Voice Intensive, I miss you.

Canada's National Voice Intensive is a five-week voice, speech, and text workshop that's been happening in Vancouver, B.C. every summer since 1986. Under the brilliant direction of master voice teacher David Smukler, the Intensive has served as a safe and accessible laboratory for participants and instructors to explore and examine the limitless textures and nuances of the human voice. Although CNVI is primarily focused on voice for the actor, it has served participants from numerous professional disciplines.

I've had the unique pleasure of attending in the Intensive twice; once in 2006 as a participant and again as an associate instructor in 2010. I have little doubt my path will guide me there again in the near future.

Today I had the chance to reconnect with a couple acquaintances from both of my CNVI experiences. I am always pleasantly surprised at how much these conversations allow me to remember ('re' as in 'again', and 'member' as in 'body'; so 'embody again') the wonderful and inspiring times I've had in Vancouver at the Intensive. I'm pleased today.

For more information on Canada's National Voice Intensive, have a look here. I'm on the homepage!!!

peace.

Quick Blog Post

I've got some real work to do. I was just cast in a show and I have to memorize my part by next week. So yeah, I'm hitting the books hard until I'm out of the woods.

Between now and then I will still post, but be prepared for them to be significantly truncated. I'm incredibly sorry, but it's a necessary evil.

Oh well...

Be sure to go here and check out last night's interview of one of my heroes, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We'll get to him soon.

Oh, and apparently we have a new astrology chart. Oh no. My world will never be the same. (add sarcasm)

peace

Drivin' 'Round the City at Night Music

Last night I was on my way home from work and thumbed my way to 808s and Heartbreak on my iPod. For the uninitiated, 808s and Heartbreak is the fourth studio album by Kanye West. Released in 2008, its prominent musical element was Kanye's extensive use of Auto-Tune added to a minimalist production style centered around the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Skipping through the playlist, I landed on the eighth track on the album called "Street Lights". And as I listened, it was almost as if the song became the soundtrack of my ride home. The lyrics, the production, the atmosphere, everything about the song seemed specifically arranged for a midnight ride through the cold and quiet Philadelphia streets. It was so perfect in fact, that I set my iPod to single-song repeat and took the long(er) way home. I almost didn't want it to end.

This got me thinking. What makes a song good for riding through the city at night?

So I went through my catalog on iTunes and made a playlist with every song I could remember playing in my car to enhance my nighttime excursions. Here's what I came up with. I'm sure I'm missing something, so don't scold me:

Kanye West - Street Lights

Digable Planets - Pacifics

k-os - Heaven Only Knows

Mariah Carey - Fourth Of July

Common - A Filim Called (Pimp)

Lauryn Hill - Tell Him

Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Iyahlonipha Lengane

Lee Moses - California Dreaming

Gnarls Barkley - Who's Gonna Save My Soul

Little Brother - Nighttime Maneuvers

Outkast - Slum Beautiful

Common - The Game

Cee-Lo - Bass Head Jazz

Sade - Love is Stronger Than Pride

Buckshot LeFonque - Phoenix

Amel Larrieux - Infinite Possibilities

Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight

Daft Punk - Something About Us

Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over

Erykah Badu - Drama

Mos Def - Sex, Love And Money

Jamiroquai - Didjital Vibrations

Black Star - Respiration

There are a few common themes that I imagined would be prevalent; references to the night, dreams, the passage of time, and emerging or fading lights are abundant. There is also a general sense of introspection and reflecting upon past times or encounters. However, there were some aspects of the list that varied greatly. Tracks like Sade's "Love is Stronger Than Pride" and the aforementioned "Street Lights" by Kanye West feel very vaporous, very ethereal. Others, such as Cee-lo's "Bass Head Jazz" or Lee Moses' "California Dreaming" seem to carry considerably more weight and, at least to me, feel very dense and viscous. There's also quite a range of tempos here, from the soulful jazz ballad "Phoenix" by Buckshot LeFonque to the dark and penetrating Common cut "The Game".

So I offer these to you. If you get a chance, give them a try on your next evening automotive venture. What songs work best at stoplights? On highways and interstates? Surface streets? Do some feel better under a starry night? How about in rain? Or even snow? You may have limitless discoveries, or you may not dig any of them at all. Either way, it's all good! If you have some others you've found inspire you, feel free to share them in the comments of this post. I'm all about new music!

peace.

Radiohole: Your brain won't save you.

"Who knows?"

