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#everything from performance to production to arrangements is just SO extraordinary and different from concert to concert
natromanxoff · 3 years
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Here is the interview that has been translated by Google, from the link ‘1′ on this post:
After Freddie Mercury visited Zagreb, it was clear why he was leading two big guys everywhere
By YugoPapir
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TODAY, exactly 25 years ago , the great Freddie Mercury passed away , and on that occasion we remember his visit to Zagreb and the interview he gave on that occasion. It was back in 1979 ...
"In a situation of useless concert rock scene (such as at least Belgrade), an interview with one of the world's famous rock stars is a special event. However, although the man is not in a position to choose and has no experience with Jagger, Lennon or Dylan, these conversations are sometimes it comes down to the usual routine of exchanging questions and answers ... Kind me, kind respondent ... I smile, the respondent smiles I ask a question, I know the answer in advance.
Hand on heart, that was exactly what the conversation with the first man of the Queen group was like. Despite the millions of records sold, the sound clearly defined and the status of the stars, the guys from the group do not have a particularly interesting "story" behind them. The only way to do something extraordinary is to try to provoke the interlocutor, but one usually doesn't have the opportunity to do so in such "serially" organized meetings between stars and the press, where a bunch of idle idlers are dragged around without much smarter work in mind.
The press conference was held in "Intercontinental" full of boring luxury and, on this occasion, unusual teams. After a short wait (the stars are always late), the Queen appeared, dressed as employees of an English insurance company on vacation.
After a few moments of doubt, various guys of unknown faces and occupations attacked them. Of course the main victim was Mercury. Honestly, I didn’t expect so many people with tape recorders, notebooks and similar supplies. It is not only clear to me where they will be able to place all this, because I have not seen the results of that journalistic attack anywhere except in "Polet" from an interview done on another occasion.
Maybe it's better not to publish it anywhere because I heard so much nonsense and ignorance in a short time that I felt pity for poor Freddy. Now it is clear to me why he is taking with him two guys, as if removed from the mountain, who were strategically arranged around the front door during the whole press conference.
And finally when the crowd subsided I seized the opportunity to talk to Mercury.
Not particularly tall, black, in a leather jacket and jeans, he looked more like one of the tappers in front of Belgrade cinemas than the world-famous rock old man. Stoic accepted to give an interview for "Jukebox", although over time he approved and became somewhat more exhaustive. I probably bothered him less than the others.
As usual, I started from the beginning ...
"It's a long story. Brian, Roger and I knew each other since we were students. John came later. We had experiences with earlier bands where we played as high school students. When we created Queen we had a clear idea of ​​what we wanted to do and our work today is the evolution of these plans and dreams.We had a very clear guiding star.From the very beginning.
Is it still clear that guiding star after all these successes and millions of records sold?
Why not. The halls where we play are always full, the records are on the charts. Why not?
From the articles we read about you, it could not be said that the critics really like you. What does it look like to be in one of the world’s leading rock bands while at the same time reading how records are being ruthlessly denigrated?
This is the case only with the English press. It could not be said that we live in the best relationship with them. The English today have no choice but to be cynical, which is why the press is like that to us. That’s why you can rarely read our interview at NME or Melody Maker. There is no point in us being a training ground for them. We learned to live with it and, you know, I didn’t care too much about it. Our records sell well. In recent years, a big thing has happened with punk, and we are understood as the total opposite.
One of the main drawbacks is the dependence on technology. Your records are lavishly produced to perfection ...
You can't survive without technology today. Loudspeakers, light instruments and the most ordinary rock band look like an LP&P to a folk group or a symphony orchestra ... Even today they can't survive without technology. Electricity is all around us and you can't avoid it. The production on our records is rich, but I don’t think it’s an end in itself as many want to present. I play a plain piano, John a plain “Fender bass,” only Brian has special “pranks” that I make myself, but that’s not overdone either. The most important thing is that it is all in the service of the idea.
You are all college educated. Do you think that had an impact on this direction of the group. I have noticed that there are prejudices in English newspapers about such groups, in fact about groups that originated from such an environment, starting from “Genesis” onwards?
First of all, we don't have much to do with "Genesis", then such prejudices are the most common nonsense. I don't see any purpose for them. I don't even know that being in college automatically makes us intellectuals.
I have no doubt that you spend a lot of time in the studio preparing the album, that's obvious. You've created some kind of art since filming (interrupts me) ...
We record, than what. That's what everyone does! But we made a style out of it. We do everything in a special way and I think there is imagination. It's specificity, not covering up weaknesses or something like that ... We don't even try to reproduce the sound from our records ... It's hours and hours of work and there are hundreds and hundreds of recorded sections.
The record is one thing, and the concert is quite another. Although some people pass it on to us as a flaw, we are very happy with their gig. It would be a tedious and boring job to always play the same ... At one time we were thinking of introducing assistant musicians to our performances, but I don't think that would work. It is our music and we understand it best. Such a way would only bring us unnecessary problems and obligations.
Can any significant changes in your sound and direction be expected on the next panels. There is a lot of criticism that you got into a certain "gyre" ...
Again about the critics ... we care the least about them! We have created a certain sound, success, image and that is what we are. It is logical for the group to evolve slowly ... It would be stupid to try something radically different ... And that is what the "scribblers" expect to have something to fill the newspaper with. Drastic changes lead nowhere and make no sense. You can't become something else overnight ...
Normally we will change. Whoever has followed our work so far is clear in which direction. This is also evident from our latest albums. There is no longer as much luxury as at "Opera" or "Racing" ... I think that our next albums will develop in that direction.
The group "Queen" is considered to be a very stable formation. No sharper disagreements were heard, and only the drummer had solo outings. Should we expect new solo projects and do they pose a danger to the group?
Although Roger has a lot of experience with solo attempts, I don't see any danger in that for the group "Queen". I think the best we can provide, we provide together. Solo attempts are just a small change of climate and refreshment. There is no special need to try our luck outside the team. When we realize we have nowhere else to go, the group disbands - there are no illusions that it won’t come and we don’t even think about it.
Do you have any information about your audience in Yugoslavia, and does the sale of records in our small market mean anything to you financially?
Well, I've heard from people in our company that we sell a lot of records. Do you see these gold and silver plates we got here? Also, we care that our music is heard all over the world, that everyone listens to it, that's why we perform so much. One should not be blasé ... It is not only important for us to be popular in England, America and Japan ... People are the same everywhere and we like to play for them ... This is just rock'n'roll after all ... "
Interviewed by: Branko Vukojević, filmed by: Dražen Kalenić (Jukebox, 1979)
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bloodybells1 · 3 years
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ON SCORDATURA
When I was eighteen, I was really into heavy metal and had been practicing the electric guitar for four years. I was devoted to music theory and looked up to guitarists like Steve Vai. I played loudly and fast, emulating the popular style of playing when heavy metal was at its apex of popularity. You might say that I was a “shredder.” 
My passion for technique took an unexpected turn, however, when I became fascinated by the classical guitar. I don’t exactly remember when it hit me, the inspiration to explore this type of playing. It might’ve been born from reading the name of Andres Segovia in the magazine interviews of my favorite guitarists. (Also, I listened to a lot of Jethro Tull, and the intro to one of his songs is a quotation of a popular classical guitar score by Bach, the “Bourée in E Minor.” I started teaching it to myself by ear, but soon realized I needed help adjusting to the new technique). 
One day I made the decision that I wanted to take the plunge into the classical world. I purchased a cheap nylon string, looked for a tutor and, once I found one in Chapel Hill, NJ, I started taking lessons and practicing every day.
