You know it’s funny, how sometimes our lives seem to go in circles.

Except sometimes, the circles are really spirals, they bring us to a higher level of whatever it is.

This is something that came out very powerfully for me tonight as I thought about an idea that I’d been fantasizing about for many years, except this time I wasn’t just thinking about it as a dream, but rather as a goal. A gigantic, hairy, audacious goal, but a goal nonetheless. About a week ago in the first session of the Cash and Joy Provocateurs, Catherine Caine asked me to do just that. She asked each of us in the group to share our Big Harry Audacious Goal. It wasn’t something I had thought much about, but after just a moment I realized that there is one thing that kept coming up in different ways almost for as long as I can remember, and I knew that this was my BHAG.

I want to share it with you, but I also need to understand that while this goal is tremendous at the moment it’s very much what Havi calls “a tiny, sweet thing.” So it needs to be handled with care, and that’s what I’m doing here.

So what is this thing?

It’s an event, actually a series of events, each one with over 10,000 people in attendance. A sort of rally of transformation, alchemy, wonder, spirit and outright magic.

I can feel how my whole life is leading to this point, for me to be standing on the stage telling stories, weaving processes of spiritual alchemy, as we gently but powerfully allow the shifts within each of us to take the next steps becoming even more ourselves.

This isn’t just a speech, or a workshop. It’s a fully immersive experience. We use lighting, projections, sound and other tools of the theater to create an environment which envelops everyone who attends, and completely surrounds them. This environment can change and morph from one moment to the next as the stories and dreams unfold.

I could go on and on, I think I have shared what wants to be shared at the moment about this.

Let me answer some questions that you might be thinking before I go:

When will this happen?

I don’t know, it will happen when it’s ready, and I’m ready.

Where will it be? How much will it cost? Where do I sign up?

I’m thrilled that you’re interested, but I don’t really know that either.

Don’t you realize that this will never work? That events like this are too expensive, too hard, crazy, or whatever?

I truly appreciate your concern, and I’m not trying to do this next week. I know that there’s a lot to it, and that there are probably lots of places where things can go wrong (there are in every endeavor, large or small.) But please understand that the biggest mistake I could make is to not do this, it is the calling of my heart.

Can I help?

Maybe? Probably? I’m not in a place yet to look for partners, or people to help, or even know what kind of help I would be looking for. However, that will change, when the time comes, so watch this space. If you like, leave a note in the comments about your interest, and I’ll keep you in mind.

Today I want to be very specific about what kind of comments I’m looking for. As I said, this is a tiny, sweet thing, which needs to be protected and cared for as it grows and solidifies. I would love your support, and if reading this sparks something super exciting in you, I’d love to hear about that too. If you think I’m nuts, you’re probably right, but please, keep it to yourself for the moment. I’m not looking for advice, criticism, or even really suggestions, I most love to hear how this resonates with you, in your heart, if there’s something you truly feel moved to share.

Thank you for letting me share my Big Hairy Audacious Goal with you. Don’t be surprised if I don’t talk about this much for a while, then again don’t be surprised if I do. I’m just excited to see how my tiny, sweet thing grows.

I’m not sure how I was first introduced to Barbara Cook’s music.  Actually, that’s not quite true – I first heard her a a kid growing up listening to the broadway cast album of The Music Man she was the original Marian the Librarian. I clearly remember not liking her all that much – her voice was to “legit” sounding, too “operatic” for my 8 or 9 year old taste.

Barbara has had an amazing carier in musicals, but that’s not where I was reintroduced to her – somewhere I got one of her more recent concert performances – she’s been doing her own cabaret shows for at least the last 30 years or so – and at age 82 she’s still brilliant – maybe better then ever.  Just listen to this – recorded a few years ago in Melbourne:

Listening to Barbara I feel like I’m not hearing words or notes, but more like pure story and emotion.  She doesn’t tell you a story, she weave’s it around you.

Here’s some more

And the grand finale (at least for the moment)

On Friday one of her songs came up in shuffle on my iTunes – and it just stopped me – I stopped working and just listened. She does it to me every time.
Now that’s brilliant!

photo credit: libraryman

As promised in my post on Tuesday, today I’m going to give you a look behind the scenes at the technology that I used to create the projections for The Planets.

This basically breaks down into two sections, creating the media to be projected, and actually running the show.

Creating The Media

On Tuesday I mentioned the DigitalSky 2 software which I used to create the 3-D space visualization sequences. The system is extremely sophisticated, and in fact has its own scripting language. By writing scripts I’m able to “fly” the camera through the 3-D model of the universe. It can also manipulate what objects are visible, and increasing or decreasing their size. In order to create the effect that I was looking for, I often had to increase the size of the planets and moons in view. This is because the distances in space are so gigantic, compared to the size of even the largest planets and moons.

The other major elements in the piece are mostly NASA images. There is a tremendous amount of maturity are available here, which was a great blessing, though as you can imagine, it could complicate the process of selecting material. In general I was looking for a combination of the most spectacular, beautiful and highest resolution images available. Fortunately, many images were available at far above HD resolution. The higher the resolution of the image, the more choices I have in how to use it. With the largest images, I’m able to show a small portion of the image, and then slowly move across it. This is the so-called “Ken Burns effect.” This effect allows me to take a static image, and give it motion.

