Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council will present an artist salon featuring rising performance poet Talia Young at Studio Z this Sunday, Jan. 21 at 2 p.m. Young will be joined by Rabbi Emma Kippley-Ogman for a lively conversation on ways in which spoken word has become an effective vehicle for social change and on the role of new media in advancing activism. Rimon Executive Director David Jordan Harris interviewed Talia Young for this preview of the event. 
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Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from?

I grew up in California then moved to Minnesota for the weather. When everyone in California asks why I am still in Missouri/Montana/Michigan I tell them I love it here, and I really do. I just graduated from Macalester College in May, where I studied Creative Writing. I am working a bunch of part time jobs this year and trying to figure out how to be an adult.

How did you begin writing and performing?

I experienced a poetry slam for the first time when I was in high school and was forever changed. The poets on the stage were teenagers like me, but they were so powerful and vulnerable in their storytelling. Sitting in the audience, I knew even though it scared me I would one day be on the stage. I was shy and slam gave me a way to share my voice. Slam Poetry has brought me closer to community, to language, and to myself. I started seven years ago and have been writing, performing and teaching poetry ever since.

What pieces will you be performing at the Artist Salon?

I've been working on new pieces for this Salon about what it means to be Jewish, what I inherited from my parents and grandparents, why I'm obsessed with learning Hebrew. I will also perform pieces about the body and illness, love, queerness, and the Bible. 

Tell us a bit about Heartland Marimba Quartet. Where are you from? How was the group formed?
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The Heartland Marimba Quartet (HMQ) is North America’s premiere marimba quartet and the primary performing ensemble of Heartland Marimba. HM’s mission is to reach an array of audiences to support and advance the classical marimba art form, its music, composers, and performers. Heartland Marimba began in 2014 through the vision and leadership of internationally acclaimed marimba soloist Matthew Coley (IA). In the fall of 2016, Coley assembled a group of highly accomplished marimba specialists from around the country to perform concerts of music by American composers with expressive mastery. These artists include Michael J. Jones (TX), Joe Millea (AZ), Andrew Veit (IL), and Abby Fisher (first call substitute, NY). HMQ regularly tours in the spring and fall to a variety of venues including universities, concert halls, churches, museums, and high schools to conduct concerts, collaborations, and educational events. The artists also serve as the main teachers and mentors at the annual Heartland Marimba Festival, an in-depth marimba academy for high school and college students as well as aspiring performers.  


What will you be performing at Studio Z?

HMQ’s program will showcase works written for Heartland Marimba, including Alex Orfaly’s Fôr Marimbas, Steven Simpson’s Fluidity, and the first movement of a new marimba quartet composition by our own Matthew Coley. Additionally, the concert will continue supporting the established repertoire for marimba quartet by featuring Kevin Romanski’s Fantasy and Michael Burritt’s Marimba Quartet.


HMQ and Heartland Marimba have very active music education programs. How does your work in education inform your work as performing artists?

Education of current student percussionists and marimbists, new and old audience members, and youth are all very important to HM’s comprehensive mission, and to the individual HMQ artists. We hope to inspire many generations with creativity and passion in order to continue the growth of the art form from year to year, but also to reach people and influence their lives in positive ways. We find the connection between marimba performance and a new audience is very immediate. Fortunately, marimba has the visual/physical component of performance on its side. We feel that programming can be fairly adventurous if there is a human/organic and relatable connection between what the audience is hearing and what they are seeing. It needs to make sense together and not be too contrived or too contained. And of course the music has to be performed in a highly artistic way. When you’re able to figure out the balance between the aural and physical the audience is entranced beyond expectations. It’s magical. At that moment we are able to educate and truly advance the art form, chipping away at making a real and sustainable future for the instrument and the artists.

As far as our summer festival of classes, lessons, and concerts for students and our initiatives in elementary music, we are fully committed to sharing what we have been fortunate to gather in our careers in order to benefit youth and up-and-coming performers. This is the most important thing we do as performers. These programs not only provide the foundation for what we hope will one day become full-time positions for the HMQ members but they are the heartbeat of what we do and why we do it. Some of our favorite concerts we’ve done have been at high schools and for small communities that have never seen or heard the marimba. Imagine being that person and seeing four 5-octave marimbas coming to life onstage! It would be amazing.