I was enthralled by the new possibilities in this style of playing. I was discovering a wealth of textures and styles I’d had no previous idea about. My parents had not listened to classical music, so all of this was foreign to me. But I fell in love with the genre all the same.
I loved how old this practice was, how its provenance dated back to before there was electricity. I loved the deceptive simplicity of paper scores, how the mere act of sight-reading might open up varied worlds of expression, limited only by the player’s willingness to learn the technique and the player’s ability to perform.
My tutor included Renaissance lute scores in his homework for me. These scores contained instructions for alternative tuning arrangements of the strings. This changes the whole grid of the fretboard. Each string has been tightened or loosened to different notes, so all the note relationships are changed. If you wanted to play the same material you would have to relearn it with new fingerings. 
But that wasn’t the point. The scordatura was designed to make available new sonorities. These lute pieces dating back to the Renaissance had a “harpier” texture, with open notes ringing out in different keys and mixtures of notes in registers I didn’t often hear in guitar music with traditional tuning. It was rather exotic, like the simple act of turning a screw on a taut string had turned this plain old Spanish guitar into some new, esoteric instrument.
My experience with classical guitar, and specifically the scordatura my tutor taught me, was a factor later in life when I played bass guitar professionally in the mid 2000’s. Not only do I think that it made me flexible enough to feel confident learning to play another stringed instrument, but it also influenced my tuning. I utilized what’s called Drop D tuning, a simple type of scordatura that lowers the heaviest string by two notes. It gives you two extra lower notes you wouldn’t normally have with the standard tuning—where the lowest note is E. 
Heavy metal guitarists love this tuning because of how much heavier it makes the music sound and because it ends up making power chord configurations a one-finger job instead of two, and you can play those heavy power chord riffs much more quickly with just one finger. 
Drop D was useful to me, however, because of how it enabled me to interact with the songwriting. My band’s music was dark and a lot of the songs were in D minor. So having a lower D available permitted me to create pedal tones and deeper support functions for chords and textures that were already using that scale a lot. It added depth and character to the music because of this sort of flexible shadow figure moving around underneath the guitars and the keyboards.
I had a profound experience with scordatura later in 2014, while I was in acting school. One of our school productions was a kind of fantasia on Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The novel is already a bit of a fantasia itself, so the production was very post-modern. 
The director, Alex Harvey, staged it brilliantly. One of his ideas was that my character would play passages on the piano between scenes. The score was from a series called Revelation by composer Michael Harrison. 
Harrison had contrived a bespoke scordatura for the score. An assistant, a specialist who could interpret unconventional concert pieces like these, was hired to transform the school’s simple upright Yamaha, an instrument more often used as accompaniment for students singing from the American Songbook, into a piece of avant-garde machinery. 
I had already begun learning some of the passages before the piano had been prepared. They sounded ok, but not extraordinary. Once the tuner was finished and the specific tuning had been accomplished, however, I began learning the pieces in earnest and it was, well, it was a revelation. 
Harrison’s scordatura was wild. Some keys adjacent to each other were tuned only fractionally sharper than their predecessor on the keyboard, thereby creating a tonal cloud or wash between the two that sounded a little like an untuned guitar, but in a shimmery, beautiful way. Other keys were tuned a whole fifth from their predecessor, thereby jumping up very far between two adjacent keys. The two extremities canceled each other out to create a distinct sense of balance and harmony, a kind of timbral mist floating in the ether. 
As I worked on the score I had a sense that I didn’t know what was happening. It was difficult for me to anticipate and conceptualize the piano with this exotic construction. Yet, reading through the score and performing it, the idea was actualized. A whole new musical sensibility was borne out of this tuning. It was thrilling to put into action such a strange and beautiful arrangement.
What would a trumpet sound like if one could alternate its tuning? It’s a ridiculous notion: it would require bending metal, destroying the instrument in the process. Scordatura is likewise impossible for woodwinds. Ditto, percussion. A timpani, the most obvious exception, is in fact quite flexible and can even be tuned during performance. The percussionist puts their ear to the skin and lightly taps so as to enable them to change the tuning without disturbing the performance of other orchestra members. But you can’t do that with, say, tubular bells.
Stringed instruments and the piano are different than all the other instruments. The oscillators, the strings themselves, are adjustable. Coupled with the fact of their polyphony, it’s plain why these instruments, especially the piano, are so popular. They are great adapters. They can be brought back to their mean and reset for future use in other circumstances. The ubiquity of these instruments, across genres, in barrooms and conservatories alike, is explained by their ability to avail themselves. 
And what about the voice? How supple are the cords? Can they be stretched or loosened like the strings of a guitar? Is there a scordatura possible for the human vocal mechanism?
It’s debatable: vocal training, primarily through work in breathing, does fortify ones range by bolstering the lower and upper parts of the register with more support. But your vocal cords are your vocal cords. Even on a guitar, you can’t detune the strings too much. It affects the timbre: the fretboard is designed with a natural state of tension and that string that is being detuned is only thick enough to perform in a certain range before the slackening of the string makes it flap against the fretboard—or before the tightening warps the fretboard. 
Vocal cords are similar in this way. Just like with a guitar, once you start “detuning” your voice, you invite corruption of the sound. Your voice cracks when you try to go too low. 
When Olivier tackled Othello he tried to lower his voice through vocal training. Obviously, considering all of the other garish and offensive effects—the blackface, the funny walk, the stupid dialect—he should’ve known better than to engage in minstrelsy, but he also should’ve known about the corruption of his voice. Not all instruments have that level of flexibility. 
He should’ve known that not everything is available. 
What about the human being itself? Can it be construed as an instrument? one that might likewise permit a certain scordatura? 
My feeling is that in this case the change is permanent. And, like with a trumpet, one risks destruction. The human being is not a stringed instrument. 
I can attest to a certain kind of “permanent” scordatura of the body and mind. It was possible for me to “detune” myself, but it was a commitment to a new state. I won’t ever be able to “go back” to my original tuning. It involved deep structural shifts and I came close to collapse—and in fact did collapse—many times. The instrument—the body and the mind—was constantly at risk of crumbling and warping under the stress of the transformation. Slackening a string is one thing. Shortening or elongating a valve is another. 
What is therapy but a type of spiritual scordatura? The patient comes in with a limitation in place and leaves with that “bar” set somewhere else. Thresholds are repositioned. Pain that was once unbearable can be stomached. New life experiences are   permitted because the mind has been opened to their possibilities. It is a fact that the change is permanent, but after we recognize the evolution we would never want to “detune” back to where we were. 
I have a long history with therapy and it is without question the source of all of the appetite for change that I’ve experienced. In teaching me about healing, it motivated me to seek out other forms of healing. I credit it with helping me gain acceptance to the prestigious MFA program in Acting which I entered in 2012 at NYU, the beginning of three years wherein this process of permanent scordatura would be hastened. 
I had many illnesses. Some would find treatment through the program’s vast assortment of exercise techniques addressing body misalignment and spiritual imbalance. Yoga classes, Feldenkrais, Alexander technique, chakra work, these were all deployed to “tune” the bodies in class. 
Voice and speech exercises as well helped bring awareness of lifelong limits, expressed through the mouth and in the breath. It was unnerving to encounter these intimate facts about how one walks, how one talks, how one moves, how one breathes. 
Most people would never submit themselves to this level of scrutiny. A fellow alumnus with additional experience in the military often jokes that an MFA at NYU Grad Acting is actually more oppressive than boot camp because at least in boot camp you let your anger and hostility grant you relief—you can growl and yawp and hunch over and adapt to battlefields—whereas actors, despite undergoing similar rounds of abuse, must look smooth and collected and relaxed in order to perform well on stage. It really was a double whammy of having my being constantly interrogated in various invasive manners, all while being denied any permission to sublimate the tension.  