Projecting The Show

When I set out to do projections for any piece were I’m collaborating as a part of a live performance, one of my primary goals is to not do anything to get in the way of the performers. One of the things that this means, is that I don’t want to create projections as a movie. It would’ve been very easy to create the projections and burn them onto DVD, and then just hit play at the beginning of each movement. The problem with that, is that then the conductor would have to follow the timing of the projections in order to stay synchronized. To my mind, that’s an unacceptable compromise to ask for in most cases.

My answer is a software package called  QLab. This amazing Macintosh software allows me to create each “visual event” of the show as a separate cue. By doing that, I’m able to essentially “edit” the projections in real time, during the performance. I read the score as the orchestra performs, and trigger each cue at the appropriate moment in music. This allows the conductor the flexibility to adjust the tempo as it feels right, and I’m still able to keep everything in perfect synchronization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind-the-scenes of The Planets. Do you have questions? Please ask in the comments, I’d be happy to do my very best to answer them for you.

So in my last post, which now feels like ages ago, I mentioned that I was going to be creating a gigantic projection design for Holst’s suite The Planets, to be performed with The Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra.

It had been my intention to blog about the creative process as I was creating the piece. As you may have determined by now, that didn’t happen. Instead, I ended up putting virtually every free moment I had into creating the projections. It was worth it.

The performance was really extraordinary, and received an extended standing ovation with the conductor being called back for additional bows three times.

More importantly, the audience was truly engaged by the combination of music and imagery. I was able to talk to a number of members of the audience after the show, and was really blown away by the response.

At some point, I will have some extended excerpts from the piece to share with you, I am dealing with some technical issues about how to convert them into a format that I can upload.

What I do have, that I can share with you now, is the trailer that I created as a preview for the orchestra’s website.

I’d also like to share with you my program notes, which I think will give you some idea of my thought process and creative process.

Creating imagery for “The Planets” is a daunting task for a projection designer. Holst’s amazing music was written about the astrological planets, that is to say, the significance that the planets have in classical astrology. In Holst’s time, the beauty of the astronomical planets
(the actual objects in space) was just beginning to be discovered through powerful telescopes, and was not widely known.

Today, we are fortunate to have an amazing and almost endless catalogue of images of the universe. Images, from ground-based telescopes  and spacecraft such as Hubble and the Mars Rovers provide an incredible wealth of scientific knowledge and also of visual texture and beauty. It is in this second capacity, as artistic images, that I draw on them for this piece. I also draw heavily on the 3-D space visualizations which it is possible to create using modern computers and the amazing DigitalSky 2 software. This software was created here in New Hampshire by Sky-Skan, and is used in
planetariums all over the world.

Each movement begins with imagery of the planet that it is named for, from there we go wherever the music and the visual rhythm of the
imagery lead. In some movements we explore the planet and its moons, in others we fly to the very edge of the visible universe. I’ve made a choice not to be bound by the science of what these objects are, but simply to allow the music to lead my eye wherever in the universe it is drawn. So I invite you to approach experiencing this
piece as I do, as a feast for the ears and the eyes, and let your heart take flight.

I’ll have another post going up on Thursday where I’ll talk about some of the technology behind the show.

And by the way,  I’d love to bring The Planets to a performance hall near you!  If you know of a local performance of The Planets that might be interested in projections, please let me know!

A couple of weeks ago I spend 4 days in a local elementary school with an inflatable planetarium.  I did shows during the day for all of the classes in the school (20 shows in all) and then did brief, 12 minute public shows in the evenings(18 of those).  In all, 600+ people saw a show in the dome.

After a couple of the public shows, I gave the audiences a peek behind the scenes. Here's my Mac desktop on the dome, warped by the mirror.

I have to say, I had an amazingly good time – the teachers and students were wonderful – and the kids had amazing questions.  But I’ll talk about that another time…  What I want to talk about today is the geeky end of the whole thing – and how it’s possible to set up a portable, inflatable digital planetarium.

The Dome

The dome, made by Go-Dome, is inflated much like a bounce house at a fair, except that it has no floor – it just sits on the floor of the room it is set up in.  You roll it out on the floor and it inflates in a couple of minutes.  The kids (and adults) really enjoy squeezing through the airlock to get inside.

The dome set up and ready for an audience.

The Projection and the Mirror

The projection technology I used is very cool.  It was originally developed by Paul Bourke, an Australian academic who works on 3d, dome projection and related ideas. The problem with digital projection in domes traditionally is that it either requires many projectors, blended together, or a very very expensive custom fisheye lens.  Paul realized that a single projector aimed at a 1/2 hemisphere mirror would cover almost the entire dome.  He then figured out the warping process that’s necessary to pre-distort the images to be projected, so when the are distorted by the curvature of the mirror, they come out right on the dome.   If you’d like to know more about this process in detail, check out Paul’s pages on spherical mirror dome projection.

I used a commercial implementation of Paul’s technology from Discovery Dome.  It encloses the  (fragile) mirror in a case which opens up.  The projector goes under the mirror facing forward, the light bounces off a flat mirror, and then off the spherical mirror on to the dome.  This keeps the projector out of the way….