How does HMQ determine which repertoire to perform, and what is the rehearsal process like when preparing new rep?

HMQ seeks to inspire the next generation of American composers to write for marimba quartet in an effort to fill a void that currently exists in the repertoire. We perform works exclusively by American composers and aim for a balanced program of both new and traditional works. We also emphasize establishing new relationships with composers and actively pursue commissions of novel works for marimba quartet to enrich and diversify our set list. HMQ holds regular video conference calls in which every member weighs in on repertoire development. Once we have settled on a tour program, the sheet music is quickly distributed to all performers. Because we choose to memorize most of our program, members must practice diligently in their home state during the months leading up to a performance. If we are able to meet prior to a tour, we record our rehearsals so the audio may be used as a helpful practice guide. The final step is meeting for two or three days prior to the start of our tour for intensive rehearsals. These are often very intense periods, but the effort put in is well worth it!  
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How did the Fireside Five get started? 

I had played gigs with most of the members of the band before we formed our group, but never in a combo setting. I have always wanted to have my own jazz combo but was distracted for a few decades with family, university teaching jobs, summer music festivals and numerous freelance opportunities. I have a been faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Music since 1990 and have also had the opportunity to play many hundreds of "gigs" with the SPCO and the Minnesota Orchestra, as well as numerous Broadway shows at the Ordway Theatre. In a previous life, I played lead trombone in the North Texas State University One O'Clock Jazz Lab Band, ran my own big band (Mom's Jazz Band) in Dallas and worked as a studio and general freelance musician in Dallas and Fort Worth. In between Texas and Minnesota, I was a member of the Kansas City Symphony and taught trombone and jazz improvisation at the University of Kansas. I also taught and performed for a year in Australia, but that's a whole other story.   

As life began to slow down a bit, the Fireside Five was formed in December of 2014. We rehearsed a few times at my home and then played a number of times at the Underground Music Cafe in the Como Park neighborhood in 2015. We did one recording session at The Terrarium studio in Minneapolis in April 2015 to create a few demo tracks, and then everyone got really busy with life and other gigs. I decided to get the band together again earlier this year and this is the first of what I hope will be many performances together. 


What is the collaborative process like with the band? 

Since I'm fortunate to be working with some of the most talented and experienced musicians in the Twin Cities (or anywhere else), there is no lack of great ideas for music, grooves, arrangements, etc. We also have a myriad of horn combinations and colors to explore, with Brian Grivna on alto and tenor sax, clarinet and flute and me on trombone, euphonium and bass trumpet. We have not generated any original tunes yet, but we have come up with some interesting and unique approaches to many great jazz standards. 


You have an eclectic mix of jazz planned for this Thursday (dixieland, swing, bebop, bossa nova and beyond). Can you tell us a bit about what we'll hear? 

As all of the band members are a bit over fifty (I am pretty sure), there aren't many tunes that someone in the band hasn't played before. We do have a good time presenting very authentic performance of jazz classics, as well as taking new approaches to many standards. Our audiences can expect to hear everything from "Struttin' With Some BBQ" with Brian Grivna burning on the clarinet, the lovely bossa nova "Ceora" with flute and euphonium (think really big flugelhorn) and Coltrane's usually burning-tempo "Giant Steps" played as a loping jazz waltz... and just about everything in between. It would be great to have an audience of music lovers come out and enjoy an evening of diverse, inspired and swinging jazz! 

June 22  •  7:30 p.m.  •  $10 / $5 students & seniors 65+
Details

​The Fireside Five presents an exciting evening of jazz, including dixieland, swing, bebop, bossa nova and beyond. The band will include leader Tom Ashworth on trombone and assorted low brass, Brian Grivna on multiple woodwinds, pianist Phil Aaron, Gary Raynor on bass and Joe Pulice on drums.

What should we expect to hear at Studio Z this Friday? 

Casey Deming, Justin Meyers and I will each play solo sets. Casey will be presenting Tone Poems: Selections from Henryk Górecki's Symphony # 3 & Beatus Vir, Op. A deconstruction of Górecki's holy minimalism through the use of tape loops. Justin will present new electroacoustic compositions from a forthcoming record entitled “Struggle Artist.” As for myself, I plan on presenting new A/V work. I’m interested in the subjective experience of sound and visuals, so the performance will be more about the interplay of sound and light than trying to project any sort of specific narrative.

