shaken the residue from my time as a student and am facing the newest challenges of my career – finding ways not to just sustain my creativity but to grow it. The circumstances have changed but the premise has more or less remained the same: how will I continue to grow as an artist and who’s coming along for the ride? I can’t do it alone no matter how hard I try!

Tyler’s Music Picks…

Tyler Taylor: Distill for 18 Players

Tyler W. Taylor · Distill for 18 players (2021)

Plus here’s a track by my fave Louisville musician, Jackie Royce.
She is a professional bassoonist and plays in this band Ut Gret. We have played together in gigs several times, went to school together, and I consider her a pillar in the Louisville music community.

Diane Downs

Diane Downs (Photo by Kriech Higdon)

My mother grew up in the Highlands of Louisville but upon marrying, moved with my dad to his family farm in Highview to raise me and my brothers. My grandparents bought the land in 1920 and supported their 10 children by running the Highview Dairy, growing crops, and the occasional sale of moonshine. I still live on the same land near my mom and my little brother. This is my home. I feel very connected to our land and never had the desire to move very far away. Part of my connection to my Louisville home was the music that was always present when I was young. “Boil Them Cabbage Down”, “Tom Dooley”, and “Old Joe Clark” were often sung in our kitchen by my mother as she played the banjo. I don’t ever remember not having a musical instrument close to me when I was young.

Louisville is where The Louisville Leopard Percussionists originated organically, accidentally. In 1993 was teaching 2nd & 3rd grade at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and found a stash of small mallet instruments in a storage closet while searching for bulletin board paper. I enlisted the help of my class to carry the instruments into our room and our group was born. We incorporated the music into our classroom schedule of math, reading, social studies, and science and ended up learning enough tunes to start gigging. A PTA meeting was our first gig, then the mall, for someone’s grandma at the nursing home, then it exploded from there.

In 2003 we incorporated into a non-profit organization and our program really started to grow. Never did I imagine that accidentally stumbling on those instruments would lead to over 30 years of Leopards, over 1000 children, performances at venues all over the eastern United States, an HBO Documentary, and even a appearance on A&E’s Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour. That’s why I still choose to live in Louisville. How could I leave this all behind?

When people think of Louisville, The Kentucky Derby, Muhammad Ali, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, The University of Louisville, or Kentucky Fried Chicken may come to mind. But, there is so much more to Louisville. To me, Louisville is an easy place to live. It has a lot of quirkiness, too. Louisville is the largest producer of disco balls in the world. Benedictine spread was invented in Louisville. The Happy Birthday song was composed by 2 sisters in Louisville.

There is a 30 foot tall golden statue of Michelangelo’s David on Main Street right down the street from the Slugger Museum and Bat Factory. We have the largest annual fireworks show in the country, the world’s longest go-kart track, and the oldest operating Mississippi-style steamboat. And, we have plenty of bourbon distilleries.

I feel that Louisville is a community that values the arts. Our Louisville Orchestra, The Louisville Ballet, and Kentucky Shakespeare are out in the community making the classic arts available and accessible to all. We have numerous art and music festivals all year long so there is always somewhere to go to find great performances and great art. Whether it’s a show by Turner’s Circus, The Squallis Puppeteers, Stage One Family Theater, The River City Drum Corp, Drag Daddy Productions, or The Louisville Leopard Percussionists, people show up to support our arts community. Like many others, our community has had some pretty significant rough patches. But Louisville is my community. I have spent most of my life here. My family is here. My Leopards are here.

The Louisville Leopard Percussionists is a performing ensemble so the pandemic was rough on us. Not being able to come together to play music for an audience was hard for our kids and teachers alike. But, we made the most of it. When it was safe, our Leopard staff at the time, Wes Greer, Kent Klarer, Carly Rodman, and I focused on very small groups and made 17 videos in just a few months. The kids were very proud of their accomplishments and grew so much as young musicians. We were able to really focus in on individual kids to help push them to a different level of musicianship. Our kids were missing out on so much life, we were happy that we could provide them with music to help get them through.

Diane’s Music Picks…

This video is from an October 2022 performance as the warm up band for My Morning Jacket. Watching our little rock stars perform on the big stage reinforced why I do what I do in my city of Louisville.

This is a link to one of my favorite Louisville bands, Squeeze-Bot, performing Thelonious Monk’s Well You Needn’t. I’ve spent many summer evenings sitting at the picnic tables at NachBar listening to these great musicians.

GLFCAM — Following the Interspecies Gaze in Shaun Tan’s Illustrated Stories

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Timothy Peterson - Articles, Commentary

Four iterations of a photo of Timothy Peterson branded with New Music USA and GLFCAM Guest Editor logos

I’ll never forget my first encounter with Shaun Tan’s work. Back in 2015, I was enrolled in an undergraduate seminar on migrant literature, and one of the texts on the course syllabus was his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival (2006). This genre was new to me, and I found myself spellbound by Tan’s illustrations, which paint the story of a father’s immigration to an imaginary metropolis. On some level, I think the idea of telling a story with images alone reminded me of the challenge that composers face when writing instrumental music: how can we weave a narrative without words? Sure, certain images can conjure up specific ideas more easily than sound, but they still leave plenty for the viewer’s imagination to fill in. And here lies, for me, one facet of Tan’s artistry: he always incorporates an element of mystery into his graphic novels; even those that do feature text. You sense that there is a message in them somewhere, but it may not make itself immediately known; rather, it waits patiently for you. Since reading The Arrival, I’ve delighted in Tan’s other works, including Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008), Tales from the Inner City (2008), Lost & Found (2011), and Rules of Summer(2013). His stories have made me laugh and cry and never fail to leave me in a state of awe and reflection.

Beyond this visceral response, I’m drawn to the environmental themes that pervade much of Tan’s work. In Tales from the Inner City, he stages a series of unusual encounters between humans and animals in urban environments. Many of the tales in this collection illustrate the hubris, egocentrism, and shortsightedness that so often define our interactions with other creatures and the natural world at large. Others, however, open a window into the wondrous possibilities that might transpire if we were to find the humility and wisdom to revere and learn from other animals. When GLFCAM commissioned me last year to compose a song cycle for Mexican countertenor César Aguilar as part of its Composing Earth initiative, I sensed that I would be revisiting Tales from the Inner City for inspiration.