I had my own motivations to undergo this training. I was desperate to have a classical training in the theatre. But I was also subconsciously motivated towards healing. Despite the horrors of these ordeals, the modalities that are therewith deployed are part of a healing experience that, having undergone them, I wouldn’t trade for anything. Had I known what I was getting myself into beforehand, I don’t know that I would’ve jumped in the pool. But I’m glad I didn’t know because I cherish the experience.
I had a problem with keeping my mouth only partially open which our singing teacher was constantly bringing my attention towards. She had taught me that this was a defense mechanism, a strategy of containment, a means of keeping the world from having access to my heart. (Of course, keeping your mouth closed is also a problem for sound projection on stage, but that’s more technical). 
During one afternoon class, singing “Lonely Room” from Oklahoma, I broke down into tears as the teacher kept coaxing me to open my mouth more and more. There I was, a man pushing 40, with tears streaming down his eyes, opening his mouth wide, not even singing the words, just the vowels, but doing something that was so psychically threatening, something that I could never bring myself to do, something simple, like opening a mouth. The limit had been expanded.
There was an element of bodily restructuring to all of this as well. I had done a number on my body during those years of my professional musicianship, when I toured the world in a famous band. And so by this point, I was aware that a shift was needed from the effects of years spent in front of cameras and abusing drugs and traveling and losing sleep. Alice Miller’s book, The Body Keeps the Score, is instructive in this regard. Somatization of traumas explain a great deal of certain physical ailments. In my case, they played out structurally, on my bones and on my muscles and in my central nervous system. 
These changes are subtle to the layperson. But they are profound for the student. When I look at how I held my body in old photos, it is obvious to me that there was something wrong. On the stage, with a heavy instrument hanging from my shoulder, it wasn’t perceptible. The lights and the postures have a way of masking the truth. But in the more candid and private shots—the Polaroids and the exposures from my disposable camera which my friends and I took in our apartments—I see evidence of a lot of tension. Shoulders crept upwards towards my ears; chest muscles held; an exploded solar plexus; a chin pointing up. It was a mixture of a lot of holding, a lot of somatization in the fibers, with a learned posture organized to communicate the persona I wanted everyone to see: a demiurge or rockstar. 
I came into grad school as though off an assembly line, where the factory had riveted and hammered onto my body and psyche its lessons. It was a capitalistic factory but it was also a societal one, one that bore the hallmarks of the dogged problems which elude solution: childhood trauma, dog-eat-dog meritocracy, bullying, etc. 
So now I was this product getting recalled, but I was going to another factory for refurbishment. One that also had rivets and hammers, but ones which were designed to break open the right parts.
I stretched and stretched. By the end of the three years I was essentially exiting with a new body. The myth about the seven year cellular regeneration in one’s body is instructive here. For it truly was the case that new grooves in my brain and muscular and skeletal patterns had taken hold. One of my teachers said during my final evaluation that I had come in to school looking like a clothes hangar with legs but that I now looked graceful. 
Even my scoliosis—a condition I was born with and which I will contend with for the rest of my life—was discovered in acting school. I had had no idea about it before one of the teachers told me that I persisted in leaning downwards to my right. My spine curves in the shape of a sidewards C. It’s a genetic condition. Of course, hanging a ten-pound instrument off my shoulder and letting the weight pull me down to the ground so that I could look cool every night didn’t really help either.
The modalities in the movement and vocal training classes in acting school are designed to build awareness and flexibility in the body and the mind. The purpose of this is to permit the actor to be resilient enough on stage so as to be present and believable. So it has a practical purpose and a real-world application. 
I had other problems which these modalities could not fix, but which their steady application, encouraging honesty and reflection, revealed. There were addictions and mental illness issues which I’d had no idea about before entering grad school but which were inflamed by the pressure inside. I then had to deal with them. Immediately, since they threatened the goal of getting my MFA. 
The cocaine abuse of my years in the music industry haunted me in the form of paralyzing panic attacks and circadian disruptions which complicated my ability to perform in school. The years spent pursuing rampant and anonymous sexual congress created inappropriate obsessiveness with orgasms and romance. Naturally, given that my peers were all considerably younger than I was, this last part wasn’t all that abnormal. But it interfered nonetheless. I was no spring chicken but I was acting like one. I had to double down on sex addiction meetings and on therapy.
It all came to a head inside the cloistered walls of the conservatory. It came to a head when Alex Harvey, the director of the Nabokov rendition, had to massage my shoulders backstage as I collapsed in tears during one of many nervous breakdowns. It came to a head when in a movement class, during an unfamiliar physical exploration, an early painful memory of abandonment that had long been forgotten had been recalled and sent me to the floor sobbing. 
I’m grateful that I had the means to address the issues. I had to juggle that with the demands of the curriculum. It was not easy. But I’m proud of my accomplishment and I’m proud of the new person this all made me become.
It is possible to “detune.” I think a better way of looking at it is “retuning.” It is a permanent scordatura and it therefore should not be taken lightly.
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ribcagecarnival · 4 years
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NO. 3 (Joy, Jacob Collier, & Maximalism)
If you are a professional musician, you have heard of Jacob Collier. You might not like him, you might not even listen to him, but you definitely know who he is. He is the sort of extraordinary talent that draws equal measures of envy, confusion, and obsession from the swaths of society that come into contact with him. Non-musicians marvel at the big picture; musicians marvel at the details. He is shocking to everyone for different reasons. Collier is a 26-year-old musician from London who cites Stevie Wonder as one of his biggest influences, and the musical genealogy is delightfully obvious. Collier plays, it seems, every single instrument, and he plays them all prodigiously well. He has a rich, unusual vocal tone. He mixes his own records with gleeful attention to detail. A YouTube comment I saw on one of his Tiny Desk performances described his style as that of “a funky weird wizard's apprentice in an old 90s point and click adventure.” That is a direct quote, and it is an accurate assessment, with his love for oversized shirts in outrageous patterns, often paired with Crocs or no shoes at all. All of this combines for a musical experience uniquely suited to the current cultural moment. Maximalism is back. Now, Collier has been enjoying success both critically and commercially for years. It’s not as if he suddenly appeared on the scene as the product of 2020 Weirdness. But I personally am embarking on a deep dive into his oeuvre right now, and it wasn’t until I’d been watching his interviews and live performances for a couple weeks that I realized why. While Collier is capable of delivering stripped down acoustic performances with remarkable delicacy and intimacy, his unique trademark is the infinite layering of vocal and instrumental harmonies. He has a band that he performs with, but he also has a one-man multimedia concert machine that he constructed with a PhD student at MIT. And he shines particularly brightly in the video projects he began his career with that have proven presciently effective during the pandemic, where he makes a band entirely out of clones of himself. The Tiny Desk I linked above is one such visual experience. Who needs to risk respiratory infection when you’re a musical jack of all trades and some sly movie magic can turn your one-man band into a four-piece with ease? Collier doesn’t perform with the stoicism that his virtuosity might suggest, and his persona is not that of a Serious Artist. He is clearly Online, and he enjoys it. And in interviews, his energy is always enthusiastic but humbled, a childlike appreciation for the opportunity to make music for people who want to listen. If his attire wasn’t enough of a clue, Collier is a goofball. He is human sunshine, elated at the prospect of doing basically every task he is endowed with. Now, I don’t know him personally, so I don’t know how much of that is a persona. But I doubt that kind of happiness is sustainable if it’s false. I don’t mean to suggest that he’s happy 100% of the time. I just think he’s one of those lucky people whose once-in-a-generation talent did not come with the price tag of boundless sadness. The 2010s began with Katy Perry’s saccharine belt on “Teenage Dream” and ended with Billie Eilish’s morose whisper on “everything I wanted.” You can never sum up an entire