What is the story behind Nada? 

Originally I started Nada as a record label for releasing my own music and that of my peers. Since then it has grown to act as a general platform for the promotion of experimental, electronic, and electroacoustic musics and sound works in a variety of contexts (e.g. recording, radio, performance). The name Nada is actually a reference to a Sanskrit word, “Nāda" which means "sound" or the "universal sound." In this system of thought, the whole cosmos is simply a projection of sound alone. Interestingly, this idea can be found in scientific theories as well! In quantum theory there is a concept that the elementary particles of matter exhibit wave-like behavior under certain conditions. 

You traveled to India to study Hindustani classical music with Pandit Shivnath Mishra in 2010. How has this experience informed your music-making?

Around 2008-2009 I was listening to a lot of drone based musics (LaMonte Young, Phill Niblock, et al), which naturally led me to Indian classical music. At the same time, I was practicing seated meditation on a regular basis. I decided to study vipassanā meditation and Hindustani music in India in 2010. For Indian musicians, music acts as a medium for a deeper connection to the universe. They call it Nada Yoga or sound meditation. As part of my education, I had to do some vocal practice and sitar lessons. I never took much interest in developing any sort of technical virtuosity; I was mostly interested in theory and understanding the conceptual aspects of the music. 

I am certainly influenced by Nada Yoga’s philosophy. I encourage a voluntary and selective listening approach to my music. My hope is that my work can activate a heightened sense of awareness in the auditor.

Your music explores sound via research and artistic practice. What types of research have you been doing, and how does that play out in your music? 

My research interests are in electronic music, psychoacoustics, and philosophy of sound. I enjoy critical discourse surrounding sound and often use these ideas as starting points for musical composition. The computer is well suited for exploring such concepts, as it allows for the creation of sounds and their arrangement in a way that extends beyond what the human body is capable. Granular synthesis for instance allows for the creation of particles of sound on a micro timescale. Depending on the arrangement: a single particle may be heard as a point; a stream of grains as a line; and dense agglomerations as a cloud. 

May 26  •  7:30 p.m.  •  $8  •  Details
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Nada is a Minneapolis based organization interested in promoting experimental and subversive musics and sound works. For the spring 2017 season, Nada is pleased to host an evening of quadraphonic surround sound performances from local sound artists Justin Meyers, Casey Deming, and Michael Flora.

Your new work for Zeitgeist, earth sleeps below, is part of a body of your work that is inspired by Minnesota landscapes. What initially drew you in this direction? 

My interest in environmental music originated simply from a love of the outdoors and many hiking and camping excursions. However, it grew into something more important; a sort of documentation of our precious wilderness. Our climate is changing at an alarming rate. In fact, Minnesota is the second most-affected state in the U.S. (after Alaska) by climate change. And along with a changing climate, the land and its inhabitants are also quite visibly affected, driving efforts to document and preserve as much as possible. It occurred to me that our environment as it currently exists ought to be documented through art as well. While my music most certainly reflects the serenity and wonder of the wilderness experience, it also recognizes the fragile relationship that we all share and need to sustain. 

Describe the research you did prior to composing earth sleeps below.

Last year I wrote a large work for the Minnesota Percussion Trio entitled Land of Cloud-Tinted Water that explored the diversity of various wilderness areas throughout Minnesota. In preparation for that work, I visited numerous state parks and nature preserves throughout the state to collect field recordings; study their landscapes, inhabitants, geography, history, etc; and simply to experience each place. Voyageurs National Park was one of those places, and I visited several times, both during summer and winter. The summertime experience was ultimately featured in Land of Cloud-Tinted Water, but I was captivated by the winter landscape there and wanted to explore it further. I went back for another visit last February while I was in the process of composing earth sleeps below. 

earth sleeps below confines itself to a single harmonic world but explores a wide range within this world. Does this relate to Voyageurs National Park? If so, how? 

Voyageurs consists of a vast area of interconnected lakes. Through earth sleeps below, I imagined the music beginning at surface level on one such lake, and panning out to discover the multitude of surrounding waterways, all connected and flowing as one. 