Throughout 2021, I joined other GLFCAM composers, Gabriela, and climate scientist Rob Davies in monthly discussion groups about the climate crisis. Our conversations centered on a series of books, articles, and documentaries that GLFCAM and Dr. Davies curated to catalyze our climate education. One hard truth that we discussed is the fact that anthropogenic climate change has ushered in a period of mass extinction: every year, one-in-a-million species should expire naturally, yet the current rate of extinction – accelerated by such factors as human population growth, meat production, and deforestation – is estimated to be 100-1,000 times greater. In response to this tragic development, National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore began documenting at-risk species with magnetic (yet unadorned) portraits as part of the Photo Ark project. Nat Geo writes, “No matter its size, each animal is treated with the same amount of affection and respect. The results are portraits that are not just stunningly beautiful, but also intimate and moving.” Sartore adds, “It’s the eye contact that moves people. It engages feelings of compassion and a desire to help.”

Tan’s Tales from the Inner City and Sartore’s Photo Ark both raise for me the notion of the interspecies gaze. What do intimate encounters with other animals engender in us? Empathy? Disgust? Something more uncanny? How does the setting of these encounters affect our response? These are some of the questions that led me back to Tan’s stories as I researched text to musically set for my Composing Earth commission, which is set to premiere in the fall of 2023. With GLFCAM’s assistance, I was thrilled to secure Tan’s permission this past spring to feature three of his stories in my song cycle. I’d like to share with you my reflections on these inspiring texts, each of which will comprise a different movement of my cycle.

“Orca” is a tale about an urban community that magically suspends a whale from the sky. “It was just so beautiful up there, so inspiring,” recalls the narrator wistfully. At first spellbinding, the sight of the orca gliding across the city’s illuminated night sky loses its charm as people find themselves unable to tune out the heartbreaking, resonant calls of the whale’s mother, which “penetrated all concrete, steel, and urban clamor.” The city dwellers feel ashamed of themselves and promise to return the whale to its mother, but their remorseful vows prove hollow: “We just don’t know how to get it down. We never did.” Musically, I find inspiration in this story’s heights-versus-depths imagery and evocation of different timbres (e.g. underwater sounds, mechanical sounds). At its core, I feel that “Orca” reflects three problematic ways in which humans relate to the natural world. First, how we all too frequently fail to consider the environmental impact of our actions. Second, when we do become aware of our impact–often only after the signs, like the orca’s mother, wail at us–the promises that we make to right our environmental wrongs tend to lie dormant, regardless of our intentions. Finally, “Orca” speaks to many people’s perception of animals as creatures that exist for our own pleasure. This human tendency, as Tan suggests in “Orca,” can instill in us a feeling of delight in the natural world, but this feeling does not necessarily translate into the reverence and respect for nature that might otherwise lead us to more sustainable ways of interfacing with our environment.

In “Butterfly,” a massive, rainbow swarm of butterflies (also known, more poetically, as a “kaleidoscope”) descends upon a city. Enchanted by this wondrous event, everyone stops what they are doing and gathers in the streets to “[wait] for the weightless blessing of tiny insects.” People’s worries fly away. Time seems to stop. (I’ll note here that this evocation of flight, lightness, and stillness lends itself beautifully to music.) Later, once the butterflies depart, people revert to their “factory settings,” desperately searching for reasons why the butterflies came in the first place and what their visit meant (“Was this an omen of something good or bad? A plague?”). At the risk of beating meaning out of a story that warns against “prying things apart for cause and effect, sign and symbol,” I feel that “Butterfly” speaks to certain obstacles that we face as we confront the climate crisis. First, our routine lifestyles–reliant on fossil-fueled energy and embedded in an unsustainable and inequitable profit-driven economy–no longer serve us or the planet on which we all ultimately depend for our survival. In Tan’s story, the kaleidoscope of butterflies snaps everyone out of their routines; they only succumb to their habitual worrying, intellectualizing, and problematizing in the butterflies’ absence. Though these mental tendencies (engrained in so many of us as we grow up) often go hand-in-hand with critical thinking (a tool that we desperately need in order to face the climate crisis), they can also lead to paralysis and inaction. We’re known to think more creatively when we’re playful, curious, and fully present, and Tan’s butterflies invite us into this mindset.

In “Snail,” a tale that will serve as the final movement of my song cycle, the narrator recalls the arrival of gigantic snails in an unnamed city and the outrage that they initially provoked. When night falls, the snails make love in plain sight in the city’s streets and alleyways. (Snails, I learned, are hermaphroditic creatures with an elaborate and languorous mating ceremony; in the narrator’s words, “the slowest of slow dances…”) All corners of society – politicians, religious leaders, naturalists – used to cry out against this open, uncouth display of affection, yet a century later, at the time of this story’s telling, everyone has grown to cherish the snails: “We would be so sad if they ever went away, leaving us all alone with our small ideas about love.” I read “Snail” as a satire on our practice of imposing human mores (e.g. notions of sexual normativity, productivity, public vs. private property) on other species. “Snail” also invites reflection on the rate of societal change: how long does it take for dominant cultural attitudes to shift? When we consider the climate crisis and the cultural (r)evolution that it requires of us, we cannot afford to wait the century that it takes the humans in “Snail” to coexist with their mollusk neighbors and absorb their lessons. If, however, we relinquish our knee-jerk hostility to lifestyles that differ from our own, our future on this planet promises to shine much brighter.

I think the idea of telling a story with images alone reminded me of the challenge that composers face when writing instrumental music: how can we weave a narrative without words?

Timothy Peterson

Anthropogenic climate change has ushered in a period of mass extinction: every year, one-in-a-million species should expire naturally, yet the current rate of extinction – accelerated by such factors as human population growth, meat production, and deforestation – is estimated to be 100-1,000 times greater.

Timothy Peterson

What do intimate encounters with other animals engender in us? Empathy? Disgust? Something more uncanny? How does the setting of these encounters affect our response?

Timothy Peterson

When we become aware of our impact ... the promises that we make to right our environmental wrongs tend to lie dormant, regardless of our intentions.

Timothy Peterson

Our routine lifestyles--reliant on fossil-fueled energy and embedded in an unsustainable and inequitable profit-driven economy--no longer serve us or the planet on which we all ultimately depend for our survival.

Timothy Peterson

How long does it take for dominant cultural attitudes to shift? When we consider the climate crisis and the cultural (r)evolution that it requires of us, we cannot afford to wait.

Timothy Peterson

If we relinquish our knee-jerk hostility to lifestyles that differ from our own, our future on this planet promises to shine much brighter.

Timothy Peterson

Orchestrating Ellington

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Ethan Iverson - Analysis, Articles, NewMusicBox

a hand placing a square shaped piece of paper in an arrangement with eight others forming a square (based on an image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

Duke Ellington was born in 1899, before anyone knew the word “jazz.” As a young man, he learned how to play “stride,” the two-fisted virtuoso manner espoused by his mentor James P. Johnson, at that time a popular piano style to accompany dancing and drinking in Harlem apartments. In his thirties he fronted his famous big band, making hit records of tunes that almost everybody still knows today. At 44, he led his orchestra at Carnegie Hall in the extended work Black, Brown, and Beige, which he introduced as “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America.”