year of music with a single style, but it is not a hot take to point out that pop music got sad by the end of the decade. In addition, that musical transition was accompanied by an aesthetic transition toward minimalism. Tiny houses were all the rage and Marie Kondo’s philosophies were regarded as gospel. Economic uncertainty and environmental urgency spurred us, Millennials and Gen Z, to curb consumption (though I’m not a data scientist and I don’t know if these ideals were popular outside my liberal echo chamber). The color palette of pop culture went neutral. But now a new decade has dawned, and it has gotten off to a shatteringly terrible start. The last thing we want is white walls and emptiness. That’s not to say that our ethical concerns about consumptions have disappeared. But spending so much of our time indoors has meant that nesting has a renewed significance, and it’s a lot easier to spend time in your bedroom if there are decent posters on the wall and a plant or two to brighten up the place. And while some people are clinging stubbornly to monochrome color palettes, many people are leveling up to include the whole rainbow in their wardrobes and home décor—or at least adding some greenery. In my opinion, Jacob Collier is the maximalist king of the Anxious 20s (unlike the Roaring 20s of the previous century—although maybe after this pandemic is over we’ll get our chance to properly roar?). Some people think his devotion to harmony is taken to excess, that his arrangements can be cluttered or that his musical ethos is pretentious. But I find it impossible to watch Collier perform and come to that conclusion. His joy is so unabashed and unstudied, and his gratitude for his gifts is so apparent, that to me he comes across as authentic as any flannelled singer-songwriter with only an acoustic guitar and a I-IV-V progression to their name. Collier’s current project is a four-volume mega-album called Djesse, and while I haven’t listened to all the available material, what I’ve heard so far is delightful. I’m a self-proclaimed wordgirl, and words are almost beside the point for what Collier does, so it might seem counterintuitive that I’m such a fan. But in this era of wall-to-wall darkness, there is nothing I need more than the sonic abundance of the Jacob Collier Cinematic Universe. I’m intimidated by the idea of ever collaborating with this artist I admire so deeply, but I know my fears are misplaced. If I’m ever lucky enough to cross paths with him, I know he’ll be nothing but generous. He’s just a kid on the playground, and everyone is welcome in his sandbox.
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blackkudos · 4 years
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Taj Mahal
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Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942), who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, a singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific.
Early life
Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr. on May 17, 1942, in Harlem, New York, Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was raised in a musical environment; his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player. His family owned a shortwave radio which received music broadcasts from around the world, exposing him at an early age to world music. Early in childhood he recognized the stark differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home. He also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of musicians such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson. His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, instilling in their son a sense of pride in his Caribbean and African ancestry through their stories.
Because his father was a musician, his house was frequently the host of other musicians from the Caribbean, Africa, and the U.S. His father, Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Sr., was called "The Genius" by Ella Fitzgerald before starting his family. Early on, Henry Jr. developed an interest in African music, which he studied assiduously as a young man. His parents also encouraged him to pursue music, starting him out with classical piano lessons. He also studied the clarinet, trombone and harmonica. When Mahal was eleven his father was killed in an accident at his own construction company, crushed by a tractor when it flipped over. This was an extremely traumatic experience for the boy.
Mahal's mother later remarried. His stepfather owned a guitar which Taj began using at age 13 or 14, receiving his first lessons from a new neighbor from North Carolina of his own age who played acoustic blues guitar. His name was Lynwood Perry, the nephew of the famous bluesman Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. In high school Mahal sang in a doo-wop group.
For some time Mahal thought of pursuing farming over music. He had developed a passion for farming that nearly rivaled his love of music—coming to work on a farm first at age 16. It was a dairy farm in Palmer, Massachusetts, not far from Springfield. By age nineteen he had become farm foreman, getting up a bit after 4:00 a.m. and running the place. "I milked anywhere between thirty-five and seventy cows a day. I clipped udders. I grew corn. I grew Tennessee redtop clover. Alfalfa." Mahal believes in growing one's own food, saying, "You have a whole generation of kids who think everything comes out of a box and a can, and they don't know you can grow most of your food." Because of his personal support of the family farm, Mahal regularly performs at Farm Aid concerts.
Taj Mahal, his stage name, came to him in dreams about Gandhi, India, and social tolerance. He started using it in 1959 or 1961—around the same time he began attending the University of Massachusetts. Despite having attended a vocational agriculture school, becoming a member of the National FFA Organization, and majoring in animal husbandry and minoring in veterinary science and agronomy, Mahal decided to take the route of music instead of farming. In college he led a rhythm and blues band called Taj Mahal & The Elektras and, before heading for the U.S. West Coast, he was also part of a duo with Jessie Lee Kincaid.
Career
In 1964 he moved to Santa Monica, California, and formed Rising Sons with fellow blues rock musician Ry Cooder and Jessie Lee Kincaid, landing a record deal with Columbia Records soon after. The group was one of the first interracial bands of the period, which likely made them commercially unviable. An album was never released (though a single was) and the band soon broke up, though Legacy Records did release The Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder in 1992 with material from that period. During this time Mahal was working with others, musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Muddy Waters. Mahal stayed with Columbia after the Rising Sons to begin his solo career, releasing the self-titled Taj Mahal and The Natch'l Blues in 1968, and Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home with Kiowa session musician Jesse Ed Davis from Oklahoma, who played guitar and piano in 1969. During this time he and Cooder worked with the Rolling Stones, with whom he has performed at various times throughout his career. In 1968, he performed in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. He recorded a total of twelve albums for Columbia from the late 1960s into the 1970s. His work of the 1970s was especially important, in that his releases began incorporating West Indian and Caribbean music, jazz and reggae into the mix. In 1972, he acted in and wrote the film score for the movie Sounder, which starred Cicely Tyson. He reprised his role and returned as composer in the sequel, Part 2, Sounder.
In 1976 Mahal left Columbia and signed with Warner Bros. Records, recording three albums for them. One of these was another film score for 1977's Brothers; the album shares the same name. After his time with Warner Bros., he struggled to find another record contract, this being the era of heavy metal and disco music.
Stalled in his career, he decided to move to Kauai, Hawaii in 1981 and soon formed the Hula Blues Band. Originally just a group of guys getting together for fishing and a good time, the band soon began performing regularly and touring. He remained somewhat concealed from most eyes while working out of Hawaii throughout most of the 1980s before recording Taj in 1988 for Gramavision. This started a comeback of sorts for him, recording both for Gramavision and Hannibal Records during this time.
In the 1990s Mahal became deeply involved in supporting the nonprofit Music Maker Relief Foundation. As of 2019, he was still on the Foundation's advisory board.
In the 1990s he was on the Private Music label, releasing albums full of blues, pop, R&B and rock. He did collaborative works both with Eric Clapton and Etta James.
In 1998, in collaboration with renowned songwriter David Forman, producer Rick Chertoff and musicians Cyndi Lauper, Willie Nile, Joan Osborne, Rob Hyman, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of the Band, and the Chieftains, he performed on the Americana album Largo based on the music of Antonín Dvořák.
In 1997 he won Best Contemporary Blues Album for Señor Blues at the Grammy Awards, followed by another Grammy for Shoutin' in Key in 2000. He performed the theme song to the children's television show Peep and the Big Wide World, which began broadcast in 2004.
In 2002, Mahal appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot and Riot in tribute to Nigerian afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. The Paul Heck produced album was widely acclaimed, and all proceeds from the record were donated to AIDS charities.