Here's a look at the back of the dome - the funny looking thing towards the upper right is the spherical mirror setup. I'm to the right behind the computers.

The Computers

All of the images were generated from my MacbookPro, and I used a Macbook for control of certain things on the projection computer – more on that later.

The software I ran is an open source project called Nightshade, which is a fork of Stellarium specifically for use in domes.  By using a combination of live keyboard commands in Nightshade and running scripts written in Nightshades scripting language that I wrote, I had a very powerful and flexible planetarium that I could use interactively to take the shows where ever the kids questions lead.

That interactivity is where the 2nd computer came in – running scripts in Nightshade requires going several levels deep in a menu and taking more time the I wanted.  That is for all the scripts except the demo which runs from a keyboard shortcut.  So I wrote a shell script to give me a menu of my scripts and rename whichever one I wanted to run “demo.sts.” so I could run it with the hotkey.

The only problem is that when Nighshade is running, it takes over the displays completely – no way to have a terminal open to run my script in.  So I brought the Macbook – I used it to SSH into the Nightshade computer and run my shell script.  So I used the Macbook to select scripts, and the MacbookPro right in Nightshade to do everything else.

It’s kind of a hack, but it worked great.

Try it yourself

By the way – If I’ve gotten you interested in trying to do something like this on your own, you can home build your own planetarium.  I particularly like the instructions on the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope site. You can use this with Nightshade, or with the MS WorldWide Telescope – which I highly recommend.  In fact I would have used it in my shows if I had known about it at the time – it’s not a replacement for Nightshade (in my view) but a great compliment to it, and an amazing piece of work.  Lots of fun on your desktop to – you don’t need to run it in a planetarium.

Here I am in front of the dome at the end of a long day of shows.

On to the Planets

Now I’m moving on to another astronomically related projection project – I’m creating giant projections that will accompany the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Holst’s suite The Planets.  The Performance will be on June 6th at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH.  I’m going to be blogging about my design process along the way, so keep an eye out for that, coming up soon.

Planetariums are magical places for many of us – I’d love to hear stories about your first or most memorable planetarium visit in the comments!

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to do a massive projection design for The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace when it was performed by The Community Church of Durham.

This is a massive choral work by composer Karl Jenkins, and is the single most powerful piece of music I have ever experienced.

You can listen to the opening movement here:

Sorry – the service that provided that (lala.com) has been shut down.  All I can suggest now is that you buy the album, but it’s totally worth it.

Click here to buy from iTunes!

Or click here to buy the CD or MP3s from Amazon

And just to give you a peak behind the curtains:

Here’s a photo of all of the computers and the main projections that made everything happen.

I sat down at my compute tonight, and something promoted insisted that I look at Twitter.  I knew somehow I had to listen.  Almost immediately, my eyes fell on a retweet by Natalie Christie (The Tiny Soprano) which had a link to the video below.  I don’t want to say anything about it, other then to ask you to take the time to watch it.  It’s 9 minutes long, and so worth it.  Don’t miss the surprise at the end.

I have so much I want to say about this, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anything quite yet.

So I’ll do something different, and ask you to begin the conversation in the comments, then I’ll chime in there as well. There is so much here to talk about!

Today, particularly in this economy, it seems to be very popular among the “art” crowd to moan about the financial problems of orchestras, opera, and particularly more avant-garde forms of art and performance. To these folks, losing these institutions is a great tragedy, and I agree with them, but maybe not for the same reason.

This was brought into focus for me by Nathalie Christie, “The Tiny Soprano,” in her post Can Art Afford To Ignore An Audience.

I think it’s really an important question, particularly for those of us who are artists and performers, to consider what is it that makes a piece of art or performance “good” or “important”? Is it the opinion of a small group of experts: other artists, reviewers, etc.? Is it only the opinion of the creator of the piece that actually matters? Is it a matter of the audiences opinion? Or is it even something to be discussed? Something left to be determined by the divine (if the artist believes in such a thing)?

I have a very strong opinion about this, and it’s one that’s not currently popular in many circles. I believe that the quality and the importance of a given work can only be determined by the audience who is experiencing that work. Yes, I really do think it’s up to the audience. Now, does that mean that we should all program to the lowest common denominator, of course not. We, as the creators get to define who we are creating for. However, if we’re creating a piece that is difficult to grok, we need to be prepared when people who don’t like difficult work don’t like it. That’s okay.

But there’s more to it, if we’re not happy with the size of our current audience (symphony orchestras and opera companies, are you listening?) It’s up to us to reach out in some way. I see two basic ways of doing this, either find stuff to perform which more people will like, or find more people who like the stuff we perform. I want to talk about both of these.

Finding stuff to perform which more people will like, is often a very unpopular thing to do. It’s seen as programming to the lowest common denominator, and somehow that’s bad. I think it can be bad if it’s the only thing that we’re doing. On the other hand, it can be a way of extending a hand and welcome to people who might not otherwise come. It also generates needed funds from people purchasing tickets. So, it can be one important part of building a larger audience.

Finding more people who like the stuff we do can also be hard, often many of them are already coming, and it takes a lot of work to find a few more.