In some ways Ellington was still just getting started. Going forward, Ellington collaborated with everybody, from traditional greats like Louis Armstrong to gospel icon Mahalia Jackson to the modernists Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. More casually, he hobnobbed with Leonard Bernstein and penned romances for Queen Elizabeth II. The big band era was over by 1956 — or was it? Ellington at Newport was a surprise bestseller and put the maestro on the cover of TIME magazine.

Ellington liked to call others “beyond category” and course he intended to live up to that sobriquet himself. One of the best film scores is Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder for Otto Preminger; one of the best ballet scores is Ellington’s The River for Alvin Ailey. His final years included three full-length Sacred Concerts.

For all his fame, Ellington can be curiously hidden in plain sight. Posterity enjoys anointing a lauded genius sole credit, and in Ellington’s case there were certainly collaborators: Not just a galaxy of legendary horn players like Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, and many others, but also a co-composer, Billy Strayhorn, the poetic soul who penned much crucial Ellingtonia including the band’s theme song, “Take the A Train.” Some critics attempt to wrest the laurels from Duke and give them to Strayhorn.

Strayhorn’s greatness is undeniable, but Ellington certainly wrote an epic amount of music on his own. Strayhorn wasn’t even there in the first decade and a half, and Ellington kept churning out pieces after Strayhorn’s decline and death in the mid-‘60s.

***

The classical establishment has been yearning to program Ellington for decades. It makes sense, for everyone instinctively knows that Ellington is a Great American Composer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some Ellington for an Americana pops concert on July 4 alongside the usual suspects like Copland?

Until now, everything that has gotten performed under the rubric “symphonic Ellington” was overseen by relatively conservative orchestrators. It was all more practical than anything else. Working with a full symphonic orchestra may have been a good way to remain “beyond category,” but there is little to suggest that Ellington treated the submitted orchestrations as more than an easy way to fulfill commission requirements. Indeed, private recordings of Ellington himself playing the music from various suites before they were orchestrated prove that much potential energy was lost the minute the scores escaped Ellington’s direct oversight.

At the same time, we know for dead certain that Ellington was interested in the idea of a glamorous symphonic concert. When he recorded the album Orchestral Works with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Orchestra, Ellington performed his piano parts with flair and vigor.

When the Artistic Director of the 23Arts Initiative, Piers Playfair, was asked to program a jazz themed evening for the Grange Festival in Hampshire this summer, he suggested the charming umbrella Duke Ellington: From Stride to Strings and asked me to write new arrangements for full concert forces. Gavin Sutherland will conduct the Bournemouth Symphony.

Piers and I both believe that we owe it to Ellington to keep his symphonic ambitions fresh, relevant, and exciting. The result is Valediction: An Ellington Suite, a substantial 45-minute orchestral journey through eight Ellington compositions.

The first question is, “Does an orchestra swing?” The answer is, “probably not.”

Indeed, all sorts of classic Ellingtonia is impossible in the hands of people who are not jazz and blues professionals. Compositions like “Satin Doll” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)” become the worst sort of amateur musical theatre when taken up by classical players.

All the great Ellington records are powered by serious drummers like Sonny Greer or Sam Woodyard, the legendary masters in charge of early and middle Ellington. It is impossible to write a swinging drum part for some “professional percussionist in a symphony” that is remotely worthy of Greer or Woodyard.

However, late in the game, Ellington’s music became a bit less involved with raw blues and swing and more involved with even-eighth grooves. Rufus Jones was the drummer, and the delightful Ellington albums The Latin American Suite and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse set comfortably on the shelf next to bachelor pad LPs by Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. This kind of feel is perhaps more possible for symphonic forces, offering something more akin to a sweeping and dramatic movie score (as compared to the elite nitty-gritty of “Take the A Train” and the rest of the swinging hits).

All the selections in Valediction come from after Strayhorn was gone. I cherry-picked eight fun or soulful pieces from eight different suites. Much of late-era Ellington is barely known except to Ducal specialists, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be heard. Again, we owe it to Ellington to dig deep and find out what is really there.

In the concert hall, it is conventional to treat Ellington with reverence — almost with too much reverence, for nobody knew more about having a good time than Duke Ellington. Much of Valediction is intentionally entertaining. I’m ready for that July 4th pops concert to include Duke at last!

1. “Oclupaca” from The Latin American Suite (1968). Of all my selections, “Oclupaca” is the most familiar, for it opened a popular record at the time and school jazz bands play the David Berger transcription today. The piece is definitely “exotica,” and the orchestral colors are somewhere not too far from one of John Barry’s scores for a James Bond movie.

2. “Daily Double” from The Degas Suite (1968). The amusing melody is about horse racing. Duke tried it out in a few places but never got around to finalizing a full Ellington band treatment. On one rendition he plunks quarter notes in a relentless fashion on the piano. H’mm. Maybe this means: pizzicato feature? Leroy Anderson was no Duke Ellington, but Leroy Anderson did know his way around a pops orchestra. Somewhere in the back of my setting of “Daily Double” lurks Anderson’s horrible (but very successful) “Jazz Pizzicato.”

3. “King Solomon” from Three Black Kings (1974). Ellington’s last three pieces were not performed by Duke himself; the only version we have of the suite was completed by Mercer Ellington and Maurice Peress. It’s fine as far as it goes, but much more could be done. My setting features English horn, while the harp gets a child-like second theme.

4. “Acht O’clock Rock” from Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971). Many serious Ellington fans and scholars look down on “Acht O’clock Rock.” However, Duke programmed it frequently, looking for something contemporary that resonated, just like he always did. (“Beyond category” was always part of the Ellington process.)

Ellington wrote in 1955, “Rock ‘n roll is the most raucous form of jazz, beyond a doubt; it maintains a link with the folk origins, and I believe that no other form of jazz has ever been accepted so enthusiastically by so many. … I have written a few rock ’n roll things myself, but am saving them for possible use in a show.”

In time Duke revealed several “rock” numbers to his public and released a few arrangements of the Beatles.

In terms of orchestrating Ellington: Driving rock music fits a string section better than swinging jazz does, and my orchestra “rocks out” several times in this Valediction suite. However, I admit my arrangement of “Acht O’clock Rock” owes far more to Igor Stravinsky than the Fab Four.

5. “The Village of the Virgins” from The River (1970). Surely “The Village of the Virgins” is unlike any other 12-bar blues in existence. When I set to work, I immediately heard two of the most famous orchestral pieces intermingling in my mind: the high string prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin, and the repetitive theme of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.

