I’m so happy to to announce that Sanctuary Songs is now available on all streaming platforms!
Here are links to a few places where you can find it:
Click to see the original museum exhibit from Angels Gate Cultural Center “Sanctuary of the Aftermath” where Sanctuary Songs first appeared!
In case you missed out on the virtual opening, you can watch on Facebook at this link. Or go to the Angel’s Gate Cultural Center Facebook page.
Also the Angel’s Gate Virtual Gallery Tour at AngelsGateArt.org will allow you to walk you through the exhibits, at your own pace, complete with artist’s statements, photos, video, and audio, including my piece, Five Sanctuary Songs, which I composed for this exhibit.
Further, Angel’s Gate will be allowing timed tickets for an in-person experience beginning at the end of April. I can’t express how moving this exhibit it, and I encourage you, if you are able, to experience it in person before it ends. The exhibit goes through June 12, 2021.
This is just a quick overview of all the great things that have been happening this last year:
Minari was nominated for a number of awards including a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination for Emile Mosseri. We have supported Emile on three big projects now and every time has been better and better. It’s so gratifying to be even a small part of a such a beautiful and lovingly produced project.
Joy Music House is hard at work on a fun Minari side project too. More to come on that later.
Horror in the High Desert is coming out soon! I composed the score for this. It’s an all new super fun and spooky feature from Dutch Marich, which will be coming to streaming very soon. This is just good ol’ pop your popcorn and get ready for scary fun. I got to write in a variety of styles of music for this. I started off all nice and gentle and just turned up the tension from there. Eventually there are some creepy drones, clusters, and orchestral effects. Once the film and soundtrack are out I will post more about that process.
This is a very different style than Reaptown, and I’m particularly excited for people to experience it.
The art exhibit Sanctuary of the Aftermath is opening April 10th at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center. Five Sanctuary songs will play as part of the exhibit. The exhibit itself is about the process of healing in a post-COVID world. The music for me became a way to help in the healing process of my father’s death. So it is a meditation on grief, and features dear friends on bansuri, English horn, and cello.
The museum experience includes a soundscape, wind, rain, birds, ocean waves, and various sounds that create a feeling of a journey through healing. And with vaccinations ramping up, it seems likely people will be able to make appointments to see the show in person!
And last but not least: the soundtrack to the Sundance Documentary Try Harder was just released, and the soundtrack has a couple of cues that I orchestrated and arranged on for composer Diana Salier. It’s a beautiful film and I’m excited for everyone to check it out!
Not that it is all been amazing. It hasn’t. These are the highlights. And they are amazing, and I’m grateful, but there have been lows. This last year has been hard. Between the constant stress of the pandemic, the wondering if we will come together as a civilization, a country, a community, if we will open our eyes and hearts to our fellow Americans amid the ongoing socio-political unrest… it is a lot. Especially when most people are just simply trying to live their lives and better themselves and their situation. But it seems so many are led by fear and misunderstanding. We need to change. I don’t know the right answer but I do know that if you are being led by love for the person before you, you are on the right path, and if you are being led by hate, you are not. That is all the rumination I have for now…
I’m excited to announce that the soundtrack to Reaptown is now available on Amazon, Google Play, Apple Music and Spotify among many other music services around the world.
So much has happened in the last couple of months, and I will have to explore all these experiences at a time when my bandwidth allows me to do so.
But today, we found out that Reaptown is now available on Amazon Prime, for your spooky streaming pleasure!
And I’m sure you are wondering about the soundtrack! Well, it is forthcoming… Look for it October 9th! Plenty of time to provide an atmosphere of foreboding to your season. Here’s a preview of the album art:
I hadn't posted anything this last week, because we had so much to do and not enough time to do it. We had about three days to get the new studio in good enough shape for me to move into, so we could fix up the old room in order for our new housemate to move into the old studio room.
It looks so big without all my stuff in it. And the cat is totally WTF…
While on a tight timetable, we hit a snag: the pink fur I selected was out of stock. And because of COVID the company would not be reordering a lot of their stock, so waiting or back ordering wasn't an option. Looking around at other stores, the prices just weren't as good. So I eventually settled on a white fur with fuscia tips. I was concerned that it wouldn't match but it ended up working out just fine.
