Music & Dance · The Creative Process: Recent Episodes
Musicians, Composers, Performers, Dancers, Choreographers...in Conversation · Creative Process Original Series
Music & Dance episodes of the popular The Creative Process podcast. To listen to ALL arts & creativity episodes of “The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society”, you’ll find our main podcast on Apple: tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, Spotify: tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Exploring the fascinating minds of creative people. Conversations with writers, artists & creative thinkers across the Arts & STEM. We discuss their life, work & artistic practice. Winners of Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Pulitzer, leaders & public figures share real experiences & offer valuable insights. Notable guests and and organizations include: Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pilobolus Dance Company & Five Senses Festival, Harvard Dance Center, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Carter Burwell, John Powell, Edmar Castaneda, Kovacs, Marcelo Zarvos, Paulo Szot (Chicago, South Pacific), Jill Johnson (Ballet Frankfurt, The Forsythe Company), Mario Alberto Zambrano (Juilliard Dance), Nano Stern, Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng, François Clemmons (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Harlem Spiritual Ensemble), Rick Carnes (Songwriters Guild of America), Peter Boal, Noelani Pantastico, Itamar Kubovy, Jonah Bokaer Choreography & The Hudson Eye, Renée Jaworski, Matt Kent, Trish Sie (Pitch Perfect 3), Emily Kent, Seán Curran (NYU Tisch School of the Arts), Carolyn Waters Broe (Four Seasons Orchestra), Yuval Sharon, Aaron P. Dworkin (Sphinx Organization), Lorenda Ramou (Onassis Cultural Center), Terry Radigan, among others.
The interviews are hosted by founder and creative educator Mia Funk with the participation of students, universities, and collaborators from around the world. These conversations are also part of our traveling exhibition. www.creativeprocess.info
For The Creative Process podcasts from Seasons 1 2 3, visit: tinyurl.com/creativepod or creativeprocess.info/interviews-page-1, which has our complete directory of interviews, transcripts, artworks, and details about ways to get involved.
Why do we write? Is it to capture a memory before it vanishes or to build a bridge between the person we are and the stories we've been told? In this episode of The Creative Process, we explore the practice of writing as an awakening and tool for discovery with a group of celebrated poets, novelists, musicians and thinkers.
We hear from neuroscientist, dancer and author Julia Christensen on how literature inspires transformative aesthetic experiences. Award-winning poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan discusses navigating displacement through narrative, while bestselling author Andre Dubus III reflects on the honest labor of the writer and the willingness to fail.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown shares how the sounds of American vernacular guide his work and Fmr. US Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses holding hope within frightening thoughts about the future of our planet. NYT Bestseller Aimee Nezhukumatathil speaks on tenderness towards the natural world and naturalist Sy Montgomery shares how animals have been her greatest teachers.
The conversation expands with poet Max Stossel on finding humanity in conflict, Tiokasin Ghosthorse on the ancient energy of the earth and Julian Lennon on art as a collective human endeavor. Finally, composer Erland Cooper takes us to the landscape of his youth, where the sound of the sea informed his creative voice.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion.
Haskell has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.
His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.
(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World
(1:33) Networked Connection is the Foundation of Life
(2:00) Contemplating the Small
(4:07) Consciousness, Intelligence & Memory in the More-Than-Human-World
(4:18) We Are Grass Apes
(5:41) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids
(6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests
(7:45) The Earth in Full Song
(8:46) The Practice of Listening
(10:11) Escaping the Screen: Real Connections in the Classroom
(11:35) The True Cost of AI
(12:11) Transforming Ourselves
(14:23) Silence Without Expectation
(15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
What if the defining revolution of Earth's history wasn't led by animals or humans, but by flowers? Are we truly individuals, or are our bodies and minds just walking ecosystems?
Our guest today is David George Haskell, a biologist who has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees.
His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories.