I actually think, the most important thing to do is a third thing. Help people who don’t know that they love our stuff, even the difficult, not so accessible stuff, to discover that they can love it. Let me tell you a story:

When I was in college, I joined a coed professional performing arts fraternity called Kappa Gamma Psi. One of the things about this group which was really amazing is the variety of backgrounds, and performance styles which members came from. This is a great thing for me to be exposed to, and that was illustrated by one particular experience that I want to share with you. Early in my association with the group, it might even have been while I was pledging, although I don’t remember, my big sister Ruth called me one night and asked me to come down to one of the practice rooms in the music school. She was working on a piece for her recital, and wanted to play it for somebody.

I went, and sat in this tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her cello as she played a suite for solo cello by George Crumb. Crumb is a modern composer, who writes some very strange stuff, which was not at all my taste at the time. As I listened, I found the piece very, very strange, but I also found it captivating and powerful. A number of things happened that night, one of them was that I fell in love with the cello, and another one was that my mind was opened to a new kind of music.

As I was putting my thoughts together for this post, I searched YouTube for a performance of this piece, and when I found it I was surprised that it didn’t seem as strange as I remembered. I find that fascinating, but I have been stretched in what I listen to by experiences like this.

So what was it that allowed me to expand my definition of “interesting and good” music? Well, part of it is an invitation, if I hadn’t been invited to hear it I would’ve never had the opportunity to like it. But there’s more to it than that, it’s also being able to experience it at full power, at close range. That’s a different experience than listening from the back of a concert hall. And there’s also learning about it, discussing it with people who know, so that I can listen in a way that it feels less foreign.

So I think that there is some important lessons here about how to build an audience:

1. You have to invite them in
2. Create opportunities to have optimal, full power experiences of the material
3. Give audience members an opportunity to learn more about what they are going to hear or have just heard

I think that Benjamin Zander, in his work with the Boston Philharmonic has demonstrated the power of this. He gives brilliant pre-concert lectures about the music that is about to be performed, typically 75% of the concert audience comes to the lecture, and they sell out virtually every concert that they give. I think this is a really good model.

It’s also helpful to mix the familiar and the unfamiliar, this was Arthur Fiedler‘s great innovation as the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. He would create a program in three parts, the first part was selections of the recently popular favorites and light classics that the orchestra was known for. Then, having made the audience comfortable, he would present a “heavier or more difficult” major piece, then in the third segment of the program he would play timeless, favorite music. It gave people in his audiences a gentle introduction to stretching their palette. I think this is also a really good model.

So what do you think? What makes good art? How do we build the audience for the art that we think is important?

I want to share with you a YouTube Concert in tribute to one of my very favorite performers, Victor Borge.  Victor’s secret was that he was both a brilliant comedian and a virtuoso pianist – and he never let his comedy get in the way of great piano playing, or his great music get in the way of brilliant comedy.  He was known as The Clown Prince of Denmark and The Great Dane. So let me get out of the way now, and invite you to enjoy a most unique and wonderful artist, preserved through the magic of YouTube.

To end with a grand finale, one of Victor Borge’s most famous pieces, Phonetic Punctuation, performed here by Victor with Dean Martin.

I hope you have enjoyed this concert/tribute as much as I enjoyed putting it together.  Victor was a true master, and is very much missed by many, including me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, responses and memories in the comments.

A few days ago someone on Twitter (I wish I could remember who) mentioned cellist, Zoe Keating. I was not at all familiar with her or her music, though I’m a great fan of the cello ever since a college friend asking to be the test audience for a piece she was working on for her recital. Sitting in a little tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her instrument, was an incredibly powerful, visceral experience, that left me with a great love of this instrument.

Zoe takes an extremely unusual approach to the cello, or rather to what can be done with the sounds that the cello makes. She creates her music by playing segments, and using electronics to record them and loop them so they play over and over again. By doing this, she creates amazing layers of sound, and creates an entire orchestra from her cello alone.

Listen to this:

Now here’s a short interview with Zoe where she talks about how she makes this amazing stuff:

If you like this music, check out her website at http://www.zoekeating.com.

So of course when I discovered how cool Zoe’s music is a naturally followed her on Twitter. She is @Zoecello.

Then today she tweeted about a new band that she just found out about called The Finches.

You’ve got to see this:

Pretty amazing, isn’t it. And by the way, if you’re thinking that this is faked, I’m quite confident that it isn’t.

This was done as a part of an art installation called “Rhythms of Life,” at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It’s an installation piece done by the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

I know these are far from the typical music most of us listen to on a daily basis (me included.) I’ll be interested to hear what you think of them.

One of the most amazing things that technology is making possible is long-distance collaboration. We are able to work together in ways that we never have before. Blogs like this one are a perfect example, people comment, and join in the discussion from all around the world. But much more intimate and direct collaboration is also possible. Over the last few days, I’ve been talking with folks in the southern US about giving a talk at a conference in Kentucky. Thing is, I’d be giving the talk from New Hampshire through Web conferencing. It’s pretty cool.