I decided, what the heck? and painted my monitor stands. It’s a metallic paint color called Venetian Blue.
Before this they were black. And I’m just sick of black and gray. So why not paint it something awesome! I can’t encourage this rebellious behavior enough.
Be a rebel-muffin.
Hug a bass trap! My incredible husband built my bass traps for me! We had 1x4’s on top of underlayment, and a couple of pieces of Rockwool insulation and covered in fur.
There's something about creating or renovating a new space in your house that causes you to scrutinize every thing you put in this space, and why. I don't want to say whether or not it "sparks joy," as the go-to shorthand adopted into our lexicon may suggest, because I found it to be more bland than that. Just, why? Why am I holding on to this? What purpose does it serve?
It is definitely not about joy because to be honest all my garbage sparks joy. My dad kept everything. But it was a pretty stark realization that the mere function of holding onto these things is not about joy, but comfort, and safety. But it’s an illusion. There were and are many things from my past, and I questioned if they are holding me up, or holding me back. Are they propping me up, bolstering who I am, or am I just sitting at the top of a pile of trash?
Trash. Trash is the answer.
Away with ye! Into the bin went a lot of things masquerading as fulfillment, as necessities. So interesting to have so many "things," when the very nature of what I have dedicated my life to creating is ephemeral. Music lasts as long as it lasts until you play, or press play, again.
So I'm mostly in the space now, and just in time for a music prep job this week. I'm still working out some particulars between the space and my schedule, but there is progress!
I’m no longer sure how to title these, but regardless, work continues. It is now the second week of July and we have two weeks before our new renter moves in. It’s exciting but that means I need to be out of that middle bedroom in enough time to clean and prepare it for them. And that means work has to progress quickly enough here for that to be possible.
We have 3 thing we are focused on this weekend:
Floor
Initially we planned to paint the floor a solid color of special paint floor concrete sealer paint stuff, but a thorough cleaning revealed an interesting square grid pattern, likely from old tiles that were there long before the linoleum. So we have decided to cover it with a clear sealer instead. I have area rugs which will eventually partially cover the cement, as part of the acoustic treatment.
2. Ceiling
After a couple of very intense days of priming the walls of the studio and ceiling (which required two coats), and the garage area wall, we were ready. It was a bit grueling and repetitive, but so happy this step is done.
The color we chose for the ceiling is a metallic pearl white, which, is apparently supposed to be sprayed on for an even coat. Not having access to a sprayer, I ended up hand painting the ceiling, since seeing the brush strokes was inevitable, I did my best to make even straight brush strokes so the light pattern would at least look intentional (right). We tried a paint roller (left), but the only way to describe that is “galumphy.”
3. Walls
We have some spectacular fur to cover the walls, window boards and bass traps. By the end of the weekend, we managed to get one wall completed. When we ordered the fur, part of our order was back-ordered and we had to make a decision to use fur we have or to order something specific from this same company.
It was amazing how putting up just the first panel affected the acoustics of the room. I’m really excited to continue work this week!
Friday was the official last day of construction. Yay! We jumped in immediately and worked all weekend, with a short break to visit friends in El Segundo. Just before we left the house, to see them, I decided that we need to cover the entire house in rainbow glitter.
Figuratively, not literally (…but also maybe literally). I know glitter is bad for the environment. It’s sad that the fun and sparkle of glitter makes me waffle in my support of our planet’s oceans and waterways. I’m kidding of course, but …it’s just so damn sparkly!
The drywall guys spent last week to complete the mud work and sanding. There was a broken piece of drywall in the space above and they replaced that as well. Part of the extra time was that the walls are 100 inches tall rather than the usual 96 inches, so they had to get creative to fill in the extra space..
The contractor, Stefan, completed the electric as well. Fun light fixtures!
And as soon as they finished, we determined where we needed to begin getting these three spaces functional.
In the studio itself, we got half the walls primed, and realized whatever future plans we had, we absolutely needed to prioritize the floor before we continued.
The floor is concrete, and having been a garage floor for the last 7 years, there was the requisite quantity of gunk in need of removing, including paint and old linoleum tiles held with glue that was somehow still tacky after all these years (in more ways than one).