(0:00) How Flowers Made Our World
The incredible ancient history of flowers on Earth
(4:56) Contemplating the Small
Expanding our world by restricting our gaze
(14:30) The Illusion of Individuality
Why atomism is false and interconnectedness is the foundation of life
(26:08) We Are Grass Apes
The evolutionary origins of humans and our dietary dependence on grass
(33:32) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids
(38:55) The Networked Intelligence of Forests
How trees communicate and share resources beneath the soil
(44:00) The Earth in Full Song
Tracing the sonic history of our planet
(51:08) The Practice of Listening
Why tuning in to the natural world is crucial for our survival
(1:01:21) Silence Without Expectation
Sitting with nature without demanding progress or enlightenment
(1:11:01) Transforming Ourselves
Why personal change matters in the fight for the climate
(1:15:20) Escaping the Screen
Finding real human-to-human connection away from technology
(1:16:16) The True Cost of AI
The devastating impact of data centers on our fossil fuel consumption
(1:23:18) A Sensory Legacy for the Future
What we must preserve for the generations not yet born
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
In this special edition, we hear from our guests from across the arts and sciences. From composers and poets to forest ecologists and climate envoys, they tell the story of our planet. Moving beyond the data of destruction, we explore the intelligence of nature, the ethics of what we eat, and the empathy required to save our future.
MAX RICHTER, Composer, Sleep, The Blue Notebooks
CARL SAFINA, Author, Becoming Wild
ADA LIMÓN, 24th US Poet Laureate
CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy Award-winning Sound Eng.
SUZANNE SIMARD, Finding the Mother Tree
JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author, IPCC 6th Assessment Rpt
NOAH WILSON-RICH, CEO, Best Bees Company
INGRID NEWKIRK, PETA Founder
BERTRAND PICCARD, Solar Impulse Foundation
DAVID FARRIER, Author, Footprints
KATHLEEN ROGERS, Pres, Earth Day Network
ODED GALOR, Unified Growth Theory
PETER SINGER, Philosopher
GEOFF MULGAN, Another World Is Possible
CLAIRE POTTER, Welcome to the Circular Economy
CHRIS FUNK, Dir. Climate Hazards Car.
JENNIFER MORGAN, Special Envoy, International Climate Action
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World
“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”
Musician Plumestakes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
On Music, Trust and Connection with the Animal World
“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”
Musician Plumestakes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
How is music a pathway to understanding animals?
Musician Plumes takes his guitar to the world's most unlikely concert halls—farms, sanctuaries, and wild habitats. A passionate advocate for veganism and animal welfare, we discuss what animals hear, how trust forms, and what music can reveal when it enters a world not made for humans alone.
“Mostly I’ll play in a minor key, something sad, which I think can work for an animal because they can sense the sadness, and they try to reassure me and comfort me. I chose love songs because I'm convinced they are very intuitive and they can sense what I am trying to say to them, and profess my love in a way. I think there's always a way to connect, and if you're being cautious and don't threaten the animals, something beautiful can happen.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So when we decided to do a documentary to follow Ai Weiwei, we knew, of course, it wouldn't be just a simple opera, and we knew he would bring his own very special and original vision. Because, of course, he is not an opera director. From his point of view, it's a challenge, but from another perspective, it’s probably an enrichment for the opera audience because he doesn't follow the rules of opera. And, of course, once you decide to do a documentary about Ai Weiwei, it's in his DNA to be political. Once I started to follow him, the political issues and topics came into the documentary by themselves.”
The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei has used sculpture, photography, documentaries, and large-scale installations to challenge authoritarian power for decades. But his project at the Rome Opera House, directing Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, may be his most powerful fusion of art and politics yet. Puccini’s original is a fairy tale set in ancient China about a princess whose riddle game costs failed suitors their lives. But Ai Weiwei transformed this story into a stark reflection of the present, weaving in footage of refugee crises, COVID hospitals, and the Ukraine war—a production that became an urgent act of resistance for its Ukrainian conductor and cast. The opera and documentary are a living document of our turbulent times, embodying Ai Weiwei’s belief that 'Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.'
The new documentary, Ai Weiwei's Turandot, goes behind the curtain to capture the artistic struggle and emotional weight of making this work—a process that began with one vision and was fundamentally changed by a global pandemic and a major war.
My guest is the documentary’s director, Maxim Derevianko. He grew up in a family with deep ties to the Rome Opera House, and he offers a deeply personal, intimate look at how in Ai Weiwei’s words, “art competes with reality, but art will have the last word.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.
I think art competes with reality. And art will give you the last words.” –Ai Weiwei
The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei has used sculpture, photography, documentaries, and large-scale installations to challenge authoritarian power for decades. But his project at the Rome Opera House, directing Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, may be his most powerful fusion of art and politics yet. Puccini’s original is a fairy tale set in ancient China about a princess whose riddle game costs failed suitors their lives. But Ai Weiwei transformed this story into a stark reflection of the present, weaving in footage of refugee crises, COVID hospitals, and the Ukraine war—a production that became an urgent act of resistance for its Ukrainian conductor and cast. The opera and documentary are a living document of our turbulent times, embodying Ai Weiwei’s belief that 'Everything is Art. Everything is Politics.'