Zeitgeist is also performing your work Black. Would you talk about how nature is reflected in that piece as well?

Black (2013) depicts a walk through the dense forests of the Minnesota Northwoods in the dead of night, emphasizing that with the absence of light (and light pollution from cities) we have a heightened sense of hearing, and with that, a heightened imagination for what might be lurking around. Surrounded by complete darkness, the sounds of the forest are magnified and the mystery of the wilderness intensified. ​

Katherine Bergman is a Minnesota-based composer who draws on literature, environmentalism, and found materials to create work that has been described as hypnotic and visceral. She has received commissions and performances from the Gustavus Wind Orchestra, The Dream Songs Project, the Minnesota Percussion Trio, and other leading ensembles and festivals throughout the United States. Katherine holds degrees from the University of Northern Iowa and Gustavus Adolphus College, and her composition instructors have included Mary Ellen Childs, Jonathan Schwabe, and Samuel Adler. Katherine is director and co-founder of Spitting Image, a collective of Minneapolis-St. Paul composers. More information at www.katherinebergman.net.

May 4-6  •  7:30 p.m.  •  $15 / $10 students & seniors
Details

Teaming up with Twin Cities composer collective Spitting Image, Zeitgeist presents new commissions by Spitting Image Collective composers Katherine Bergman and Daniel Nass plus Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung’s captivating work Spiral XIV “Nimitta.”

How long has the trio been working together, and how did the collaboration begin?

BB: BHZ has been together for two years. The collaboration started in 2014 when I met Mark in Prague at the Echofluxx Festival run by Dan Senn who I studied with in Canberra, Australia. Mark and I played in a large ensemble and decided we needed to continue collaborating so I was invited to the US for an artists residency at Marshall University with Edwards Distinguished Professor in the Arts in 2015 where I met Steve Hall. We did concerts, toured and spent many hours in the studio rehearsing and recording which resulted in the album Total Harmonic Distortion.

MZ: Yes that’s it. We both also have a connection with Dan Senn who runs Echofluxx. Dan and I both studied with Sal Martirano; I met him at Sal’s funeral and our paths have crossed many times since then.

What is your collaborative process like?

SH: We get together and talk about how to approach each piece. As works develop I can choose to react to the music or video complementing the current texture, or be more pro-active; developing ideas over time. This time around, I am playing more rhythm-based ideas than the last, and thinking more about large-scale form.

MZ: I’ve been performing with Steve since around 2008 or 2009 with my jazz trio; and we have always had a great sympatico. In the jazz setting each individual has a more specific role, but I was always very attracted to Steve’s sense of color, and his ability to place sounds in the “right” place. After I met Brigid, I was sure that this would all work very well. Brigid and I are both composers so we usually bring in material to work with. Brigid’s video work is also a great place to start when we are working on something new; the films often work as visual/graphic scores. I would describe our working/collaborative process as active; we don’t speak much in the beginning, and tend to put pieces together by reviewing rehearsal recordings and discussing approaches. After a certain point, works begin to blossom and grow. That part of the process is exciting because it reveals how much more there is to explore.

BB: The collaborative process is exciting and inventive. Mark and I came together with pieces to perform and Steve adds percussion to the sound world. Each piece we discussed and rehearsed with specific ideas. The overall ideas of most of my compositions when working with Mark and Steve was they added to the overall texture with gestures and in most cases a conversation between the ideas to accentuate the ideas.

What is the story behind your recent album, Total Harmonic Distortion.

BB: Total Harmonic Distortion is a combination of structured improvisations and scored works by Mark and I. The evolution of the works resulted from our openness to ideas and exchanging musical thoughts and sound worlds to each of the pieces. Mark and I had specific ideas to how we should approach Stretching G and Gloss. For Stretching G Steve and I were given gestures we had to enter at specific times keeping movement within the composition and punctuating the gestures played by Mark on processed/looped guitar. With Gloss the score was the video that included nine short movements with a fixed electronic part. The other four works all different were created through improvisational experiments pushing all out individual sound worlds experimenting with different combinations and changing the acoustic sounds electronic in mixing stage which was an exciting time as all the tracks were recorded over such a short intense time.