Once clean, we are going to seal it. Then we can finish the walls and ceiling (which will be a metallic white.
For the laundry room, Gregory had a fun idea for some stripes that would go at an angle up the wall and back the opposite direction on the ceiling, which is short because of the attic space above.
It was a two-person job, taping the borders for the strips.
There will be multicolor stripes and a metallic pearl white in between.
This is going to be fun.
I’ve fallen behind due to so many things happening at once. I’m not entirely sure where we are now…
The world is a political and cultural minefield. Fourth of July just happened, and LA had the worst air quality in the WORLD the morning of the 5th. Not hyperbole. The air quality was a 361, which was hazardous. By the afternoon it was down to 160ish, which is a huge improvement but still not great. With a disease affecting the lungs running rampant, having poor air quality brings paranoia to every breath. I’m happy that all my friends are taking it seriously, keeping a 6-foot distance, regularly washing their hands, and wearing masks.
This morning, July 6th, we woke to the news of the passing of Ennio Morricone at age 91. One of the true giants of our modern music world. His profound contributions to our culture changed music forever. It is sad news to lose such an icon, especially as we starve for positive light in this darkness.
The world changes beneath our feet, our concept of time keeps moving. Hopefully we continue to learn and grow.
In the meantime, I have nothing to offer of any real significance, beyond pictures of drywall. How exciting is this? Right? Just what you wanted. Pictures of drywall. The last bit of drywall went up to enclose the room. Here’s the garage area wall progressing:
Here’s the laundry area wall mudded. Still a bit of work to do on this side to finesse it, but progress continues. There’s a door now!
The door is a heavy solid door, which we got a deal on.
Just out of the frame to the left, is our washer and dryer. We will probably fill this area with shelves for more storage and whatnot.
And here’s a look at the room inside. I used my zoomed out lens which is very fish-eye and a bit distorted. It is exciting how close we are to completion, but there is still so much work to do.
It is exciting and overwhelming. They finished mudding the room on Friday, but I neglected to get a picture of it. They arrived early this morning to continue work and I’m doing my best to stay out of the space while they are working.
In the meantime, I’ll be spending today working on some new music and listening to Morricone.
Yesterday a bit more drywall went up and we got the lights in the laundry room. This drywall is more dense, more sound proof than your regular run of the mill drywall.
Today the drywall continued in the attic space and on the ceiling of the main space. We are getting closer to this becoming an actual space!
There wasn’t much to discuss or show from yesterday’s work since most of it again took place within the walls and in the ceiling. But today, the drywall started going up and it began to really feel like a room.
I started to plan a bit of a layout, where my desk, the shelves and the piano (squee!!!) will go. So exciting!
Most of today’s work was in the walls and in the attic space. An air conditioning unit was put in, and the outlets and light switches were put in. But most of the day was repairing the hazardous electrical nightmare that lurked above the ceiling.
I ordered the materials for the bass traps and some sound baffling as well as a couple of wild area rugs.
And they are going to look great with the fur.
Another thing I am excited about is to be able to make more use of my old upright piano.
The first piano I learned on was an ancient gigantic beast of a thing that was made of mahogany—it had real ivory plated keys, and I suspected was a former player piano, just because of the size and heft to accommodate the mechanism, and a conspicuous panel in the foot area that looked newer than the rest of the piano, which likely covered the foot pedals. It had several broken strings in the upper register, and many of the remaining strings were rusted, which made tuning it a bit tenuous. So my piano teacher at the time convinced my mom to buy a newer piano. I think I was about 13 or so, when this little Wurlitzer upright entered our house. And I’m so glad to still have it with me.
This morning, the remaining studs were put up for the walls, and it’s starting to look like a room!
The next thing to do is the electrical, s while the guys took their lunch break I mapped approximately where we would need outlets, light switches and overhead lighting for the laundry, studio and garage.
They discovered that some of the electrical had been routed in a very shoddy and dangerous way. Our house was a flip, and the wiring was not at all to code, and actually a pretty serious fire hazard.
They pulled down a light fixture and where the bulb plugged into the fixture, you could see a bunch of black burn marks. Yikes! Thank goodness we decided to do this now.