The new documentary, Ai Weiwei's Turandot, goes behind the curtain to capture the artistic struggle and emotional weight of making this work—a process that began with one vision and was fundamentally changed by a global pandemic and a major war.
My guest is the documentary’s director, Maxim Derevianko. He grew up in a family with deep ties to the Rome Opera House, and he offers a deeply personal, intimate look at how in Ai Weiwei’s words, “art competes with reality, but art will have the last word.”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I had to become the father of my family very young because my parents divorced when I was 12. My situation was a little bit unusual in that my father kind of disappeared, and I had been making a fair amount of money as a kid, doing commercials and television and film. We needed money, and I kind of became the breadwinner. But I had this amazing world that I had access to, which was the world of the entertainment industry. My mom was supportive of my taking over and saying, "This is, I think, what we need to do." She liked the idea of moving to New York, so we moved to New York when I was 17 with a play that I had gotten. Then she got cancer and became really sick, so I had to take care of her full time. That lasted for about eight years, and then she died when I was 25. That was a rough go. At the same time, I had an amazing other world, and my other world was the world of make-believe and pretend, which I got to participate in on the soaps, with happy families and Christmases, Easters, miracles, love, weddings, and children. The pretend world that I spent a large amount of time in became a great way to balance what was sort of tragic in my real life.”
Our guest today is Cady McClain. You probably know her from her long and celebrated career in daytime television. She is a three-time Emmy® Award-winning actress. She plays Pamela Curtis on CBS’ Beyond the Gates, and is the Artistic Director of Axial Theatre, and her directorial work includes the documentary, Seeing is Believing: Women Direct, a fascinating look at the challenges and triumphs of women behind the camera. Her memoir, Murdering My Youth, is an honest and sometimes difficult book about growing up as a child actor in the spotlight. Her work across all these different art forms—acting, directing, writing, art, and music—all seems to be connected by a commitment to telling true stories, no matter how complicated.
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I won my first Emmy when I was 21, which was the result of absolutely devoting myself day and night for two years to doing all the scene work. I attended classes simultaneously and did plays until my mother died. I studied with Michael Howard for eight years. Even when I was so tired I couldn't get up to do a scene, he would say, "Get up and do a poem." It helped me enormously; it saved me.
The way I was trained and how I train others is that you know when you’re in the zone. Oh God, it feels so good. It feels like flying. And that's what you want. You want to be so unselfaware that you're on liftoff?
I had to become the father of my family very young because my parents divorced when I was 12. My situation was a little bit unusual in that my father kind of disappeared, and I had been making a fair amount of money as a kid, doing commercials and television and film. We needed money, and I kind of became the breadwinner. But I had this amazing world that I had access to, which was the world of the entertainment industry. My mom was supportive of my taking over and saying, "This is, I think, what we need to do." She liked the idea of moving to New York, so we moved to New York when I was 17 with a play that I had gotten. Then she got cancer and became really sick, so I had to take care of her full time. That lasted for about eight years, and then she died when I was 25. That was a rough go. At the same time, I had an amazing other world, and my other world was the world of make-believe and pretend, which I got to participate in on the soaps, with happy families and Christmases, Easters, miracles, love, weddings, and children. The pretend world that I spent a large amount of time in became a great way to balance what was sort of tragic in my real life.”
Our guest today is Cady McClain. You probably know her from her long and celebrated career in daytime television. She is a three-time Emmy® Award-winning actress. She plays Pamela Curtis on CBS’ Beyond the Gates, and is the Artistic Director of Axial Theatre, and her directorial work includes the documentary, Seeing is Believing: Women Direct, a fascinating look at the challenges and triumphs of women behind the camera. Her memoir, Murdering My Youth, is an honest and sometimes difficult book about growing up as a child actor in the spotlight. Her work across all these different art forms—acting, directing, writing, art, and music—all seems to be connected by a commitment to telling true stories, no matter how complicated.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So I think that part of colonialism for Indigenous peoples has been this idea that Indigenous peoples aren't thinking peoples and that we don't have thought on a kind of systemic level. One of the things that I was interested in doing is intervening in that because I think Indigenous people have a lot of beautiful, very intellectual, theoretical contributions to make to the world. A lot of our theory is encoded in story, but a lot of our theory is also encoded in land-based practice. You can't learn about it from reading books or from going to lectures. You have to really be out on the land with elders for long periods of time.”