SH: On Total Harmonic Distortion we went into the studio, recorded and developed things on the fly. As pieces developed we added additional layers; I think this relates well to Brigid’s videos and soundscapes. Overall, I enjoyed the project immensely and am very proud of the end result.
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MZ: When I performed with Brigid in Prague, I knew from the start that we would be doing a record. So I started looking for a way to bring her to the U.S. Marshall University’s Edwards Distinguished Professor in the Arts program was a great vehicle making it possible for us to begin working together. On THD we came in with the pieces Brigid mentions above, and then tried some different approaches to improvisation to finish. Pop, Flaming Radio, Silent Endeavors and Total Harmonic Distortion are the result of that work. Brigid and I are both “workaholics” so we finished roughing out tracks on the last day of her residency; that was after teaching for a week, and playing five concerts on a mini tour. Further, we both think alike so the hours of editing were very productive.


Tell us about the tour you are concluding, and the program at Studio Z.

MZ: On tour we will play at Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA, University of Minnesota, SEAMUS National Conference, and Studio Z. I encourage folks to view the promo and BHZ: THD tracks on youtube. The material on this program is eclectic and is a great next step for the group. We are playing really well together and the new works are vibrant and dynamic. I am also very pleased that my dear friend Todd Harper will be joining us at Studio Z. His new work is really great and he is such a talented improviser. The last time we played together was in the late 1980’s with the Seekers of Beauty. So for me it is a bit of a homecoming, and I am looking forward to seeing old friends!

BB: The tour we will be traveling on a bus from Huntington, West Virginia to Minnesota. We are performing a varied program of works by Mark and me referencing many genres. Steve will be adding a wonderful array of percussion to intricate and thought provoking electronics and guitar by Mark, and I will performing bass clarinet, electronics and projected fixed and live video.

Acclaimed pianist and new music specialist Matthew McCright will perform an innovative recital of new music on Saturday, April 22, 7:30 p.m. at Studio Z. The program, titled "Connecting Flights," is derived from McCright's global view of contemporary music and its multiple inspirations and will feature premieres by Reinaldo Moya, the new assistant professor of composition at Augsburg College; Irish composer and 2016-17 Fulbright Scholar to the U.S., Linda Buckley; St. Olaf College professor Justin Merritt; and Twin Cities jazz composer and pianist, Laura Caviani. McCright also will perform pieces by Carleton College visiting professor, Andrea Mazzariello and noted American composers Stephen Andrew Taylor, Mason Bates, Martin Bresnick, and Amy Williams.

“When sitting on a long flight; having run out of podcasts or my latest digital book is done, I am drawn to the airline magazine section that shows the route map for the globe. It is fascinating how interconnected the world really is,” said McCright. “This program demonstrates how these composers can be linked together by very similar ideas or moods and it does not take long to trace the six degrees of separation among them. The route map is a perfect metaphor for this concept, considering one can leave MSP and be in Johannesburg with just a few connections."

About the artist
American pianist Matthew McCright has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific as piano soloist and chamber musician. He has thrilled audiences and critics alike with imaginative programming that places the greatest piano repertoire alongside the music of today’s most innovative composers. A native of Pennsylvania, McCright now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a member of the piano faculty of Carleton College. An accomplished recording artist, McCright has released five solo recordings: three albums on innova Records (Second Childhood, A Waltz through the Vapor, and Blender), a 2011 release of the piano works of Gene Gutchë on Centaur Records and a 2015 release on Albany Records of the piano music of Olivier Messiaen. His solo touring shows include Evening Preludes, The People’s Music, Contemplations: the Music of Messiaen, Connecting Flights, and Endurance.

The recipient of numerous awards, grants, and prizes, he has performed at festivals such as Bang on a Can at MassMOCA, Printing House Festival of New Music (Dublin), Late Music Festival (UK), Hampden-Sydney Chamber Music Festival, Engelbach-Hart, Kodály Institute, Perilous Night, Fringe, Bridge, Spark Festival of Electronic Music, Seward Arts, Music 2000, CCM Village Opening, and Minnesota Composers Alliance. McCright completed his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance from the University of Minnesota, Master of Music Degree in Piano from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and earned his Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance, Magna Cum Laude, from Westminster College. His past teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Nancy Zipay DeSalvo, Lisa Moore, and Richard Morris. He is represented by Proper Canary Artist Services. For more information please visit: www.matthewmccright.org

Excerpt from an interview with Barbara Held by Alexandra Alisauskas and Godfre Leung, forthcoming in The Third Rail #10.  
 