Taj Mahal contributed to Olmecha Supreme's 2006 album 'hedfoneresonance'. The Wellington-based group led by Mahal's son Imon Starr (Ahmen Mahal) also featured Deva Mahal on vocals.
Mahal partnered up with Keb' Mo' to release a joint album TajMo on May 5, 2017. The album has some guest appearances by Bonnie Raitt, Joe Walsh, Sheila E., and Lizz Wright, and has six original compositions and five covers, from artists and bands like John Mayer and The Who.
In 2013, Mahal appeared in the documentary film 'The Byrd Who Flew Alone', produced by Four Suns Productions. The film was about Gene Clark, one of the original Byrds, who was a friend of Mahal for many years.
In June 2017, Mahal appeared in the award-winning documentary film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon, recording Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere" on the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. Mahal appeared throughout the accompanying documentary series American Epic, commenting on the 1920s rural recording artists who had a profound influence on American music and on him personally.
Musical style
Mahal leads with his thumb and middle finger when fingerpicking, rather than with his index finger as the majority of guitar players do. "I play with a flatpick," he says, "when I do a lot of blues leads." Early in his musical career Mahal studied the various styles of his favorite blues singers, including musicians like Jimmy Reed, Son House, Sleepy John Estes, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin' Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, and Sonny Terry. He describes his hanging out at clubs like Club 47 in Massachusetts and Ash Grove in Los Angeles as "basic building blocks in the development of his music." Considered to be a scholar of blues music, his studies of ethnomusicology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst would come to introduce him further to the folk music of the Caribbean and West Africa. Over time he incorporated more and more African roots music into his musical palette, embracing elements of reggae, calypso, jazz, zydeco, R&B, gospel music, and the country blues—each of which having "served as the foundation of his unique sound." According to The Rough Guide to Rock, "It has been said that Taj Mahal was one of the first major artists, if not the very first one, to pursue the possibilities of world music. Even the blues he was playing in the early 70s – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff (1972), Mo' Roots (1974) – showed an aptitude for spicing the mix with flavours that always kept him a yard or so distant from being an out-and-out blues performer." Concerning his voice, author David Evans writes that Mahal has "an extraordinary voice that ranges from gruff and gritty to smooth and sultry."
Taj Mahal believes that his 1999 album Kulanjan, which features him playing with the kora master of Mali's Griot tradition Toumani Diabate, "embodies his musical and cultural spirit arriving full circle." To him it was an experience that allowed him to reconnect with his African heritage, striking him with a sense of coming home. He even changed his name to Dadi Kouyate, the first jali name, to drive this point home. Speaking of the experience and demonstrating the breadth of his eclecticism, he has said:
The microphones are listening in on a conversation between a 350-year-old orphan and its long-lost birth parents. I've got so much other music to play. But the point is that after recording with these Africans, basically if I don't play guitar for the rest of my life, that's fine with me....With Kulanjan, I think that Afro-Americans have the opportunity to not only see the instruments and the musicians, but they also see more about their culture and recognize the faces, the walks, the hands, the voices, and the sounds that are not the blues. Afro-American audiences had their eyes really opened for the first time. This was exciting for them to make this connection and pay a little more attention to this music than before.
Taj Mahal has said he prefers to do outdoor performances, saying: "The music was designed for people to move, and it's a bit difficult after a while to have people sitting like they're watching television. That's why I like to play outdoor festivals-because people will just dance. Theatre audiences need to ask themselves: 'What the hell is going on? We're asking these musicians to come and perform and then we sit there and draw all the energy out of the air.' That's why after a while I need a rest. It's too much of a drain. Often I don't allow that. I just play to the goddess of music-and I know she's dancing."
Mahal has been quoted as saying, "Eighty-one percent of the kids listening to rap were not black kids. Once there was a tremendous amount of money involved in it ... they totally moved it over to a material side. It just went off to a terrible direction. ...You can listen to my music from front to back, and you don't ever hear me moaning and crying about how bad you done treated me. I think that style of blues and that type of tone was something that happened as a result of many white people feeling very, very guilty about what went down."
Awards
Taj Mahal has received three Grammy Awards (ten nominations) over his career.
1997 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Señor Blues
2000 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Shoutin' in Key
2006 (Blues Music Awards) Historical Album of the Year for The Essential Taj Mahal
2008 (Grammy Nomination) Best Contemporary Blues Album for Maestro
2018 (Grammy Award) Best Contemporary Blues Album for TajMo
On February 8, 2006 Taj Mahal was designated the official Blues Artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
In March 2006, Taj Mahal, along with his sister, the late Carole Fredericks, received the Foreign Language Advocacy Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in recognition of their commitment to shine a spotlight on the vast potential of music to foster genuine intercultural communication.
On May 22, 2011, Taj Mahal received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He also made brief remarks and performed three songs. A video of the performance can be found online.
In 2014, Taj Mahal received the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement award.
Discography
Albums
1968 – Taj Mahal
1968 – The Natch'l Blues
1969 – Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home
1971 – Happy Just to Be Like I Am
1972 – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff
1972 – Sounder (original soundtrack)
1973 – Oooh So Good 'n Blues
1974 – Mo' Roots
1975 – Music Keeps Me Together
1976 – Satisfied 'n Tickled Too
1976 – Music Fuh Ya'
1977 – Brothers
1977 – Evolution
1987 – Taj
1988 – Shake Sugaree
1991 – Mule Bone
1991 – Like Never Before
1993 – Dancing the Blues
1995 – Mumtaz Mahal (with V.M. Bhatt and N. Ravikiran)
1996 – Phantom Blues
1997 – Señor Blues
1998 – Sacred Island AKA Hula Blues (with The Hula Blues Band)
1999 – Blue Light Boogie
1999 – Kulanjan (with Toumani Diabaté)
2001 – Hanapepe Dream (with The Hula Blues Band)
2005 – Mkutano Meets the Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar
2008 – Maestro
2014 – Talkin' Christmas (with Blind Boys of Alabama)
2016 – Labor of Love
2017 – TajMo (with Keb' Mo')
Live albums
1971 – The Real Thing
1972 – Recycling The Blues & Other Related Stuff
1972 – Big Sur Festival - One Hand Clapping
1979 – Live & Direct
1990 – Live at Ronnie Scott's
1996 – An Evening of Acoustic Music
2000 – Shoutin' in Key
2004 – Live Catch
2015 – Taj Mahal & The Hula Blues Band: Live From Kauai
Compilation albums
1980 – Going Home
1981 – The Best of Taj Mahal, Volume 1 (Columbia)
1992 – Taj's Blues
1993 – World Music
1998 – In Progress & In Motion: 1965-1998
1999 – Blue Light Boogie
2000 – The Best of Taj Mahal
2000 – The Best of the Private Years
2001 – Sing a Happy Song: The Warner Bros. Recordings
2003 – Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues – Taj Mahal
2003 – Blues with a Feeling: The Very Best of Taj Mahal
2005 – The Essential Taj Mahal
2012 – Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal
Various artists featuring Taj Mahal
1968 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
1968 – The Rock Machine Turns You On
1970 – Fill Your Head With Rock
1985 – Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed
1990 – The Hot Spot – original soundtrack
1991 – Vol Pour Sidney – one title only, other tracks by Charlie Watts, Elvin Jones, Pepsi, The Lonely Bears, Lee Konitz and others.
1992 – Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder
1992 – Smilin' Island of Song by Cedella Marley Booker and Taj Mahal.