It struck me this morning just how powerful this is when I ran across a link on twitter to this video:

It was created by a group called Playing For Change. They believe, and I agree, that one way to create peace is to bring individuals from around the world together collaborating in creation. One of the really cool things about this type of project, is that even when it’s “finished” we can still continue to collaborate, by sharing the work across the Internet, and in person. Here’s another video from Playing For Change which is fair introduction of themselves, and has another great song.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these videos and music, I know I did, but the real question is, what are you going to do now? How are you going to use this to make a difference? Share it with the people you love. Pass it around the Internet. Maybe host a party to show the Playing For Change film. I’m looking into showing it at the theater were I am the technical director.

How have you been moved by technology enabled collaboration? Please share in the comments.

As I write these words, 2009 about to become 2010. And I’m looking back on one particular aspect of my life which I enjoyed very much, which I had to put on hiatus during this last year.

A Classic Zeiss Planetarium Star Projector

For quite a few years I’ve been a part-time educator/presenter at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, in Concord, New Hampshire. The planetarium is the state of New Hampshire’s official memorial to the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe. Of course, Christa was one of the astronauts killed in the Challenger disaster. After much discussion about how to officially remember her, it was decided that a planetarium was the best possible thing — a living institution of teaching and learning.

I have to say, I love doing planetarium shows — it’s something that I have a great time doing. One of the really cool things about the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium is a commitment to doing live shows. While some of the shows on each day’s schedule are pre-recorded (which allows for something much more spectacular,) many shows are at least partially live, and there’s at least one show which is entirely live — Tonight’s Sky. For most presenters, me included, Tonight’s Sky was the most fun show to do. We had pretty much free reign of topics so long as it was something that generally fit under the title of Tonight’s Sky. When I did the show, before we started I would always ask the audience if there was anything that they were hoping to see, or learn about in the show. Often I would get a list of very interesting questions, and would build the show around them — completely customizing it to a particular audience in the theater. To me, this was great fun to do.

Not surprisingly, as someone who loves stories, I would often balance technically heavy content with mythology and stories from all over the world. I would try to reference mythology from at least three continents in every show, and I almost always was able to do that. Sometimes, particularly with younger audiences, I would devote five or more minutes to telling a full story based around a constellation or another object in the sky. I even carried a bamboo flute with me in the theater, I would pick up the flute and played for a few phrases to set the story apart from the scientific content and the rest of the show.

While working at the Planetarium, I saw a lot of planetarium shows, each one many times. This allowed me to study them in depth. Often, when we think about seeing a planetarium show, we think about it in visual terms — the spectacle of the projected sky, amazing and unexplainable special-effects, and feeling like we’re looking into or even traveling through the depths of space. To me though, the thing that made the most successful shows so successful was not a matter of visual production quality, it was a matter of storytelling. The best shows took their topic and wove it into a story — occasionally a literal story where we’re following characters, but more often presenting information in the form of a story — a powerful opening that gets our attention, and inciting event that draws us forward, a course of action that builds to a climax, and a resolution with reflection on the journey.

Unfortunately, the Planetarium is over an hour away from just about everything else I do, and it just became too difficult for me to schedule with any regularity. So I finally had to admit that at least for the time being I had to let it go. I’m sad about that, and I’m sure I’ll be back in one form or another to working under the dome. In fact, I’m about to embark on a different kind of astronomical journey shortly. I’m going to be designing massive, full stage projections for the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestras presentation of The Planets in June. I’ll be talking more about that project here, as I get more involved in doing it.

Well, it’s now 2010. Time for bed.

What is it that makes great art great? I’ve often seen people try to answer this question in a technical way, and have even been guilty of doing that myself on occasion; but I really think that it’s not about anything technical. Great art speaks to you in an intangible way that reaches to your very core. It may bring a deep sense of peace, or a sense of discomfort in the unsettled — but it moves you in a way that’s profoundly real. So as someone who creates art, the question becomes how do you do that?

Great art is in the eye and heart of the audience. (photo by Peasap)

There’re a number of things that have been helpful to me in my work, I’ve found that either technical mastery or technical inexperience tend to be good starting points — one end of the spectrum the technique is so natural that it’s not in the way, at the other end of the spectrum there is no sense of technique or how it should be to get in the way. I’m reminded of Prof. Peter Rothbart who I studied electroacoustic music with at Ithaca College. In one of the first intro classes he suggested that those of us who were not really accomplished keyboard players not try to play the synthesizer like a piano but rather treat the keyboard like a row of buttons so that our creativity was not stifled by lack of technical ability.

I’ve also found that for me it’s important to “empty the cup,” that is to stay to start from a position of no expectation about what the outcome will be. When I begin a new design, I do my very best to set aside any preconceived notions and simply read the script and/or score and see what it has to say. Only then, am I ready to talk to the director, with my initial impressions firmly in my mind to ground me.

But I still don’t think that these are the things that make for great art, I believe they can certainly help to facilitate it, but there’s something else. Whenever I do what I later looked back on as some of my best work, I home to a critical point where I am getting out of my way, and letting the work “do,” rather than me doing the work. I really don’t know how else to explain this, in a way it’s very strange, and in a way it’s very natural. It really is about letting go and letting the music, or the imagery, or the stage picture, or the talk comes through me. When I’m able to do that, that’s where the real magic is.

