music for people

This past Saturday I went to a Music for People workshop hosted by David Darling... it's a very wonderful organization that has people getting in touch with their 'inner child' and improvising on musical instruments... getting professionals side by side with people who have never touched musical instruments before... it's very moving to hear what comes out of people when they have their guards down!  I had been to several workshops a few years ago and found them to be extremely inspiring, but I hadn't been in a while... this past week I realized that I had the day free, and that the workshop was more or less in my backyard... so went on a spur of the moment.  It was very interesting to see where I was a few years later in my music creation self... lately I've been practicing so much classical music and I've been feeling a little stymied when it comes to improvising new music... Saturday was very cool though... some of the exercises of MFP feel a little corny for this very private person... but as the day progressed I relaxed into them more and more, and by the end of the evening, I actually performed a singing improv in front of the entire group... one that touched deep inside of me... The evening's "concert" was absolutely incredible... group after group of mystical and magical improvising groups... including several jaw-dropping amazing pianists.  It's not a light thing at all for me to say I did a singing improv... I think that may have been the first time in my life I ever did something of the sort.  David D. teaches that you should "sing what you play and play what you sing"... and the next day at Jody and my brunch gig at Beans, I found my improvs going in all kinds of amazing new directions, when I stopped THINKING... I even found myself singing along with River Dawn at one point... wowzas.   (as an aside, my ego event at the MFP day was a group session where we all spoke gibberish to each other... it just so happens that I've been speaking "Catherinese" my whole life, and gibberish comes extremely naturally to me... and one of the guys in the room proclaimed that I was a virtuoso at it... hee hee)

In any case, things are really looking up these days... I'm busy trying to coordinate a bunch of concerts later this year, and Jody and I are making plans to go back for more recording of our improvs... this time instead of Jody being in an isolation booth in the studio we are going to try a 'live' recording in an auditorium and maybe even make the sessions open to fans to come in and out so we can have an audience while we're playing.  I'm checking out a few options over the next few weeks, so I'll let you know!