1993 – The Source by Ali Farka Touré (World Circuit WCD030; Hannibal 1375)
1993 – Peace Is the World Smiling
1997 – Follow the Drinking Gourd
1997 – Shakin' a Tailfeather
1998 – Scrapple – original soundtrack
1998 – Largo
1999 – Hippity Hop
2001 – "Strut" – with Jimmy Smith on his album Dot Com Blues
2002 – Jools Holland's Big Band Rhythm & Blues (Rhino) – contributing his version of "Outskirts of Town"
2002 – Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume III – Lead vocals on Fishin' Blues, and lead in and first verse of the title track, with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Alison Krauss, Doc Watson
2004 – Musicmakers with Taj Mahal (Music Maker 49)
2004 – Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (Music Maker 50)
2007 – Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino (Vanguard) – contributing his version of "My Girl Josephine"
2007 – Le Cœur d'un homme by Johnny Hallyday – duet on "T'Aimer si mal", written by French best-selling novelist Marc Levy
2009 – American Horizon – with Los Cenzontles, David Hidalgo
2011 – Play The Blues Live From Lincoln Jazz Center – with Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton, playing on "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" and "Corrine, Corrina"
2013 – "Poye 2" – with Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba on their album Jama Ko
2013 – "Winding Down" – with Sammy Hagar, Dave Zirbel, John Cuniberti, Mona Gnader, Vic Johnson on the album Sammy Hagar & Friends
2013 – Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War – with a version of "Down by the Riverside"
2015 – "How Can a Poor Boy?" – with Van Morrison on his album Re-working the Catalogue
2017 – Music from The American Epic Sessions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – contributing his version of "High Water Everywhere"
Filmography
Live DVDs
2002 – Live at Ronnie Scott's 1988
2006 – Taj Mahal/Phantom Blues Band Live at St. Lucia
2011 – Play The Blues Live From Lincoln Jazz Center – with Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton, playing on "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" and "Corrine, Corrina"
Movies
1972 – Sounder – as Ike
1977 – Brothers
1991 – Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
1996 – The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
1998 – Outside Ozona
1998 – Six Days, Seven Nights
1998 – Blues Brothers 2000
1998 – Scrapple
2000 – Songcatcher
2002 – Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
2017 – American Epic
2017 – The American Epic Sessions
TV Shows
1977 - Saturday Night Live: Episode 048 Performer: Musical Guest
1985 - Theme song from Star Wars: Ewoks
1992 – New WKRP in Cincinnati – Moss Dies as himself
1999 – Party of Five – Fillmore Street as himself
2003 – Arthur – Big Horns George as himself
2004 – Theme song from Peep and the Big Wide World
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supershanzykhan · 3 years
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How can companies benefit from an event agency?
Event bureau info
Does your company have to hold some kind of event, and do you not have the resources or the desire to organise this event within the company? Then you may want to consider using an event agency for event planning. Event agencies are specialists in coordination, service and logistics, so it all just works as it should.
Most event agencies will be able to arrange:
Festive galas that give rise to PR and press
Company parties, also with team building in mind
Anniversaries
Cultural events
Concerts
Role-playing
Theme parties
Creative product events
Event agencies are also able to run the entire event, from invitations, through catering and subsequent cleaning. If you hire an event agency, it is therefore almost like putting the entire event planning and performance on autopilot.
Companies often forget how much time employees spend on their events and projects. A company should do what it does best, which means the company should spend time on their core competencies and not on organising events. A larger event can take on one or more employees, and these resources can be saved by using an event agency.
Why choose an event company?
When you choose to contact an event company to get it to be in charge of planning and organising your event, the event company can help you with everything from advice, to a complete solution of your event. If your event planning needs to be handled internally, you can get ideas and new input for your event at the event company.
However, most people find that it can be difficult to keep an overview and gather all the threads in connection with event planning, when there are typically other tasks that need to be solved as well. More and more companies and individuals are therefore contacting a professional event company.
When you choose an event company to be in charge of planning and organising your event, you can expect:
Professional advice
Professional conduct of your event, including secure time management
Knowledge of the latest trends in gastronomy, popular entertainment and attractive locations
Wide interface for catering, premises, entertainment
Ideas and input for creative decoration, event design and festive features
What can an event company do for you?
How much you choose to outsource your event planning to an event company, depending on your needs, you decide for yourself. The only thing the event company needs to know before it can start planning your event is how many people you expect to come to the event, what's your budget, when and where to hold it. The rest will take care of the event company if you wish. You can also come up with ideas for location, design and decoration yourself, after which the event company can provide an informed answer as to whether it is possible or not.
Among other things, an event company can help you with:
Serious organisation of any event - the scope you decide for yourself
Advice
Event ideas and input
Event design and decoration
A complete coordination and implementation of all stages of the event, including sending out invitations, booking catering and service personnel, and cleaning up.
Thus, an event company will tailor an event solution that will meet your requirements and criteria for a perfect event. In this way, you can concentrate happy and relaxed on welcoming only your guests and focusing on social interaction.
Are event agencies for you?
An event agency can both create really large events where several thousand guests will participate, but can also create small personal events with few participants. So it doesn't matter if you are about to arrange a company party for a larger company or whether you need to arrange team building for a single department.
A collaboration with a professional event agency will start with the event agency doing a sharp analysis to map your company's situation and opportunities. You can therefore be sure that when you use a professional event agency, you will make the most of the resources you have available. So whether you are a small or large company, a professional event agency will always be able to arrange exactly the event that you need.
To arrange exactly the event you want, an event agency will work with e.g. visual merchandising, professional bar/restaurant contact, service/staff handling/training - everything it takes to arrange and perform 100 percent completed events!
What do you need an event agency for?
If you want to create an unforgettable event, an event agency can help you. An event agency can handle everything from the development of strategy and the creative process, to production, logistics, execution and evaluation. In addition, an event agency can both provide total solutions where the event agency handles the entire process, or the event agency can act as your creative partner in parts of the task solution.
If you want help arranging an extraordinary company party, a professional event agency will certainly be able to deliver just that. Event agencies also create decoration, often from scratch, depending on the season, event theme and surroundings - so that each event is unique and unlike anything your guests have experienced in the past. However, it's not just parties that an event agency excels at. An event agency will also be able to arrange and secure well-executed conferences, product launches, team building, etc.
An event agency will be able to deliver unique experiences by kindling and moving participants. But the creativity and imagination that an event agency brings to a task isn't the only thing that a good event agency should be able to do. A good event agency must also be able to deliver the strategic, logistical work with the formulation of objectives, effective and strategic planning and organisation.
The process of an event agency
A typical process when using an event agency will look like this:
Research - The event agency gets into exactly what your company wants and what the purpose of the event is.
Event idea and design - Once you know what the goal of the event is, you can start shaping how the event should look.
Coordination and planning - The event agency prepares a plan for how the event should run.
Execution - The execution of the event is, of course, the highlight of the process.
Rounding and evaluating - The event agency should be able to make a thorough evaluation of the event.
Team building with an event agency
If you need a round of team building in the company, an event agency will be able to arrange many fun forms of this, the purpose of which is to optimize the company's soft values for the employees. Team building can strengthen and nurture relationships, trust, communication and other aspects that strengthen the internal cooperation within the company.
With team building, you can improve your collaboration with a focus on what works. Across disciplines and competences, job satisfaction and confidence are increasing - which is something that shows up on the bottom line. By using an event agency to strengthen the internal relationships within the company, the company will be able to achieve visible results.
What is the price for using an event agency?
The price of an event agency will vary depending on the size of an event to be held. By using an event agency, you save the internal resources the company would have had to use if it was to be responsible for the planning and execution of the company's event.
Whether your company has to organise the annual summer party, Christmas party, conference or just needs a game of team building to shake your employees together better, an event agency will be an effective solution.