The Third Rail: As one follows the trajectory of your career, the breath, via flute, and then via other operations — both scores and machines — undergoes a transformation or conversion into a different kind of sound. Scores and machines “re-shape the breath,” to tweak Ned Rothenberg’s phrase. For instance, in your very recent work with Benton C Bainbridge, your breath instigates the piece, both through the sound of the flute and in controlling your Moog synthesizer, both of which Benton then modifies for the piece’s audio and video outputs.
 
Barbara Held: When I was four years old, my mother got sick with polio at the very end of one of the big epidemics. She spent many months in an iron lung, and my younger sister and I were sent to live with relatives far away and not allowed to visit her. When she died, I found something that had become one of my deepest memories: a 2-track reel-to-reel tape that my father had made as a family letter. He recorded my mom in the iron lung, and then everyone in the family added some kind of little message, mostly talking about the hot mid-western weather (it was August), the crops, the corn, the beans. The voices are incredible, including my own child voice singing “In the Good Old Summertime,” but what I remember is mom’s voice, speaking in the rhythm of the iron lung that was making her breathe.
I used all that sentimental material in a sound collage piece called Upper Air Observation, but what has impacted me the most was the alarm or fear or whatever feeling it is that stays in that artificial breathing. I guess that it wasn’t a coincidence that I choose an instrument that is so transparently breath-like.
 
About breath in general, I think, like the Black Mountain artists, that we can’t help making things that come from our natural body rhythms, especially the heart and breath, that are really one thing. One of my favorite sounds is the way string quartets use their breathing to stay together. You’re not supposed to hear it. A composer named Charlie Morrow has a beautiful song setting for solo voice of an English translation by Jerome Rothenberg of Juan de la Cruz’s poem “Dark Night.” The breathing is notated in the score: long breath in, long breath out, musical phrase, breath. He has another fun piece for ocarina that is only the instruction to play each phrase as long as one breath. I performed it while having a gallbladder attack, and the phrases were tiny gasps.
 
TTR: I would love to hear more about your work with installation, for instance your recent installation with Benton Observatory/Lisa Joy (2016). From what I understand the original Observatory piece uses numerical data as its basis, and is further filtered through an information-based system. In looking at other installation works of yours, so much of it seems to be about mapping or building the particularities of a given space.
 
BH: My collaboration with Benton is still in process, but I’m really enjoying the directness of the relationship. We are using similar instruments to synthesize and process image and sound (Eurorack video modules and a small Moog synthesizer modulated with acoustic flute sound), and everything is folding back, in and out. He is interested in portraits, so even the images of our hands and faces are going into the mix. His A/V modules make sound or image equally. He can send me audio frequencies that I can use as what’s called a control voltage: information that can be used to modulate the sound I am making. My acoustic flute or my synthesized sounds can go into the mix of what is modulating the images that he is making. In the installation that is part of the Madrid show Escuchar con los ojos: Arte sonoro en España, 1961–2016 (Fundación Juan March, 2016), Benton’s instrument, which he calls Lisa Joy, is a fairly simple extension of the translation of data that creates my generative sound installation and converts one natural phenomenon into another: numeric data of solar oscillations into the math of the harmonic series over a pixel of flute sound. His drawings are not a totally direct interaction with the sound. He creates a calligraphy of shapes and lines with the synthesizer module that then is modified by the sound input from a small mic inside the synthesizer that divides that information into its component frequencies and translates it into changes in the horizontal, vertical, and brightness components of the drawing.
 
Interestingly, Lisa Joy is named for Lissajous figures, which are named for Jules Antoine Lissajous, a French physicist who developed a method of visualizing waves by using a small mirror on a vibrating object such a tuning fork, which is another of the gadgets I love. (I have a collection of books from the era, by John Tyndall and Spanish equivalents, with these wonderful illustrations. The Royal Society was organizing soirées to demonstrate the new scientific discoveries about the way light and sound work, and they used these apparatuses to demonstrate, which was like something between performance and magic show.)
 