Today is Day 1 of the studio build out. We decided to build out part of the garage to create a new studio space. This is not some fancy state-of-the-art studio creation. We are having two walls put up and doing a bit of sound proofing with insulation. That’s it. But it is still exciting!
My husband and I have been together for 20 years, and have gone on many adventures, and have the requisite amount of stuff to prove it. So one of our challenges is how to deal with the sudden loss of cubic feet to keep our many bins of assorted human and non-human remains (we are really into Halloween).
There is a mostly unused and unfinished attic space above the garage, which could serve as storage, but it requires support beams and reinforcement to hold the weight of all our stuff, which will also be undergoing a serious “does it spark joy” edit.
Our plan is to effectively divide garage in three. In the photo to the left, the brown tiled area will include the laundry, the enclosed space will be the studio, and the far area will comprise the remaining garage space. The area up above this ceiling will be more permanent storage, and some of the annual stuff (punkins!).
The result will be a room about 18 feet long, which results in a greater length than the ideal proportions of a studio space (given a ceiling height of 8 feet). Once we are able to understand the resulting acoustics of the space, we will figure out what it needs. We will learn by doing here. But I decided to track the progress of this endeavor, if for no other reason than my own person edification. And the additional square footage may be advantageous for recording, if the acoustics turn out to be good enough.
I dreamed about doing this for a while now, but it always seemed impossible. But with the support of my incredible husband and with a more simplistic approach, it seems like we will be able to accomplish this well below my projected budget, which is yet another reason to be happy about this endeavor.
I recently participated in the write-ups that the local Voyage LA creates on people in the various communities around the Los Angeles area.
If you are wondering what to do in this moment, how to continue, here is a link to various resources with ways you can help, through direct or passive action, donating time or money, and a variety of ways to learn more:
Black Lives Matter - Resources
Something once suggested is to follow a bunch of accounts on social media of people with differing experiences than yours. Not to comment or engage, but to read, and learn, and understand their point of view, and develop empathy for their experience.
It has been heartening to see the world has had enough of the way things are and to challenge the systems that perpetuate violence. We can create meaningful reforms that work for everyone. It is going to take a lot of work, but I’m optimistic there is a kinder world where everyone can live in peace!
I have spent all day thinking about how to feel in this time, this moment. I’m sure I’m not alone while considering the future of our civilization and what we can do to progress, who we want to be as individuals, as a nation, and as a global community. I always hope for the best, despite the challenges therein.
I decided to post this track I composed back in 2013, featuring several friends on violin, cello, oboe, English horn and vocals, who came together to help me realize this.
I composed this for an art gallery exhibition at the Northeastern Nevada Museum of Art, where this and the accompanying four tracks played on a loop for nearly two months. Where museum goers would have an immersive experience of the Five Elements, wherein 25 paintings told a story of women artists communicating their vision, of how they see and experience the world around them. I was fortunate because my mother was one of those artists. Unfortunately she was too sick to create new works by the time the exhibition began, but she had enough work in her repertoire to participate, nonetheless.
So here is a 9-minute meditation for your listening pleasure:
I had this idea to create videos, narrating the poem over a stylized images of the score. So… I did. I divided the poem into five pieces to post on the instagram, but here’s a link to a YouTube video which has all the videos married together in one.
It was too painful to say goodbye,
and with barely a glance at the place,
the empty house, well,
empty except for one thing,
you drove away.
The furniture and dishes,
pictures of the lake, and silver dollars
distributed evenly,
as carefully as years ago
M&M's divided amid eager delight.
All those seasons we spent,
our footfalls, running, laughing,
the endless potential of summer became
autumns of long shadows and raked leaves,
became shorter still,
the city, frozen,
until the icy darkness melted into
the embrace of a bright and muddy spring,
a house thawed, ready to do it all again.
All I had learned beneath that roof,
hours spent at the piano in repetition,
trying to break through
my technical limitations,
trying to achieve knowledge
I too-eagerly sought,
a common thread though
my youthful victories and tragedies,
my philosophical and romantic awakening
to despair and resignation,
my stunted prayers and most secret,
darkest thoughts, all took place
in just a few small square rooms.