If your company is about to organise an event, and if you need an event agency, you can fill out the contact form on this page. We will then help you find exactly the event agency that can deliver the event that best suits your needs.
Event planning for company parties
The two classic company parties during a calendar year are the Christmas party and the summer party. In addition, anniversary parties, galas, product events, annual meetings, team building courses, m.m. How these events are held varies according to the size and level of ambition of the company. Common to all kinds of events, however, is that event planning helps to bring the different points of the programme together and bring the event together.
For many companies, the Christmas party in particular is a prestige project, where both a gourmet dinner and an exuberant entertainment program are to be presented, which can impress both employees and external partners. A large Christmas party is used by many large companies as an opportunity to profile the company's brilliant face to the outside world, and here an impressive program as well as a professional and structured settlement are important. The planning of a large corporate event is more extensive than many people think. Event agencies concentrate on what they do best, as do companies when hiring professional event planners.
Do you need event planning?
You can use event planning for a wide range of events, whether you are hosting a small or a very large event where hundreds or thousands of guests participate. For example, event planning can be used when you are having a party for the entire company and when you are sending just one department on team building.
Event planning is also used for the public launch of new products, trade fairs, conferences, etc. Typically, the collaboration around event planning begins with an analysis of the customer's wishes, ideas and needs regarding the upcoming event. The concept for the event is then drawn up. This ensures that your resources are used in the most intentional way possible.
Professional event planners will be able to organize exactly the kind of event you want at any time. Event agencies have the necessary partners in the industries involved in your event, and will thus be able to deliver the "whole package", no matter how comprehensive it may be.
Courtesy:best corporate event planners
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kchannel9 · 4 years
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▶︎ Natthall | Sebastian Mullaert with musicians of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich | Sebastian Mullaert
"The majesty of the natural world has always been integral to Sebastian Mullaert’s music. His approach to art, as well as to life, is centered around meditating on nature’s primordial cycles and forces, things he has been fortunate to experience in abundance in his adopted village of Röstånga, in the south of Sweden. Situated on the edge of the Söderåsen National Park, it’s an area of outstanding beauty; primeval forests, deep ravines, and huge boulders left over from the last ice age give the area an enchanted, otherworld air.
One particular spot provided the inspiration for Mullaert’s latest project and forthcoming album. Sitting atop a 50m ridge, Natthall is a small, rocky bluff with majestic views east over the Rönne river, fields, and acres of trees. It’s a place he returns to often, to meditate, to think, or just to stare serenely out over the changing landscape. It’s that spontaneous transformation in the natural world that forms the emotional core of Natthall, a project that’s so much more than a mere album or series of concerts. These songs – this music – is alive, constantly morphing and evolving in a way that’s reflective of nature. Reflective of ourselves even. Things change, things grow, things die. “That is our essence,” he says. “We are fruits of patterns. It’s beautiful to make music that reflects these things; I think that’s very healthy.”
A classically trained violinist, Mullaert broke through the house and techno scene in the mid-nineties, winning international acclaim with his work as a producer and live performer. As a part of the Swedish alternative music scene, his career highlights include a Swedish Grammy - P3 Guild Awards (for his work under the Minilogue duo) in 2007 and a nomination for the same award in 2017 as a solo artist. His reputation as one of the most forward-thinking and inventive electronic artists of the 21st century was cemented when in 2018, he launched Circle of Live. This groundbreaking improvised live concept brings together some of the most extraordinary electronic live artists in free-flowing collaborative jam sessions throughout some of the most prestigious venues and festivals around the world.
Back in 2017, with a desire to combine the two musical worlds that had given him so much, Mullaert scored and performed a collaborative concert with musicians of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, one of Europe’s best symphony orchestras. An immersive audiovisual performance, it took place at the spectacular Tonhalle concert hall in Zurich as part of their tonhalleLATE series. Naturally, the event was a triumph, but Mullaert wanted to do more with the repertoire, and further push the boundaries of what might be possible on stage. “Live instruments have a very powerful organic force,” he says. “I have a way of working in the studio, how I loop and record things, with all these effects, and soundscapes. And I wanted to know: ‘Can I move this whole process onto the stage? To have the musicians playing something and actually capture them, and do that post-production at the same time as they’re playing?’”
The original music – the songs that he scored and recorded for the first performance and that will feature on the album – will be, he says, “a starting point” for Natthall, the framework for a wider range of material and moods. Using special prototype technology, Mullaert will take the role of a figurative digital conductor, integrating improvisation at the core of a performance with a chamber ensemble of five additional musicians.
The musicians, dubbed the Subchamber Ensemble, had no input in the project’s first chapter, a factor that Mullaert hopes will bring new perspectives and flexibility to the work going forward. The soloists will receive dynamically rendered scores from his computer via iPad screens, as Mullaert improvises around the main themes of the compositions. He will, in turn, re-loop and creatively process the audio signal from each musician through his specially designed live rig, creating a seamless blend of electronic and acoustic sound textures.
Patterns, and the idea of subtle repetition, deeply inform Natthall. “Nature is an expression of patterns; trees, water, the weather,” he explains. “This mix of everything, bubbling away, feels very vital. Improvised music has the same power. It has all these different phases, and beautiful moments just spring out. For me, that’s a beautiful presentation of our life and has the power to actually invite someone to relax into listening or dancing. Or just being in the moment.” Mullaert’s ultimate goal is to carve out space precisely for that, transcendent moments that go beyond mere music where his audience can turn inward and truly connect with themselves. “The magical thing is not the music and not the artist. It’s when people become very conscious or present when that experience is taking place in your consciousness. That’s the magic; it’s as much you as it is something outside of you. It’s that connection when it clicks together.”
Losing oneself in the music that forms the physical release of Natthall certainly isn’t hard. Sinking into its warm embrace, all lush synth washes, and widescreen soundscapes, one is struck by how organic it all sounds. There’s the gentle, elegiac ‘As The River Pass,’ the downcast strings of ‘Living Invitation,’ and the joyful ‘Ascending Of A Spotless Bird’, a song that sounds like a blissful spring sunrise. ‘No Words For A Beautiful World’ comes closest to touching upon his techno work, with synth stabs approximating a beat. Yet, it’s Natthall’s quietest moments that are the most affecting – both ‘Undressing The Sky’ and album closer ‘Rest Of The Heron’ is poignant, mournful passages, the latter gently fading to nothing, like day into night.
“The creative process is a fleeting thing,” he says. “You can’t decide what you are going to do.” Working against preconceived notions of what modern classical music can achieve, the music and project he has created is deep, unique, and full of raw beauty. He’s taken the intense, spiritual energy of Natthall and channeled it into art that brings us closer to nature, and ultimately, closer to ourselves. “When compositions feel right, it’s a wonderous thing,” he says. “Not all artists are blessed with that.” Natthall feels like communion, and one we should all partake in.  see less
credits
releases September 18, 2020
Performer: Sebastian Mullaert,
Cello: Alexander Neustroev
Harp: Sarah Verrue
Horn: Mischa Greull
Clarinet: Felix-Andreas Genner
Piano: Peter Solomon
Violin: Julia Becker
Mastering Engineer: Zino Mikorey
Arranger: Sebastian Mullaert, Luca Magni
Composer: Sebastian Mullaert
"
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verwelktesgedicht · 6 years
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Part 2: Purple Stone “Poison Chocolate” Interview Translation
Band: Purple Stone Topic: Poison Chocolate Release (February 2017) Original interview: Barks (January 2017) Translation: VerwelktesGedicht (July 2017) Part: 2 of 2
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-- Let’s continue and talk about the coupling songs!