6. “Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies” from New Orleans Suite (1970). One of Ellington’s ominous tone poems in the manner of his early masterpiece “The Mooche.” “The Mooche” was apparently a pimp, and the saga of “Jingling Jollies” is now something like The Rake’s Progress, with early swagger, a plateau of high living, and then the inevitable descent into madness and despair. Ellington usually wrote in 4/4; in this case I changed the meter to 7/8, recalling the ’60’s “crime jazz” themes of Lalo Schifrin and Jerry Goldsmith.

7. “The Lord’s Prayer” from Third Sacred Concert (1973). At the start of the final religious concert at Westminister Abbey, Ellington played a few minutes of transcendent piano chords that seem like they were beamed down from the heavens above. It’s not clear if this was formal composition, but it’s listed on the record as “The Lord’s Prayer,” and is surely worthy of chimes, strings, harp, and trombone in solo and duet. (Mahler said the trombone was the voice of God, and this was before Gustav had a chance to hear Tricky Sam Nanton or Lawrence Brown.)

8. “Loco Madi” from from Uwis Suite(1972). “Loco Madi” was the final and most lunatic entry in about 50 years’ worth of Ellington train pieces. As already declared, it is risky to ask an orchestra to swing, but since this piece is already rough-hewn and chaotic, I wrote out the shuffle for all 80 instruments and expect the resultant discordant revelry to please the ghost of Charles Ives. At times the train nearly goes off the tracks, but that is perfectly okay.

***

Like many 20th-century artists, Duke Ellington was not always good about giving credit to his associates. In the 21st century, most of us have wised up to sharing the kudos. If Valediction: An Ellington Suite is successful, then some of the praise (and none of the blame) goes to Tom Myron, a wonderful composer and the house arranger for E.F. Kalmus Signature Editions. Since I had never written for orchestra before, I knew I needed the help of a kind professional who truly understood the idiom. Tom told me what orchestration books to read and answered key questions as I sat in front of my score for three months; eventually I spent a week at Tom’s house while we went through everything bar by bar. I didn’t argue, or at least I didn’t argue very much. If Tom said, “Nobody will hear that” we took it out, and if Tom said, “That needs more” we added what was required. A few times I turned my back, and when I next looked again, a phrase was completely re-orchestrated for maximum impact. Sincere thanks to Tom Myron!

Duke Ellington was born in 1899, before anyone knew the word “jazz.”

Ethan Iverson

Ellington liked to call others “beyond category” and course he intended to live up to that sobriquet himself.

Ethan Iverson

The classical establishment has been yearning to program Ellington for decades. It makes sense, for everyone instinctively knows that Ellington is a Great American Composer.

Ethan Iverson

Everything that has gotten performed under the rubric “symphonic Ellington” was overseen by relatively conservative orchestrators.

Ethan Iverson

Private recordings of Ellington himself playing the music from various suites before they were orchestrated prove that much potential energy was lost the minute the scores escaped Ellington’s direct oversight.

Ethan Iverson

The first question is, “Does an orchestra swing?” The answer is, “probably not.”

Ethan Iverson

We owe it to Ellington to dig deep and find out what is really there.

Ethan Iverson

Ellington wrote in 1955, "Rock 'n roll is the most raucous form of jazz, beyond a doubt."

Ethan Iverson

Driving rock music fits a string section better than swinging jazz does.

Ethan Iverson

Mahler said the trombone was the voice of God, and this was before Gustav had a chance to hear Tricky Sam Nanton or Lawrence Brown.

Ethan Iverson

GLFCAM — New Day

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Iman Habibi - Articles, Commentary

Mirror images of Iman Habibi with branded GLFCAM Guest Editor and New Music USA logos

(Note: The following essay was originally shared as a Weekly Musing as part of the Composing Earth program on June 21, 2021.)

It has been years since I truly celebrated Norouz, the Persian new year, which welcomes the rebirth of nature with the spring equinox. Norouz is a remnant of a millennia-old Zoroastrian Iran, which in so many of its cultural and technological achievements, strove for the sustainable life we seek today. The architecture was ever so carefully designed to harness the power of nature (wind, sun, and water). The literature, going as far back as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, makes clear a distinction between biaban (wilderness) and abadi (urban center), with the latter being shielded with a greenbelt, moistening the air, preventing the expansion of the desert, protecting people from the wildlife, and the wildlife from people. The avestan vision of pardis, from which the English word paradise was later derived, could be summarized as a walled reserve, in which an ideal equilibrium between humans, animals and plants could be achieved (read more on these here, if interested).

The spirit of this celebration got lost on me somewhere along the process of immigration, and while the tradition is alive, its powerful symbolism seems lost on much of the Iranian populace today. An Islamic Iranian government doesn’t have much interest in people’s Zoroastrian roots, rarely educating them on its meaning. Not fully understanding the power of its symbolism as a child, I realize it wasn’t the Norouz itself that was meaningful to me, but the people who truly loved and cherished it, and as I saw less and less of the people who formed my childhood memories of Norouz, the excitement for the festivities faded in me. The Persian culture is so replete with traditions, and one ancient belief has it that whatever one does on the first day of Norouz, the day following the spring equinox, that activity will represent what one does for the remainder of the year. The moral may be: seize the day! Just as accomplishing that first task in the morning can propel you to accomplish the next and so on, if you use your time well on the first day of the year, that may just give you the momentum you need to make it through the rest of the year.

So I want to start my Weekly Musing by telling you how much I appreciate you all, and the time we have together. I spent two quality hours of my Norouz meeting with you last Saturday, discussing something we all care so deeply about, and I couldn’t be happier if this was to be the type of discussion I have all year. I feel I have just begun this journey. But already, I find the lessons of Amitav Ghosh, Kate Raworth, Rob Davies and David Wallace-Wells finding their way into my day-to-day life, forming my understanding of the world around me and my relationship with art. Twice over the past five days, once during a virtual rehearsal and another time while guest lecturing to the chamber piano students at The University of Michigan, I found myself explaining my take on gradualism and catastrophism as could be translated to music, and the need to keep an open mind as we explore new narratives. I found myself talking about a sustainable ecosystem, Raworth’s doughnut, one that takes balance, justice, and our finite resources into consideration. Last month, I received an invitation to speak at Earth Day Boston 2021, after the organizers took interest in the connections I made between climate change and the classical music industry in an interview, ideas I continue to absorb from our ever-amazing mentor, Gabriela!

What I am learning from these experiences is quite heartwarming to me! There is an immense thirst; a thirst for learning more about climate change, a thirst for finding the most effective ways to take action, a thirst for leading a more sustainable lifestyle at micro and macro levels, and a thirst for translating it all to music and to express it in the form we know best. When climate change entered the conversation during my guest lecture at Michigan, it quickly derailed (in a good way) our enthusiastic discussion about piano, chamber music, and collaboration with composers. The students were interested in learning more about climate change, how it can be incorporated in their lives, their career, and in their art. They were interested in learning about what GLFCAM is doing, through this study and in its climate commitment, and how that model can be translated to what they do.