In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about her new book,Theory of Water. Theory of Water is a rich, complex, and deeply personal reflection on world-making and life-giving processes best captured in the fluidity of water as it circulates through all our bodies and the planet. It is a largely collective project that enlists our listening and love, and helps us face the violence of all forms of dominance, enclosure, and containment. We are especially gifted to have the chance to listen to one of the songs from Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, and have her comment on it and the relation of her music to her writing. This is a particularly special episode of Speaking Out of Place.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies, which was short listed for the Dublin Literary prize and the Governor General’s award for fiction. Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, released by You’ve Changed Records in 2021 and short-listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award. Her latest project Theory of Water was published by Knopf Canada/Haymarket books in the spring of 2025. Leanne is a member of Alderville First Nation.
https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
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“I would encourage you, as I do if you're an actor, to know your own equipment, know your own psychology, and use the great teachers that are synthesized in my favorite teacher's book, Moss, who I studied with later. There is a book called Intent to Live that distills down Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, and Stanislavski. The great teachers at the Group Theatre believed that the method needed to be altered to be constructive rather than destructive to artists.
David Milch's mind is so singular because he uses language in a way that defines character. That's what all good writers do: use language to get to the heart of something. He would use malapropisms to make up words, and Milch loved playing with that. As someone who played the love interest of such a unique character as Andy Sipowicz, I found it fascinating.
Through Sylvia and David Milch's understanding, his wife humanized him. Sipowicz was portrayed as an addict, a very flawed human who had many addictions. David Milch is now suffering from Alzheimer's, so we won't get his words again. However, the words that he has to offer are timeless because he studied Robert Penn Warren and had many mentors throughout his vast literary education. That is key. I love speaking Noël Coward’s words. As a bon vivant, he wrote musically, to charm us and amuse us. So going and reading Noël Coward is important for actors to learn those cadences and the musicality of a certain era.
Of course, Shakespeare comes to mind. I also think of the female playwrights who delight me now, whether it's Caryl Churchill. She has that singular mind and plays with gender so well, challenging gender norms. Seeing ‘Cloud Nine’ when I was in college blew my mind open because men were playing women and women were playing men. Of course, Shakespeare was doing it too, but her work felt more intimate; it was in a small theater. That’s another thing I encourage actors and audiences to do: go see things in small theaters. See it up close because that will excite you and help you learn the craft.”
Sharon Lawrence is an acclaimed actress best known for her Emmy-nominated, SAG Award-winning role as ADA Sylvia Costas on NYPD Blue. She has delivered memorable performances in Desperate Housewives, Monk, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, Shameless, and Queen Sugar. On stage, she’s earned praise for roles in The Shot (a one-woman play about the owner/publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham), Orson’s Shadow, and A Song at Twilight. Shestarred in Broadway revivals of Cabaret, Chicago, and Fiddler on the Roof. Her recent work includes the neo-Western series Joe Pickett, opposite Michael Dorman, and the films Solace with Anthony Hopkins and The Bridge Partner. Lawrence is also a dedicated advocate, serving on the boards of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, WeForShe, and Heal the Bay, and is a former Chair of the Women In Film Foundation.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram
@sharonelawrence
@creativeprocesspodcast
“That transformation was key to my next step as an artist, to knowing that's what acting is. It isn't just posing; it isn't just being a version of yourself in a way that was free. Performing wasn't just performing; it was transforming. I think that artists find that in many different ways, and as actors, there are many ways into that.
I would encourage you, as I do if you're an actor, to know your own equipment, know your own psychology, and use the great teachers that are synthesized in my favorite teacher's book, Moss, who I studied with later. There is a book called Intent to Live that distills down Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, and Stanislavski. The great teachers at the Group Theatre believed that the method needed to be altered to be constructive rather than destructive to artists.
David Milch's mind is so singular because he uses language in a way that defines character. That's what all good writers do: use language to get to the heart of something. He would use malapropisms to make up words, and Milch loved playing with that. As someone who played the love interest of such a unique character as Andy Sipowicz, I found it fascinating.