GAK: “Cluster Voltage” is a song I composed in summer last year. That song completes the story about “FORGERY” that we’ve released on our mini album “NEXUS” in 2013. I wanted a continuation song for that one and with that in mind I composed it. That’s why I used the same “drop B” tuning like for FORGERY. I challenged myself, thinking about how far I can go to keep that system but complete the song at the same time.
-- With an aggressive tuning you organized it in a very digital, straight forward, original style.
GAK: I used industrial break beats and was obsessive over strong sounds with pretty high notes. And like it’s popular with loud rock these days I added sing-along shouts. We haven’t really used these elements for Purple Stone’s songs, so I wanted to try it. I think this song will heat the crowd up at concerts, so I’m looking forward to it.
Fuma: Holding the image GAK decided for he told me “I want you to use the word “Voltage” in the title!” when he brought the Demo version. But no matter how much I tried, the word “Voltage” didn’t fit in when I wrote the chorus (笑) So I came up with “○○ Voltage”. The word “Blaster” means “fierce attack, using explosive material, blasting everything away little by little”, “Voltage” means “hot air, power from the inside”. So this “fierce attack thanks to the power from the inside and blasting everything away little by little” is the way Purple Stone is heading toward 2017. So the content of these lyrics is “We want to compose songs and give lives without being scared of anything until everything is reduced to ashes and is completely burned”. That’s what this song expresses.
keiya: During the recording the “♪burabburabburabbura” was really difficult for me (笑) I combined the words like “♪buraburaburabura blaster voltage” and it turned into pop. But singing it “♪burabburabbura” it sounded like European rock! But both have their good points. I worried about it to a lifetime’s extend (笑) I was so exhausted because of this and my head went spinning so much I didn’t know anything at all anymore. Once again I let it sound in my head again and it turned into “♪burabburabburabbura”, so I thought: “Alright, going with this is fine!” but listening to it now, I wonder if it was the right choice.
GAK: I also thought about how to play it at lives with my guitar. Playing this at lives I will definitely get passionate about it. But if there are difficult parts in it I have to cool down and concentrate. I wanted this to be a song where my head can just turn blank and I can focus on my performance. That’s why I deleted all the unneeded difficult parts and kept it simple.
Fuma: Blaster Voltage isn’t a super rock song though. In my head the “Blaster” turned into the image of a “Lightsaber” from Star Wars (笑) It’s a superb image and I feel like there’s a nuance that makes it a bit different to super rock songs.
-- It all ends with a stylish hard tune. “Subarashiki kono sekai e” is a great, melodious up-beat song.
keiya: I composed it around 2014 and GAK was responsible for the arrangement of the song. It’s a song that has always been sleeping since that time. I wanted to include it on this single but I wanted to use GAK’s current way of seeing and arranging things, so he worked over the guitar arrangement once again. But the main thing is like the one from 2014, isn’t it?
GAK: Yes. I just worked over the guitar riffs and solo. I used the image of an “electrical parade”, added phrases and change the harmony. I think we made it flowing well.
Fuma: It’s an extraordinary band sound, hard rock/pop song and is also focused on the melody. Since those are my roots it was fun to play the bass for it. It’s a type of song we haven’t had for Purple Stone until now, so this is a bit different to the usual Purple Stone and I thought it would be fine to use a bass line that’s easy to remember.
keiya: There are times when I listen to a track after recording it and it makes me think: “I can do better, can’t I?”. If that feeling is too strong I do it all over again and correct everything until it sounds good.
-- The song’s passion is perfect. There’s also a part of the song when you sing “Exactly because so many different things happen, life is beautiful.” (song translation here)
keiya: Looking back at the songs we’ve created as Purple Stone I realized that there are barely lyrics that make you think “When I listen to this song, it gives me strength again!”. I wanted “Subarashiki kono sekai e” to be a song people listen to on their way to school in the morning. That’s why I decided to avoid dark lyrics or topics like love. I didn’t want to tell everyone what to do in life or write irresponsible lyrics like “Everything’s fine! Move forward and keep going!” That’s why I wrote lyrics that tell you “These things happen as well” or “That’s how you understand this or that kind of thing”. Also, personally I think that this world is a wonderful place. During the 2nd chorus there are the words “Even in the morning when rain is falling or in a stormy night there are sceneries that you will be able to see only at those times.” For me I want to appreciate this part the most out of the whole song. While being alive I write a lot about things you feel but I want you to remember these lines. If you accept that then I think this song is one that can encourage and cheer you up in a different way than those you already know.
-- It really became a song like that. You recorded another song, “Poison Chocolate Poison ver.” That you included on the “poison type”.
keiya: For the better or worse we are making music and being in a band, showing our true selves. But recently I came to thin that it’s not fun to show our real selves too much. I thought that it would be nice to express our playfulness more into our songs. “Poison chocolate poison ver.”is a Karaoke song I gave my best at (笑)
Fuma: The lyrics also turned out to be pretty exciting (笑)Keiya said there are lyrics he wants to write, so we left it up to him but when at 3am he called us saying “I wrote lyrics. Can you look at it?” and I asked him “What do you mean?” he answered “These might be too risky…”. When I read them they were really “risky” but also so fun that I told him they are good (笑)
keiya: I thought he will definitely be against it but when Fuma’s “OK” came I was so surprised (笑)The talk in the A-Melody was Fuma’s idea.
Fuma: Speaking of it being my idea it was rather that keiya said there are too many words and they don’t fit in, so I suggested that way. (笑) I gave him the advice to just say them instead of sing them and it turned out like this (笑)
GAK: In the “poison chocolate poison ver.” keiya also plays the guitar solo!
keiya: It was especially for that. To let the idea we just talked about live, I wanted to change the guitar solo and let GAK play it. But then he told me “Change it as you like!” and I went all like “Eh? I’m the one who’s playing it now?” (笑)He let it play me the way I want but I didn’t listen to his complains at all. Please treat me well in the future, too (笑)
-- There are so many impulses in this version! (笑) Well, your year of 2017 started with the single “Poison Chocolate”. What kind of year do you want 2017 to become?
keiya: Around the middle of last year there were many things that made us and you be able to see and say “So this is what Purple Stone is like!” We released “panic panic!”, went on tour, accepted the reaction of everyone and turned it into shape with “poison chocolate”. That’s why this year is about our future once again. Once again this year is about victory or failure. Personally, there is one thing I really want to archive. To make that come true I will give good lives every single time, compose many songs and put all my feeling into our band activity.
Fuma: In the end of 2016 we were able to perform at Shinjuku ReNY and in the beginning of this year at Osaka BIGCAT. During high school times I already held a live at BIGCAT and thought that it was SO HUGE. But in the beginning of this year it didn’t feel THAT huge at all. With that energy I want to become a band that is able to perform at Namba Hatch or Zepp soon. To achieve that I want to release CDs with better quality than before. I want to create things that makes me think “If we can’t sell this one, let’s die.” Regarding lives, I want to take the offensive this year.
GAK: After releasing the four songs “poison chocolate” I want to create even better music and will improve the way of production of my CDs at home once again. Now we can produce them in a new way and I think we can show you a good way of doing so. “Poison chocolate” is an important song during this transition period and with that maybe you can see how Purple Stone is heading now. Please look forward to our selves of 2017.
keiya: I really want you to watch the music video of “poison chocolate”! This time as well I thought about the furitsuke and was in charge of dancing. The whole song as furi and the difficulty level is high, so I worried a lot about how well our fans will be able to dance it. But I just want you to have fun in the best way. I’m happy if you do an exact copy of it but it’s also fine if you remember only a bit! I will accept it, no matter which way, and be happy if we can create a fun live all together.
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