It is not the traditions that made Norouz meaningful to me, but the people cherishing those traditions. And while I am finding little practical hope in realizing the solutions proposed to climate change, I find renewed energy in the unification of people under this cause. So I thought for this season of renewal, it may be apt to share some people-led projects and links I have been collecting, mostly related to carbon capture, that have given me some hope!

Ocean-based Climate Solutions in Santa Fe is working on a cool project increasing the levels of phytoplankton in the oceans to remove carbon dioxide biologically. Project Vesta is working on weathering volcanic minerals and using wave energy to lock up CO2 in the form of limestone at the bottom of the ocean (one has to wonder though, what ultimately happens to the CO2 trapped at the bottom of the ocean in this way)? This Norwegian cement factory is trying to go carbon neutral by figuring out a way to capture its own emissions! Climeworks uses subscription-based public donations to directly capture carbon from the air. And of course, there is the expansive project Drawdown, about which we will be reading later!

Norouz has been a uniting tradition, and is celebrated by more than 300 million people worldwide. Among them are the Parsis, Iranis, Baluchs, Pashtuns, Baltis and some muslims of India and Pakistan. Amidst a decades-long ongoing conflict between them, India and Pakistan, two countries highly affected by climate change, are leading the way in fulfilling their climate goals: India is the only G20 nation on track to meet its Paris Climate Goals, and Pakistan is a decade ahead of its goals to meet UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13. If two countries involved with an external conflict and plagued by domestic terrorism can turn their focus to climate change, perhaps there is hope that the rest of the world can too!

If you use your time well on the first day of the year, that may just give you the momentum you need to make it through the rest of the year.

Iman Habibi

When climate change entered the conversation during my guest lecture at Michigan, it quickly derailed (in a good way) our enthusiastic discussion about piano, chamber music, and collaboration with composers.

Iman Habibi

While I am finding little practical hope in realizing the solutions proposed to climate change, I find renewed energy in the unification of people under this cause.

Iman Habibi

If two countries involved with an external conflict and plagued by domestic terrorism can turn their focus to climate change, perhaps there is hope that the rest of the world can too!

Iman Habibi

GLFCAM — A Maxwell Tape

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Gabriela Lena Frank - Articles

A double image of Gabriela Lena Frank with New Music USA and GLFCAM Guest Editor-branded logos

Last Christmas, I received a beautiful gift from my parents. They were up in Boonville from Berkeley, enjoying our (long-labored) remodel of our central room. Christmas was already a day or two past, and I didn’t immediately follow when Mom gave me an old shoebox, nonchalant-like. The contents rattling around inside turned out to be Maxwell cassette tapes, the kind from the 70s with the extra boxy cases and orange stripes. When I opened the cases, my editor Dad’s handwriting, familiar and precise, electrified me.

“Omigodddddddd…!”

Mom laughed. For years, I had been nagging my folks to find home audio recordings from my girlhood — Tapes of me at the piano as a baby and not yet fitted with hearing aids, tapes of my older brother sharing last night’s dream years before he would become a sleep scientist, tapes of our close circle of friends in heated conversation around the dinner table debating Carter vs. Reagan… I remembered my Dad’s old player, still functioning from his college years pre-Peace Corps and Perú where he met Mom, and how Dad would casually slip in a tape when he thought things were about to get good.

So, we made a plan to not fast-forward or rewind so as to not stress the reel, and I found the first cassette dated March of 1975 when I was two and a half. I’ve lived nearly twenty lifetimes since. With Jeremy’s old double-decker on the dining table and all of us gathered around, I pushed play.

A bit of static, and then a song already in motion: Alternating G and D, thin and twangy and recognizable from our first family piano, a tired but earnest blond spinet; through it, an impossibly young voice, light and high and tremulous, hovering around the pitches, a singing time traveler from the past.

My past. My voice.

This went on for a while. Of course, I was weeping. Mom held my hand. Here I had the evidence that although those first few years of my life were largely in silence because my hearing loss hadn’t yet been diagnosed, music wasn’t dependent on a silly thing like, well, audibility. The tapes from immediately after I got fitted for hearing aids, when I was five, showed how quickly I became a confident improviser. By the time I was ten, Dad was relieved from his duties as I became my own engineer, “mixing” with multiple players and cassettes.

The tape I really want to tell you about is dated early 1983. My speech impediment was diminishing quickly by this time, and I headquartered a radio station from my bed with my mini Casio synthesizer on a pillow for jingos. I had my slogan (“Hey hey hey, K-G-A-B, K-GAB/all day all night/don’t be wrong/let’s be right!”) and the news hour where I cautioned my listeners: “Well, folks, today we have some good news and I’m afraid, some bad news. So first, here’s the bad news.” From there, I proceeded to talk, appropriately somber, about the warming waters along the northern California coasts and the tuna, a warm water fish, that was swimming up from the southern Baja region. I declared that this was really bad news and improvised sad music in the background.

I never got to the good news; the rest of the tape is blank. What I do remember is, shortly before this “broadcast,” learning about the warming of our waters from my sixth grade teacher, a self-professed tree hugger. I was completely freaked out as my family and I were frequent visitors to our local cold-water beaches. The frigid ocean brought out the boogie boards and wetsuits in us. It was the perfect temperature for the perch that flitted nearby, the bronze-green kelp forests we’d wander into, and the waves that slammed harder than any warm surf could. (Surfers often talk about the extra “weight” of cold waves versus warm.) All sorts of creepy-crawly shelled creatures loved the cool temperature and we dug them out of the sand just for the joy of the catch before throwing them back into the sea. The day would end with packing up our wetsuits, towels, and blankets while violently shivering, making the outdoor hot water showers by the parking lot even more glorious.

I could not imagine all of this changing. The invasion of warm currents and tuna might have well been an invasion of aliens from my Mom’s cherished 50s sci-fi B-movies. In those, skyscrapers blew up and there were lots of crying women and children needing saving. I didn’t really want my world to change into a disaster flick, and so, with words and music, I fictionalized an alarmist radio show. Listening to that tape last Christmas, I realized I was processing eco-anxiety while urgently alerting the public, even if it was just the public of my imagination.

No fear of stressing the reel of memories… Fast-forward nearly four decades, and hey now? I’m processing eco-anxiety, going on honest-to-God real radio stations, and trying to alert the public with my words and my music.

I feel like Galeano’s old, old man who copies and retraces his childhood drawings.