After witnessing Whatever, Heaven Allows (WHA?!), staged by the Brooklyn-based experimental performance group Radiohole, and watching as it humiliates anyone who ever believed they were a part of forward-moving theatre, you may be left wondering what it was you just witnessed. What was the story? What were they trying to say? Where was it going? No matter the question, I would suggest the only reasonable response is, "Who knows?"

You see, that's just it. Knowing has nothing to do with it. This show is not for your brain, but rather your body and your soul. It's a show for audiences to taste, smell, and most certainly feel (especially if you're splattered with Jell-O shots from the front row). It's purpose is to vibrate, tickle, rattle, blind, deafen, chill, and warm you within a lightening quick hour and a half. You are lambasted with an image one moment then unapologetically snatched away into new imagery the next, with no regard for continuity or safety. Video screens whip out and slap you with rainbows. Ice water flings from a man's bald head into your lap. And there will be no mercy.

"Experimental" and "experience" are practically the same word.

This company is operating on the leading edge of the theatrical universe. A usual outing to the theatre is like Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetism on a table top; important, noteworthy, interesting. But we've been there many times before. Radiohole is closer to the Large Hadron Collider. Once they crank that thing up, who knows?

Here's a teaser video for the show.

peace.

Emcee of the Month: Asher Roth

I was bouncing around youtube tonight looking for some performance footage of Asher Roth and happened upon this video of Ash doing a cover of "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas for BBC Radio 1. It's good. Ash and his crew, The Roth Boys (hmmm...), seem to be having a good time and making things fun for the listeners.

But more than that, Asher has allowed someone to record him and his crew doing a cover of another hip hop song. That got me thinking. I've seen artists like The Roots, Common, and Talib Kweli do bits of other artists' tracks in their live performances, but rarely do I see those bits recorded. Why is that? Why is it hip hop artists don't do recorded covers? I mean, there's this video, the In Tha Beginning...There Was Rap compilation album, Snoop's "Paper'd Up" (which was Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full"), and that's about all I can think of.

Perhaps it's due to the fear in the hip hop community of being criticized for borrowing and re-imagining a new idea, which is ironic because that's what hip hop beat makers have been doing since around 1974.

Or maybe it's simply a case of hip hop not having enough historical source material from which to sufficiently revisit an idea. But honestly, that would be a really lame excuse. There are dozens of memorable artists and memorable tracks from hip hop's past that I would love to hear rediscovered and reworked. Imagine OutKast doing their take on "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" or Kanye West taking on a new "Planet Rock" project. How incredible would that be?

Best of all, projects like these would allow younger generations in the culture to continually be exposed to hip hop history in way that's more digestible. They won't feel they're being scolded for "not knowing their roots". They would have the opportunity to enjoy these songs with the same sense of discovery and excitement as those who were so fortunate to experience them at their inception.

I vote more covers in hip hop!

peace.

Tucson Ruminations

It's late. I just came from my friend James' birthday celebration and I don't have much left. So I'll make this quick.

Maybe I've been fooled.

Maybe this moment has been tailored to trigger my response.

Maybe I'm being cornered and manipulated by powers I could never comprehend.

Perhaps it's because I feel like I should have been around for the 1960s so I didn't feel like such a fake when discussing "the struggle".

Perhaps I want to feel now the way they felt then, as if someone spoke not only with a familiar voice, but a familiar soul.

But...

Maybe it's the truth. It's been hard to spot nowadays.

Maybe this is the feeling I've been waiting for; pride, admiration, awe.

Maybe this represents the beginnings of my citizenship.

Because I don't know if I've ever identified with that until now.

But whatever it is, I do know this.

These two will always be my heroes.

Hopefully, I'll be in New York tomorrow to see my friend Mark in a play. If I can get to an internet connection I'll put up the next Emcee of the Month post and get a review of the play up on Sunday. I'm so excited (Jessie Spano)!

peace.

Snow Day

So, I'm blowing off my homework tonight, as my friend Ron would say. I've been watching coverage of the Tucson memorial service, reading up on photographers specializing in photos of abandoned buildings and other ruins, and debating my friend Marcel about Jon Stewart's impact on the public discourse.

So I'm not REALLY blowing off my homework. Rather, I'd like to think of it as doing research.

I'll be back tomorrow with more rambling about something or other. I hope you'll check it out.

In the meanwhile, check out this video of a guy ice-skating down Peachtree Street in Atlanta. That's right. Ice-skating. On the street. In Georgia.

Bonkers.

Peachtree St. Ice Rink in Midtown #2 from A.Nendel on Vimeo.

peace.