In college, I was fortunate to meet and study with Prof. Carol McAmis in the Ithaca College School of Music. Carol is a professor of voice, but she’s also a teacher of something called The Feldenkrais Method, and that’s what I studied with her. Moshe Feldenkrais was an Israeli physicist, judo master and teacher. He was one of the people who created the field which is now known generally as Somatic Education — that is to say teaching the body. The Feldenkrais Method uses very sophisticated patterns of extremely small, extremely gentle movements to help you to learn at a very deep level how to use your body more efficiently.

So what does this look like?

In a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class with Carol, we would all come in and lay down on blankets on the floor of a large rehearsal room. Carol would sit on a stool and mostly read sets of instructions for the movements that we were to make. The things that is so amazing about doing this work is that you would lay on the ground, following the instructions, often feeling like you are doing nothing of any consequence. Yet, when you would get up and very mindfully walk around at the end of the lesson, I was often shocked by how different I felt, how much lighter or taller or thinner or fatter or what ever — but very different, and always somehow easier and more elegant.

One of the aspects of this work which I found so amazing is that there’s no right way to do it. Carol would never correct us in any direct way. She might give general clarification about something, but you had to figure out for yourself if what she was saying applied to you or not, everything applied to everyone in one sense, and no one in another. This is one of the key parts of the method, allowing people to have their own experience and process of discovery. It was truly amazing how sometimes the various members of our class would interpret the instructions in such radically different ways, and yet still receive powerful benefits.

You want me to put what where???

Often the instructions would become confusing, sometimes even disorienting, Carol’s response to this was always the same “enjoy your confusion.” This turned out to be an extremely profound statement for me, and one that continues to affect how I think today. By telling us to enjoy our confusion, she was suggesting a number of things. The first is that confusion is okay, and that it was not necessary to try to only many it immediately. It also taught us to stay in the experience, to really experience, accept, and embrace the confusion. It also started a process for me of learning that I could get excited when I hit a point of confusion, because most often that was the state which came just before discovery. This is something that has stayed with me, and which I remind myself of to this day. It’s an incredibly powerful thing.

When I was putting together this blog post I found a YouTube video of Moshe Feldenkrais himself talking about the importance of letting each person have their own path of discovery.

So, the next time you find yourself feeling like you don’t know which end is up, let me encourage you to stop worrying and enjoy your confusion.

A Merry Christmas Eve to you all!

I hope you are enjoying the time however you choose to recognize (or not) the holiday, it’s a wonderful time of year.

Photo by Jurvetson

I am very fortunate to live near my family, and had dinner with my parents and my sister tonight. It was wonderful, my dad made roast beef and popovers — a favorite meal for all of us. We had a great time. I’m so grateful, both that I live so close to my family, and I have such a wonderful relationship with them. And even though our family is Jewish, and we really don’t celebrate Christmas at all, somehow this time of year always manages to bring us together, if only because there’s nothing else to do, so why not have a party.

In any case, I got home tonight and out of the blue was struck with inspiration. I was inspired to record one of my favorite Christmas songs, so I could share it with you. So now, you get to hear me sing, something I don’t do nearly enough these days. I gathered up the Virtual Symphony Orchestra (who fortunately get the same pay rate even on Christmas) and we laid down the track. Here it is for you to listen and enjoy:

Hear Andy Sing!

Enjoy the season!

I said yesterday, that there was a whole area of music which I love that is so big and so unknown that it needed its own post. So, let me introduce you to the Theater Pipe Organ. Now, this is an instrument unlike the organs that you find in churches, or the Hammond B3′s which are commonly used in blues and rock, they really are a unique beast.

A little bit of background, silent films were never really silent. They certainly didn’t have a recorded soundtrack, but they were always shown with live musical accompaniment. In small towns, this was often provided by a pianist, but most theaters used an orchestra. As you can imagine, this became rather expensive for the theater owners. The Theatre pipe organ, more formally known as the Unit Orchestra, was, as the name implies, designed to give a single organist access to as much of the tonal range of the orchestra as it was possible to create with a 1920s pneumatic technology.

The instruments are amazing. In addition to the pipe work, most of these instruments have a tremendous variety of auxiliary sounds. Most of them have a piano which is played from the organ console, as well as various percussion instruments, also played from the organ console. These percussion instruments can include everything from glockenspiels and vibraphones to drums of every description to gongs, chimes, and castanets.

Of course, this tremendous range of both pipes and auxiliary instruments gives the theater organ an amazing range of both tone color and volume. A big theater organ at the top of its volume range can easily compete with many rock bands, yet often it is played at barely above a whisper. This ability to move through such an enormous dynamic range creates an amazing listening experience as a song can build from a single soft flute to literally shaking the building.

Of course the introduction of “talking pictures” spelled the beginning of the end for theater organs, at least in common use. Fortunately, quite a number of instruments have been preserved in many locations which range from private homes to theaters to at least one church that I know of and perhaps most unusually, pizza parlors. Much of the work of preserving these instruments is due to the incredibly hard work by members of the American Theater Organ Society, and its chapters.

Of course, all of this talk is somewhat meaningless. It’s about the sound. Before you listen, let me tell you that an instrument of such wide dynamic range is very difficult both to record, and to playback accurately. While this video gives you some sense of the range and power of the instrument, it’s nothing like the experience of hearing it in person.

So hopefully, that gives you something to whet your appetite to hear the theater organ.

