roots & bridges

Also: THIS SUNDAY! Creative Jam!

THIS SUNDAY MAY 19th @ 10:30am central on Zoom! Join me for this month’s Creative Jam: THE EXQUISITE MYSTERY

Part ritual. Part game. Part deep dream.

Find details about this and all upcoming gatherings here.

Neon & I travelled to Milwaukee last month to see “Seville to Isfahan”, a stunning cross-cultural collaboration from early music masters Constantinople and Accademia del Piacere .

This was Neon’s bday prezzie to me, so we’d been looking forward to this since December— and, wow, wow, wow was it ever breathtaking.

This musical journey from Sevilla to Isfahan brings into dialogue the music of the Spanish Renaissance with Persian/Ottoman masterpieces taken from manuscripts unearthed in monasteries and palace libraries such as Topkapi. 

Before the show, we got to hear the ensemble directors talk about how music truly has no borders. Origins, influences, instruments shift and blend as music travels & evolves with its human stewards. They defined this like roots & bridges.

You can feel that about music, right? Roots & bridges…

The great masters of the Spanish Renaissance created their own signature of polyphony. Into what was essentially Franco-Flemish music of the time they wove influences left by the monodic tradition such Cantigas de Santa Maria and also by the Moors and the Muslim cultures so present in medieval Spain. During this time, the courts of Shah Ismail and Sultan Suleyman in the East welcomed and trained some the most remarkable musicians, composers and theoreticians to grace the pages of the musical history of these regions. (link)

After their talk, I pulled out my sketchbook to quickly capture the experience before the music started:

(inked during intermission, colored afterward)

A frowning couple forcefully avoided eye contact while tucking in next to us in the front row— one whispering loudly into the other’s hearing aid about how we had taken the “good seats”— but they intently watched me work across these pages, “Ooooh! LOOK WHAT SHE’S DOING!”

I gave them a smile.

Art! Roots & Bridges!

There were so many gorgeous instruments waiting on the stage, and the space itself was so beautiful, I was racing, racing, racing to catch details before the lights went down.

A few minutes after the concert started, I realized that the detail I was struggling to see on the viola da gamba was actually a pale wood inlay of twisting snakes and flowers and I audibly gasped. I have never seen a more beautiful instrument in my life.

And the performance was…enthralling. Moving. We both wept. It felt amazing.

Seven absolute masters of their craft sitting in a half moon just a few feet in front of us— All interlocking glances of the eye and nods of the head, weaving this net of musician-flow-energy between one another so intricately you could see it hanging in the air.

My prompt for you?

As soon as you’re able, go sit in a room with living, breathing music. Be there, fully.

Real talk: It was stressing me out that they just set their instruments on the floor and invited guests to come up on stage unattended afterward to poke around and look at them all. I was like OH MY GOD ONE OF THESE INSTRUMENTS COSTS MORE THAN A COLLEGE EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES— YOU PEOPLE ARE TOO CLOSE!!! But I leaned in for a good long while, squatted down, let my eyes linger and admired them all, too.

Beautiful instruments make me weepy even when they’re just sitting on the floor. These musicians understand that.

Such sacred objects.

I was fascinated by this recent study shared by

Shane O'Mara

in “Creative Flow” which outlines the different qualities of “flow” for expert and non-expert musicians. In short, how much you practice changes how you “flow” at the neural level.

Exhibit A: I have very few hours of practice in with the setar since Neon gifted it to me in December. Here I’m (surrounded by studio chaos) ducking in and out of flow-ishness with a sound that mimics what I might play on the mountain dulcimer— getting a little lost, experimenting, but not getting out of my own way yet. Tentatively moving toward flow until it totally falls apart...

Exhibit B: Kiya Tabassian, founding Director of Constantinople, and Pooria Pournazeri— two masters of Persian classical music— improvising…

🤯

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A couple of you confessed recently that you enjoy my newsletters but that it can take you a couple weeks before you get around to reading them:

A) THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading & interacting with my work! And B) no worries— I also subscribe to 12,467 amazing newsletters, exist in the real world of inbox anxiety & very much cherish my time offline. All things can be true at once!

In fact, back in March I hustled to generate four weeks of this newsletter at once and scheduled them so I could take a month off to focus on other things (like traveling to see this amazing show). Right now, I’m doing the same thing to get in front of a busy summer.

(If you’re one of my awesome friends who’s recently started a newsletter, might I offer this humble #protip!)

You’ll still be seeing my regular weekly prompts & I’ll be active in the comments & paid subscriber Community Chat between our live summer gatherings— I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU SUNDAY!!!:

xo,