There are yet more tapes, reminders that I always had much, if not all, the aspiration and alarm I’ll ever need as I consider my future relationship to the earth in this urgent time. After I finish listening to the rest of the tapes in my Mom’s old shoebox – which held a pair of size six Clark’s sandals, apparently – there’s a tape that I would love to make. It would complete the tape I left unfinished when I was ten, unable to recover from the horror of warm water and tuna. Indeed, a tape that finishes with… good news. Good news, as yet undefined and likely to take me to the remainder of my days in fulfillment of a promise made long ago.

For years, I had been nagging my folks to find home audio recordings from my girlhood.

Gabriela Lena Frank

Although those first few years of my life were largely in silence because my hearing loss hadn't yet been diagnosed, music wasn't dependent on a silly thing like, well, audibility.

Gabriela Lena Frank

I headquartered a radio station from my bed with my mini Casio synthesizer on a pillow for jingos. I had my slogan ("Hey hey hey, K-G-A-B, K-GAB/all day all night/don't be wrong/let's be right!")

Gabriela Lena Frank

I cautioned my listeners: "Well, folks, today we have some good news and I'm afraid, some bad news. So first, here's the bad news." ... I never got to the good news; the rest of the tape is blank.

Gabriela Lena Frank

I didn't really want my world to change into a disaster flick, and so, with words and music, I fictionalized an alarmist radio show. ... Fast-forward nearly four decades, and hey now? I'm processing eco-anxiety, going on honest-to-God real radio stations, and trying to alert the public with my words and my music.

Gabriela Lena Frank

There's a tape that I would love to make. It would complete the tape I left unfinished when I was ten--a tape that finishes with... good news. Good news, as yet undefined and likely to take me to the remainder of my days in fulfillment of a promise made long ago.

Gabriela Lena Frank

GLFCAM — Reflections on Rockefeller’s Ghosts

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Erika Oba - Articles, Commentary

Banner with multiple photos of Erika Oba plus New Music USA and GLFCAM logos

Back when I was an environmental studies student at Oberlin College in Ohio, many of my colleagues and mentors were involved in activism protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. It is a hugely destructive practice with wide ranging ecological and public health impacts, and the Appalachian mountains have been particularly harmed by it.

I took a week-long trip to the Appalachian mountains with a group of student activists, and that trip was a formative experience that forever changed my perception of our energy systems and their human costs. One of our stops was at a large-scale organized protest event at a mountain site that had been blasted. As I stood on top of the barren remains of a mountaintop, I fell into conversation with an activist photographer who had made it his primary work to document the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. He asked me a bit about who I was and what I did, and I explained to him that I was a college student studying both jazz piano and environmental studies and felt myself being pulled in two opposing directions. He asked me why I couldn’t pursue both, bringing up that many, many jazz musicians were artist-activists. He explained that he hadn’t always photographed mountaintop removal coal mining, but that he felt compelled to use his skills as an artist in service of this cause, and I have never forgotten that.

Since then, I feel like I’ve tried to navigate my way as an artist with that in mind, admittedly with varying degrees of success. The year of study and discussion that I spent with my Composing Earth cohort was invaluable in reigniting my commitment to exploring what it means to be an artist-citizen. Specifically regarding the climate crisis, one of the reassuring things that I got from all of our readings was the knowledge that we actually already have a lot (if not quite all) of the technological and design solutions to many of our current problems. The biggest hurdle continues to be cultural and political will, which is why our Composing Earth mentor, Dr. Rob Davies, has made it his mission to engage artists so that we may collectively shift the needle on cultural narratives and attitudes.

We actually already have a lot (if not quite all) of the technological and design solutions to many of our current problems. The biggest hurdle continues to be cultural and political will.

Erika Oba

My sincerest wish now is that my current car will be my last car, and that by the time it ceases to run we will be in a car-free society or that we will at least have enough alternative options to not need private cars.

Erika Oba

History is not an inevitable linear trajectory of “progress” but rather a series of decisions, concessions, and happenstance that have created the structures and systems in which we live.

Erika Oba

I titled my Composing Earth piece “Rockefeller’s Ghost” (written for solo bassoon and electronics) and as I worked on it, I thought a lot about what it means to meaningfully use my composing to address something as momentous as the climate crisis.

Erika Oba

It is my belief that any action starts with being present.

Erika Oba

As I worked on my Composing Earth piece, I found myself reflecting on how climate change most saliently impacts my day to day life and I kept coming back to our carbon intensive transit systems. As I worked on my piece, I pondered themes of carbon dependence, urban design, and transit futures.

I have never liked driving, and really dislike living in a car dependent culture. I put off buying a car until I was 26, because I had hoped that I could get by without one. My sincerest wish now is that my current car will be my last car, and that by the time it ceases to run we will be in a car-free society or that we will at least have enough alternative options to not need private cars. I know this is highly unlikely, but one can hope.

I read Crude: The Story of Oil by Sonia Shah back in my undergraduate days, and remembered it having a big impact on how I thought about energy and society, so I reread it as I worked on my Composing Earth piece. The book was published in 2006 so some of it’s a bit out of date now, but Shah writes about the history of oil in a compelling and accessible manner.

Reading it was an important reminder that history is not an inevitable linear trajectory of “progress” but rather a series of decisions, concessions, and happenstance that have created the structures and systems in which we live. One striking historical fact was that most urban centers in the U.S. used to have robust light rail systems that were decimated mid-century to be replaced by infrastructure that favored individual car use.

A society in which the built environment prioritizes individual car ownership is a society built around individual need rather than collective need, and doesn’t serve the needs of the young, elderly, and those who are mobility and vision impaired. The climate impact of a car intensive environment is substantial, not to mention the acute pollution from cars and refineries. Nothing about this current urban reality is inevitable. Historically we have had other models and systems, and many places in the world have robust public transit and urban design that prioritizes walkability and bikeability.

Sonia Shah writes that “Rockefeller’s Ghost” has risen and continues to haunt us through modern day Big Oil. I titled my Composing Earth piece “Rockefeller’s Ghost” (written for solo bassoon and electronics) and as I worked on it, I thought a lot about what it means to meaningfully use my composing to address something as momentous as the climate crisis.

In our Composing Earth meetings we discussed how some of the ways in which this will manifest will be extra-musical; the titles and themes of our pieces, program notes, preconcert talks, and interviews will inevitably be really important ways in which we communicate. It is equally important, though, to make the music itself stand strong or the rest of it won’t amount to much. In one memorable discussion, Gabriela brought up how trite it would be to create a “programmatic” work that was emulating the sounds of fire and say “this piece is about wildfires”!