I’m also a fan of the classical pipe organ and particularly of the organist Cameron Carpenter, who I think may be the greatest organist who has ever lived. He has both incredible musicianship and technical ability on the instrument which seems superhuman. Check out this video of Cameron playing his arrangement of Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude.

For those of you who happen to live relatively near me here in New England, we have a number of very fine theater organ venues. To find out about upcoming concerts, the best thing to do is to check out the website of the Eastern Massachusetts Chapter of The American Theater Organ Society. All of the venues where they produce events have good organs, however the Shanklin Music Hall is an extraordinary venue, in Groton Massachusetts. If you ever have the chance, you should experience it at least once.

So, have I opened your eyes, and maybe changed your mind a little bit about what the organ can do and how interesting it is? I’d love to hear your response in the comments!

I think that many of us are deeply moved by music. I believe, in fact that music has it’s own spirit, almost a sentience of its own, and when a musician is able to really let go and allow their playing to be carried by this spirit of music absolute magic happens. I love a tremendous variety of music, much of its styles and artists who are not well known at all.

I was reminded of this today when I was reading a post called The Songs That Saved My Life on the blog of sound healer Fabeku Fatunmise. (Click here for pronunciation instructions.) In my life, I’ve been very fortunate to not have the kind of experiences that he describes, but in much the same way music is something I have often turned to when I wanted help moving through something difficult. At these times, I always turn to music which resonates with me in some particularly powerful way. I think often the reason for that resonance is this connection where the artists are allowing the music to flow through them, rather than trying to control the performance.

Apple iPod (photo by 1Happysnapper)

I want to share with you in this post some of the music that has touched me deeply at one time or another in my life, my hope is that you may be introduced to something that touches you as well.

When I’m looking for comfort, more then anything else, the album I turn to is The Visit by Loreena McKennitt. She starts from a celtic base but blends seamlessly sounds from all over the world. Her music touches me deeply, and is just wonderful for getting unstuck or being soothed if that’s what I need.

I first heard The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams when my friend Sonja Bode played it on her recital when we were in college. I think it affected me so powerfully because the piece is so close to her heart – and that came through so powerfully. It is an amazing musical flight.

And then there was jazz

I love early jazz and ragtime, it moves me in a way that even the best “modern” jazz doesn’t seem to. There are so many amazing performers in this area, who I’ve had the honor to work with as the sound engineer for the Traditional Jazz Series at the University of New Hampshire.  I know that by mentioning any of them I’m going to leave someone out, but the groups that come to mind are The Wolverine Jazz Band, Bria and Jim’s Borderline Jazz Band, The Back Bay Ramblers and I know I’m forgetting several wonderful groups….

I can’t leave the subject of jazz without telling you about one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and getting to know. And that is the amazing trumpeter Clark Terry. I’ve been fortunate to both work and hang out with Clark on many of his visits to the University of New Hampshire over the last 10 years. While he has not been able to visit us often in the last year or so due to health, traditionally Clark has visited UNH twice a year. Clark is truly a jazz legend, the only musician who played in the orchestras of both Duke Ellington and Count Basie, been there and done that. Even now, in his 80s, he continues to be passionate about sharing the language of jazz with a new generation of musicians. Listening to Clark play is amazing, there is so much music in every one of his notes, it’s just a pleasure to hear.

Here is a video of Clark performing one of his most famous pieces “Mumbles.”   This is absolutely classic Clark Terry.   And by the way, keep in mind that he was 86 or 87 years old when this was recorded.

After hearing him perform this piece many times over the years, I asked him after a concert a few years ago where the idea for “Mumbles” came from. He told me the story, when he was young it was not uncommon for really lousy singers to tip the pianist in a bar or club to let them sing a few tunes. And according to Clark what they sounded like is pretty much what you hear when he does this tune.   I can imagine that they could’ve possibly sounded as good as Clark does, but it’s an interesting story of finding inspiration in an odd place.

And on to the theater….

I’m also a tremendous fan of musical theater, but to do that any justice would take all day, so it’s going to have to wait for another post.

But there is one more thing…

But that one more thing is so big, and so unusual that it needs its own post as well, so stay tuned for that one tomorrow.   (If you want to be sure you know when it’s posted, just fill out the form in the sidebar on the right, to get an e-mail whenever I make a new post on this blog.)

So tell me in the comments about some of the music that has really moved you, in your life.

I have a couple of special treats to share with you for the holidays. My (Jewish) family has always seemed to find it somewhat perplexing that I like Christmas music, in fact I like it rather a lot, though I couldn’t tell you why. So in the holiday spirit I have three things that I want to share, though I must warn you, they are not quite typical.

Happy Christmhaneid (Photo by Frankie Roberto)

My friend David Gallant is an amazing DJ, no, not the kind that plays music at people’s weddings, at least not normally. Dave is a club DJ, the kind of guy will beat match the tempo of each song to the next one and keep the crowd dancing nonstop all night. I have to admit, that while I tremendously admire his skills, modern” dance” music is not my style. However, I’ll make an exception for his “X-mass X-mix.”   Go to his blog and listen to or download this very cool mashup of holiday standards.