Right now, Benton and I are working on Pausa, a piece for St. Cloud in March to make an installation that is partially performed, which keeps the seed of the performed sound and video images, and continues to generate new relationships. We’re thinking of ways of using that late winter light and reflection of snow in the gallery window when we make our piece. I started trying to combine performance and installation this last fall when I was asked to participate in the Signal Festival in Cagliari, Sardenya. The theme of the festival was silence, so I proposed to start from zero, playing the flute into a computer patch that recorded and manipulated the sounds, eventually generating sound as an ongoing installation.

 
Issue 10 of The Third Rail launches on Friday, March 17. The event will feature live music by Feel Free Hi Fi and Zina, video by Mati Diop & Manon Lutanie and Adam Khalil & Zack Khalil, food by The Sioux Chef and Salty Tart. 8:30 – midnight, 147 Holden Street North, Minneapolis.  Free.

​I am interested in all the senses. We all engage the world through eyes, ears, mouth, nose, sense of touch. As a composer, you might think that in my compositions I am primarily concerned with hearing. And it's true, I am, but over the years I've started to understand that what I am doing is better described as “music and...”  
 
Music and light. Music and movement. Music and staging. Music and visual image.
 
And now, music and nose.
 
About six years ago the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC was the first American museum to establish a department of olfactory arts. I learned of this development with a great deal of interest. From the time I was a little girl I was enraptured by scents. I loved wearing many different scents at once: bubble bath, lotion, perfume, talcum powder. I was known to experiment with combining the contents of various bottles on my mother’s dressing table. And one of my treasured Christmas gifts was a kit that allowed me to create my own scented lotions. With the announcement of the new Department of Olfactory Arts at MAD, my fascination with designed scents was rekindled and with it, the idea to create a body of music paired with aromas. 
 
Scent and music surely have much in common. An aroma is a powerful memory trigger, just as music can be. The experience of aroma can affect our other perceptive senses, just as music can affect our experience of emotion, visual image and time. Much of my prior musical work arises from a fascination of how music can alter perception and it is this perception-bending intersection between these two artforms that I am keen to explore. 
 
And so I dug in. I researched scent: I talked with neuroscientists, independent perfume designers, a world-class “nose.” I visted Osmotheque, an olfactory archive in France, as well as the Musee International de la Parfumerie in Grasse. I traveled to Los Angeles to meet with the founder of the Center for Art and Olfaction. I tried my hand at formulating my own perfume. I created and hosted a series of scent dinners, with designated scent courses, paired with music. And I read and read and sniffed and smelled. 
 
This weekend at Studio Z, Zeitgeist performs their annual Eric Stokes Song Contest winners (which I am eager to hear), then performs a handful of my concert works, some arranged for Zeitgeist, others written expressly for them, including a brand new piece. The evening ends with music and scent. The audience will be invited to explore three rooms filled with scents and music. I'm not looking for the scent and music to copy or translate each other, but to compliment, much like pairing food and wine. And then, true to form, Zeitgeist will end the evening with food and wine. I hope you'll join us and partake of all the senses! 

--Mary Ellen Childs, composer

Katy Vernon calls herself a "singer of sad songs on a happy instrument." She has been writing songs as long as she remembers; they have always served as an emotional outlet for difficult losses and experiences in her life. Five years ago Katy picked up a ukulele and found that it gave a levity and new creative balance to her work. She performs solo and with a full band all over the state and is preparing for her first UK tour this summer. 

Katy writes: "Songwriting has always been my favourite thing to do. As a child I used to make up musicals as I played with my dolls. It has always been a part of me. I find that I can deal with issues that are on my mind by singing them out. I love singing more than anything else and when I'm singing my own words it is the ultimate self expression." 

Katy is one three winning composers of Zeitgeist's 22nd annual Eric Stokes Song Contest. Named in memory of late composer Eric Stokes, the contest is designed to encourage and celebrate amateur composers throughout the Twin Cities. Katy will perform her winning song, Pearl, with Zeitgeist at their annual Playing it Close to Home concert Feb. 17-18 at Studio Z. 

Pearl was written as a direct response to hypnotherapy sessions that Katy used to deal with anxiety and depression. It was a deliberate move away from sad subject matter and a literal goodbye to the grief that has fueled her earlier works.