As I worked on my piece, I found that it was less about making a statement or a narrative about car culture, but more about exploring how petro-culture and the climate crisis make me feel – deep anxiety, despair, and hope for a better path forward. The use of electronics allowed for an exercise in deep listening to be a part of my process. I made field recordings of the incredibly loud, visceral sounds of traffic at three very busy intersections and layered them, stacked them, and highlighted the sounds against a solo bassoon voice. The process of composing became itself a meditation for me, and my wish is for the piece to become a space for reflection and presence for future audiences.

It is my belief that any action starts with being present. My hope is that we may all fully inhabit our environments with open ears, that we refuse to passively accept our current systems as inevitable, and that by being present and aware we may find the agency and courage to change things.

Let’s Take Young Audiences Seriously

Posted on May 18, 2023 by John Liberatore - Articles, Commentary, Toolbox

Who doesn’t love Frog and Toad? One of my favorites is a story where both of the title characters sneak over to the other’s house to rake leaves, hoping to surprise their friend with the kind gesture. On the way home, unbeknownst to either of them, a gust of wind scatters the leaf piles back across both lawns. When each character gets home, they resolve to rake their own leaves the next day, and both Frog and Toad go to sleep that night feeling happy about their act of kindness. Adrianne Lobel, daughter of Frog and Toad author Arnold Lobel, suggests that her father’s famous amphibian duo was the beginning of his own coming out. Toad is such a curmudgeon, but Frog treats him with loving kindness, and together they bring out the best in each other. At its core, the Frog and Toad series is about what it means to love someone—a complicated message, distilled to the vocabulary of a first-grader.

Lobel has been on my mind lately because, for the past few months, I’ve been touring with the American Wild Ensemble, presenting an all-ages program we’re calling “Wild Imagination.” My contribution to this program is a 30-minute monodramatic adaptation of Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home, a beautifully imaginative, but lesser-known entry in the Lobel treasury. In my piece, called Owl in Five Stories, a narrator recites an animated rendition of the book, acting out Owl’s whimsical adventures with an original musical score.

Children sit and musicians perform as John Liberatore narrates in a performance of his Owl in Five Stories

From a performance of John Liberatore’s Owl in Five Stories. From left to right: Emlyn Johnson, Daniel Ketter, Tiffany Valvo, John Liberatore.
Photo credit: Jeff Burkhead. Photo used with parental permission.

Many times after a performance, an audience member has said to me some variation of the following: “You’re reaching the audience of tomorrow.” I appreciate this sentiment, but internally I push back. I’m reaching the audience of today. “The audience of tomorrow” suggests that, someday, the kids in the audience will grow up and go to a concert, and then they will be real listeners, not just kids. I hope the kids go to another concert someday. I hope the adults do too. But they came today, and that should count.

A room full of five-year-olds, the wisdom goes, can’t distinguish a Jessye Norman from a Florence Foster Jenkins. Their approval doesn’t count for your tenure dossier because no credible record attests that you performed at a high level, outshining your peers. A stigma forms around family programming as a result, as if it’s not worth the attention of someone with serious musical aspirations. But if we want to make our practice more inclusive and reach a broader audience, we need to perform and write music for spaces and people that don’t offer validation in the form of prestige.

Many artists, organizations, and institutions respond to this charge with excellent and innovative family programming. But this stigma still materializes in a certain brand of “family programming,” which I believe still dominates the forum. It leads to lukewarm afternoon programs of unrehearsed Classical Clichés with an itinerant, underpaid assistant conductor. It’s treated more like community service than serious programming, hardly a forum for innovation or real musical expression. It’s like Puffin Rock—it keeps kids busy, and it’s tolerable. This mindset comes to characterize family programming for a lot of us, so we don’t think much about it, or at least I didn’t until recently.

Since at least the 1960s, when children’s literature was just starting to gain recognition as a commercial market, some publishers have enforced a controlled vocabulary[1] on their authors. Today, Lexile scores empirically calculate the exact parameters of a child’s vocabulary, and many publishers expressly limit the words authors can use. Controlled vocabulary has its pedagogical uses, for sure, but not everything directed at kids needs to be pedagogical. In 1977, interviewer Roni Natov asked Arnold Lobel about whether his own work used a controlled vocabulary. He responded:

I wouldn’t dream of it. … I think of trying to express myself in the simplest fashion I can, but I won’t stop and not use a word that is a little longer, if there’s not a simpler word. … I’ve used words like “avalanche,” and “beautiful,” because there just isn’t another word that I could gracefully exchange them for … Once [kids] bite into reading, they’ll read anything. Once they are enjoying it, nothing stops them, even if they come to a word that they have to sort of sound out and fight with a bit.

The Classical Cliché approach to family programming subscribes to a belief that kids only grasp easily-singable melodies and stock emotions, a tepid controlled vocabulary of musical meanings. Like Lobel, I’m suggesting that we move beyond this mindset, and recognize youth programming as a serious and energizing forum for creativity.

Writing in The Atlantic, George Saunders suggested that when a piece of writing moves you, the author “imagined you generously, and you rose to the occasion.” Saunders uses Tolstoy as an example, but the same could be said about Lobel. It’s often said that a work speaks to the “inner child” within an adult. But some work speaks to the “inner grownup” within the child. Lobel imagined kids generously. He created characters with quirks and foibles and emotions, and he told stories with complicated messages. And kids rise to the occasion.

Contrary to popular wisdom, I do believe that kids can discern a truly special performance from a mediocre one. I think kids know when they’re being talked down to. They just don’t express their feelings through the same channels as adults. In writing Owl, I never felt like I was dumbing anything down. I was preoccupied with all the same challenges and obsessions that interest me when writing any piece of music. The piece even has some of those new music bonafides like multiphonics, whistle-tones, and metric modulations. It’s a demanding score written for invested performers. The challenge of writing the piece was not so much about limiting my vocabulary, but rather one of clarity. Like Lobel said, I tried to find the simplest, most direct way of speaking in the moment. I found it hugely rewarding, and I realized that family programming is full of opportunities for composers and performers.

Five such opportunities come to mind:

One: Youth programming has a built-in and deeply appreciative audience. As a musician and university professor, I have to pick and choose what events I go to, attending to my work-life balance and various obligations. As the father of school-age children, I face the opposite challenge. I want my children to have memorable experiences, and, well… I don’t want to deal with bored children on weekends. So while I am reluctantly turning down concert invitations as a professional, I am actively seeking them as a parent. If a family-friendly event also caters to my musical interests, you can bet that I’ll be there, and I’ll bring three kids in tow. That’s four people in the audience, instead of one. Or zero. This also addresses issues of inclusion for parents in New Music, which Emily Doolittle called attention to (from the perspective of motherhood) in her much-recommended 2017 article on NewMusicBox. Furthermore, parenthood is a much more cross-cultural experience than mine as a composer and professor. Which brings me to my next point.