Speaking of mashups of a rather different kind, I would like to introduce you to one of my all time favorite pieces of music.   It’s a klezmer arrangement of the standard carol Joy To The World.  Just in case you’re not familiar with it, klezmer music is a style played originally by Eastern European Jews. It tends to be very upbeat, and features a style of clarinet playing which is absolutely unique. Let me point out the (possibly obvious) absurdity of a klezmer arraignment of any sort of CHRISTMAS music, but the Klezmonauts do it amazingly well.  Like I said, this is one of my all time favorite pieces of music.

I’ve saved this third one for last because it’s the one that I suspect you may have seen.  It’s a video of a performance by the a capella group Straight No Chaser of their amazing version of The 12 Days of Christmas.  This video was posted on Youtube in 1996 and since then has been viewed over 10,000,000 times.  It’s another remarkable creation.

Happy holidays – which ever ones you do or do not celebrate – to you and yours!

Are you terrified when you need to present?  Are you worried about whether you’re going to “get through?”

Think about it, whenever someone gets up to give a presentation presumably they are looking to communicate something. Or if not, someone else is looking for them to communicate something.  I believe that by thinking about that communication as a dialogue of story, we, as presenters have much greater ability to move our audiences. It is only through moving our audiences emotionally that we can communicate intellectually in a way that is memorable and meaningful.

Let me say that again, it is only through moving our audiences emotionally that we can communicate in a way that is memorable and meaningful. This is a key tenant of my work, where ever it’s been. Whether designing for theater, producing special events, performing on stage, speaking to an audience, creating content for the web or even just having a meaningful conversation, when I think back to the times I’ve been at my best is always about creating an emotional connection.

One of the most powerful ways I know to create a connection is through storytelling. I’d like to offer you two incredible examples of storytelling in settings where you might not think about it that way. I’d like you to watch both of these pieces of video in their entirety, are both worth it, filled with content that you will find useful and ideas that you will find inspiring. I’m not going to provide any introduction to the videos because I want you to watch them with an open mind, and without me imposing a context. As you watch, and enjoy these videos are just a little bit about what these presenters are doing that makes them so engaging.

Did you watch both videos? If you didn’t please go back and spend the time. I promise that they’re both worth it,  and I’ll still be here when you’re done.

So why are these presenters so compelling? I think that the first key issue, which Gary Vaynerchuk speaks so eloquently about, is passion. I think that it would be rather difficult to find more passionate people than Gary Vaynerchuk and Benjamin Zander.   The passion alone is not enough for effective communication, they are each doing more than that. They are both telling stories. When I say they’re telling stories, I’m not referring to the small stories that they tell about experiences as a part of the talk. Each of these presentations is a story in its entirety.

They both open with strong beginnings. The beginning serves to hook us, to get our attention.  In Gary’s talk he first addresses the people in his audience “just because you’re here, I know that you are going to kill it, and that’s what I want to talk about.” In one statement he begins to create a powerful rapport. Then he awakens our curiosity by telling us that what he wants to talk about is “PP.” What the heck does that mean? By causing us to ask that question in our own minds, we are powerfully drawn in.

Ben starts his talk with a humorous story that has a message. All three of these points are important. People like stories, starting with the story invites us to open up. We also love to laugh, and with this use of humor he sets a light tone for the talk even know what he’s going to talk about is quite significant. But notice, he’s not starting with a joke or a funny, but insignificant story. He’s starting with a story that has a message, that’s inviting us to be open to a new possibility and that’s setting the stage for where he’s going to take us. Once again, by the end of the first few seconds he’s caught our attention.

You see, both of these presenters are starting a powerful storytelling technique of a hook.  Giving us a reason to care, and drawing us in. I could continue to analyze these presentations and how they follow the age-old storytelling forms, I’m not going to do that. I’ve already asked enough of your time, and I want to leave you with this to think about:  think about how both of them reached out and connected emotionally first, and how powerful that is!

That, and one more thing.   Notice, that neither one of them use any PowerPoint slides.

Note: This post was inspired when I watched the Gary Vaynerchuk video as a part of Adam Baker’s excellent blog post How NOT To Suck At Blogging

I feel like it is now time for a complete change of pace. I’m sure that you are reading the title of this post and wondering what in blazes a doowopera could be. Well the only way to really find out is to watch the video below, so do it now you’ll be glad you did.

So why am I posting this? The first reason, and probably the most important is that I absolutely love it. But there’s more to it than that.

I think that this is an incredible piece of work, the singing is technically difficult and done extraordinarily well, it also works so well as a piece of comedy. Often when people try to do cross style musical parody it falls flat because it doesn’t work on its own. In this piece, it’s so successful for me on many levels.

But it also goes a level deeper for me personally. In the last two days I’ve made posts about the massive vandalism of pianos at my alma mater Ithaca College.   This piece connects me to Ithaca in a special way. You see, the Puccini aria O mio babbino caro which forms the basis of this piece is from the opera Gianni Schicchi. As a junior at Ithaca College I was the sound designer for a production of this opera as a part of the theater department’s main stage season. I remember very clearly being in rehearsal  and looking forward to hearing it night after night. To me, this is somehow one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written. I don’t know why, it just is. And to see it transformed through such musical and comedic genius really makes me happy.

What you think of the video? What you think of opera? Please comment below.