All the laughter and tears
smeared into the wallpaper,
itself a fraught choice,
now evaporated by time,
withered from neglect.
anger, faded,
and fantasies, lost
at the bottom of
poorly hidden
plastic liquor bottles.
How welcome is the silence,
the weight of inhabitants lifted,
after decades of intersecting lives,
complex and visceral,
full of mistakes,
and love.
Everything vanished
in a matter of days,
and the house settled,
prepared to become
a memory for everyone.
Even before you left,
you started to forget
how the floorboards creaked
by the phone desk,
the bright blue wall hidden shamefully
beneath beige and pink folk-art bouquets,
the lonely stillness of late afternoon,
filled only by the ticking of the clock,
until it, too, yielded to time
it could no longer keep.
Now, at this last interstitial moment,
I am the last ghost in the house,
moving through each room, like the air,
the silence vibrating with the
thinness of the veil,
the last echoes fading into
freshly painted corners.
Because this ghost is a being,
very much alive. The dead
leave behind only memories and regrets,
and that is what haunts the living.
Maybe I do believe
in reincarnation, of a sort.
We cannot become a new thing
until we cease to be all that we were,
our old life stripped to the studs,
tenets of familiarity, but underneath,
new, full of strangers
cheerfully unaware of the memories
that lingered in the walls.
A child looks upon a house
for the first time,
possibly unable to see
its former life,
then again,
perhaps
a faint,
still-fading
echo
remains.
I realize we are nearly a month an a half into the year, but I am still reeling from a pretty intense six weeks. Just before New Years, Joy Music House took on the project The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and I had the pleasure of orchestrating Emile Mosseri’s beautiful score. He’s a very talented composer and a really wonderful guy. We had recording sessions that entire week, including a brass quartet on New Year’s Day and a remote string session the day after. The film was very well received at its Sundance premiere.
I had the opportunity to participate in the Helix Collective’s new series Pulling Back the Curtain, a concert featuring the music of the assistants, the people behind the scenes who often assist other composers, but don’t often have the same opportunities to share their music. I have spent the last couple of years serving on the score production teams for several composers, which earned me the consideration.
The score and parts were due in mid February, which only gave me about three weeks to either rearrange an older work, or compose a new 10-minute piece for chamber orchestra. Of course I wanted to challenge myself to write something new.
But the blank page is hard enough when I have inspiration to propel me forward. Without it, it is more challenging. I like parameters, a visual or a story of any kind. Limitations can be illuminating, provide guidance. It was helpful knowing that I had a palette of nine players: solo violin, viola, cello, bass, piano, marimba, flute, clarinet and horn.
In mid January, I went to northeastern Nevada for a couple of weeks to see my dad. He lives in the high desert which was covered in snow and was seeing nightly lows of about 10 Fahrenheit degrees. He decided it was time to move to a retirement community, to downsize. He had been living in the house alone since my mom passed away in 2014, and at 93, it had become overwhelming. He used to take care of everything, but no longer had the same energy. So my brother and sister and I spent the weekend moving him and all his necessities, and cleaning out the house, the place we all grew up.
The last day before I came back to sunny—rather, rainy, but still a hell of a lot warmer—Los Angeles, I was in the nearly empty house alone ruminating on its 40-plus-year-history in our family. And even though it hasn’t been my home for more than twenty years, being there still fills my brain with intimate nostalgia. I know this place so well, and to see it empty… it was the end of something deeply personal for me.
I started writing a poem to capture the gamut of emotions, and as my rambling started to come together, I began to write the music. In four short sections, I sought to understand everything I felt in that last night: a seemingly bottomless well of grief, loneliness and cynicism, but also moments of wonder and joy, gratitude and happiness, even euphoria. I relived many wonderful memories flipping through pictures, and seeing time pass quickly. On that last night when all the lights were out, I moved through the echoey space, and mused to myself that I was the only thing haunting this place now.
And that is what Last Ghost in the House is about: a saying goodbye, of a sort.
The piece will premiere March 16, 2019 at 7PM at the Barnsdall Park Theatre. More info about the concert is available here, and tickets are available here.
I will be posting more about this, including the poem, very soon.