Two: It’s inclusive. Much has been said about the unwelcoming atmosphere at Classical Music concerts. “No clapping between movements” is a favorite bugaboo for such editorials. Really, though, sitting in your chair with the lights dimmed, program in hand, while someone plays a piece, and then clapping while the person bows—that in itself is a set of cultural conventions that some people find alienating.[2] Regardless, any preconceived notions of concert etiquette go out the window when kids are involved. Kids have episodes, they run around, they crinkle candy wrappers and juice-box straws… and it’s okay. The music is still wholly appreciated, even by seasoned concertgoers, and maybe a little less ossified in the process. This kind of environment goes a long way toward breaking down cultural barriers to entry in music performance. Especially when such events are offered for free, or by optional donation, family programming has far greater potential for cross-cultural and socioeconomic inclusion than traditional programming.

Three: It invests in community. It’s not just outreach or community building. The experience of the music by those present matters. But it’s also not just a concert. It’s an impression, potentially a very lasting one, upon people less inured to live performance than most listeners who hear my music. Such programming builds awareness about contemporary music among unlikely supporters, so that maybe our next underground new music festival might be a little less removed from public awareness, and a little more welcoming. More importantly, it’s an investment in the kids who see it, many of whom might otherwise never see a professional flutist up close, or learn that there’s such a thing as a bass clarinet, or that a cello is different from a violin. Who knows what impact these encounters might have? In what other context are we so poised to make such a profound impact on even one of our listeners?

Four: Reaching young audiences promotes (and requires) creative approaches to curation as well as composition. As an example, the Danish experimental music ensemble Scenatat developed a series of Concert Walks with support from the now-defunct European agency New:Aud, an organization once dedicated to connecting Europe’s premiere new-music ensembles with young audiences. Such events don’t need to be child-centric to be child-friendly.[3] In all sectors of the New Music world right now, people are engaged with the question: what can a concert be? Bringing youth and families into this discussion is a major catalyst for creativity.

For my fifth and final point, I defer to the wisdom of Frog and Toad. In “The Dream,” the last story in Frog and Toad Together, Toad dreams himself on a stage in a huge auditorium where only Frog sits in the audience.[4] A strange voice announces “THE GREATEST TOAD IN ALL THE WORLD.”

Toad took a deep bow.
Frog looked smaller as he shouted,
‘Hooray for Toad!’
‘TOAD WILL NOW
PLAY THE PIANO VERY WELL,’
said the strange voice.

Toad played the piano,
and he did not miss a note.
‘Frog,’ cried Toad,
‘can you play the piano like this?’
‘No,’ said Frog.
It seemed to Toad
that Frog looked even smaller.

As the story goes on, Toad shows off a number of astounding feats, while Frog grows smaller and smaller, until he eventually disappears. The more Toad boasts and shows off, the more he (literally) belittles Frog, and the more he distances himself from what matters, until he loses it completely. Talk about a complex message for young readers.

I’m guessing anybody trying to make a go at a career in the performing arts understands the exhaustion of perpetual one-upmanship. We are all under such pressure to “count”—to add to those dreary lists of names, venues, awards, and commissions that, if we’re lucky, render our professional bios unreadable. Yes, this is a terribly unhealthy fallacy, which I know to be irrational and destructive, but which I confess remains lodged somewhere in my composer id. The thing is, kids don’t care about any of that, and it’s just so wonderfully refreshing. They don’t care if you’re the greatest toad in all the world. They do care about sincerity, directness, and honesty. They know when someone is taking them seriously. It’s a very healthy exercise as an individual and as a community to pause and take stock of how we might try to communicate something important to children.

Many other reasons to invest in family-friendly New Music could be added to this list, some of which I have touched upon, and others which deserve their own articles: accessibility, cultural impact, activism, and even economic reasons come to mind. Fundamentally, though, each of these reasons comes back to the same point: Music, and New Music especially, is about community. Obviously, not all events, aesthetics, and messages are suitable for children. My next few projects are not expressly written for young audiences. But having spent so much creative energy over the last year with young audiences in mind, I believe I have grown as a composer and a person. I believe our community will grow stronger if we take young audiences more seriously.[5]

A room full of five-year-olds, the wisdom goes, can’t distinguish a Jessye Norman from a Florence Foster Jenkins. Their approval doesn’t count for your tenure dossier because no credible record attests that you performed at a high level, outshining your peers. A stigma forms around family programming as a result.

John Liberatore

A certain brand of “family programming” still dominates the forum. It leads to lukewarm afternoon programs of unrehearsed Classical Clichés with an itinerant, underpaid assistant conductor. It’s treated more like community service than serious programming, hardly a forum for innovation or real musical expression.

John Liberatore

Contrary to popular wisdom, I do believe that kids can discern a truly special performance from a mediocre one. I think kids know when they’re being talked down to. They just don’t express their feelings through the same channels as adults.

John Liberatore

Youth programming has a built-in and deeply appreciative audience.

John Liberatore

Kids have episodes, they run around, they crinkle candy wrappers and juice-box straws… and it’s okay. The music is still wholly appreciated, even by seasoned concertgoers, and maybe a little less ossified in the process.

John Liberatore

Youth programming invests in community. It’s not just outreach or community building. The experience of the music by those present matters. But it’s also not just a concert. It’s an impression, potentially a very lasting one, upon people less inured to live performance. Such programming builds awareness about contemporary music among unlikely supporters, so that maybe our next underground new music festival might be a little less removed from public awareness, and a little more welcoming.

John Liberatore

Reaching young audiences promotes and requires creative approaches to curation as well as composition.

John Liberatore

It's a very healthy exercise as an individual and as a community to pause and take stock of how we might try to communicate something important to children.

John Liberatore

I believe our community will grow stronger if we take young audiences more seriously.

John Liberatore

[1] I apologize for the irony of linking to JSTOR here, since I realize that not everyone has access to it. Still, the concept of Controlled Vocabulary is fairly ubiquitous and easily investigated through search engines.

[2] Whether or not Classical Music describes what we do, many of the readers of this blog will surely participate in events that share at least some of these conventions. It’s fine—I love these kinds of concerts! But the experience is far from universal.

[3] Quite a bit of what makes an event family-friendly has to do with presentation, and not repertoire per se. I thank Emily Doolittle for making this point, both in her aforementioned article, and in personal correspondence. In this article, I am primarily talking about the creation and performance of kid-friendly repertoire, leaving suggestions for presentation to other writers. Though as projects like Concert Walks demonstrate, content and presentation are not always separable, and family-centric programming encourages us to think this way.

[4] I sympathize with Toad’s low turnout in proportion to the size of the venue.

[5] I’d like to thank Emlyn Johnson, Daniel Ketter, and Tiffany Valvo for bringing Wild Imagination to life, and for our conversations that led to this article.