Through Sylvia and David Milch's understanding, his wife humanized him. Sipowicz was portrayed as an addict, a very flawed human who had many addictions. David Milch is now suffering from Alzheimer's, so we won't get his words again. However, the words that he has to offer are timeless because he studied Robert Penn Warren and had many mentors throughout his vast literary education. That is key. I love speaking Noël Coward’s words. As a bon vivant, he wrote musically, to charm us and amuse us. So going and reading Noël Coward is important for actors to learn those cadences and the musicality of a certain era.
Of course, Shakespeare comes to mind. I also think of the female playwrights who delight me now, whether it's Caryl Churchill. She has that singular mind and plays with gender so well, challenging gender norms. Seeing ‘Cloud Nine’ when I was in college blew my mind open because men were playing women and women were playing men. Of course, Shakespeare was doing it too, but her work felt more intimate; it was in a small theater. That’s another thing I encourage actors and audiences to do: go see things in small theaters. See it up close because that will excite you and help you learn the craft.”
Sharon Lawrence is an acclaimed actress best known for her Emmy-nominated, SAG Award-winning role as ADA Sylvia Costas on NYPD Blue. She has delivered memorable performances in Desperate Housewives, Monk, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, Shameless, and Queen Sugar. On stage, she’s earned praise for roles in The Shot (a one-woman play about the owner/publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham), Orson’s Shadow, and A Song at Twilight. Shestarred in Broadway revivals of Cabaret, Chicago, and Fiddler on the Roof. Her recent work includes the neo-Western series Joe Pickett, opposite Michael Dorman, and the films Solace with Anthony Hopkins and The Bridge Partner. Lawrence is also a dedicated advocate, serving on the boards of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, WeForShe, and Heal the Bay, and is a former Chair of the Women In Film Foundation.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram
@sharonelawrence
@creativeprocesspodcast
“I think that it all goes back to childhood. I’ve always really been writing about family. I suppose we always are. I do think that it is the original wound, and it's where we are kind of wired and built from those early years. So I think every other relationship just replicates that. It's very natural for me to go there, I suppose because the feelings are most intense there. We just keep recycling these relationships and dynamics over and over again—until maybe someday we can catch ourselves and try to break the bad patterns. It feels the most visceral and real to me, always. You're always looking for that in writing. You want everything to be at this peak intensity, or at least I do. That seems the most natural place to start.
I've thought about that a lot while writing the book. We really are in the age of the grifter, as they keep saying. In some ways, it's the most deeply American type, the hustler of American aspiration. And money, I think that was hovering in my head when I wrote the book. How women persuade and convince one another of things feels particularly complex to me. I think there are so many layers to female relationships. That was really interesting to me to pursue because, in some ways, it's much more veiled and complex. So I tend to write about groups of women a lot, regardless of the field, but particularly the way they communicate or don't communicate, or communicate without words to one another, is an ongoing fascination of mine.”
Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of twelve crime novels, including Beware the Woman, You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand, and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, El Dorado Drive, is available June 24, 2025.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I always say to young writers, you need to put your heart on the page. Don't worry about being like anyone else. I would say that foremost, in any of the arts, it is self-expression at its core. I don't buy rules or a set criteria or a static criteria. I don't believe in any of that. I think the most exciting talents are kind of inexplicable. You can't really understand why that art works. It just does, and that feels like it comes from a very pure place.
I think that it all goes back to childhood. I’ve always really been writing about family. I suppose we always are. I do think that it is the original wound, and it's where we are kind of wired and built from those early years. So I think every other relationship just replicates that. It's very natural for me to go there, I suppose because the feelings are most intense there. We just keep recycling these relationships and dynamics over and over again—until maybe someday we can catch ourselves and try to break the bad patterns. It feels the most visceral and real to me, always. You're always looking for that in writing. You want everything to be at this peak intensity, or at least I do. That seems the most natural place to start.”
Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of twelve crime novels, including Beware the Woman, You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand, and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, El Dorado Drive, is available June 24, 2025.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“The more that you have that evolving relationship with the natural world, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have. The more we rely on that black-and-white thinking of either being in grief or being out of it, where we have a loss and we have to move on, or we don't and we're fine. The more that happens, the more difficult it is to flow into what we really need in terms of emotional flexibility to get through the staggering changes that are starting to happen regarding climate issues.”
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion,Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
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“We are in a complex and delicately balanced relationship of connection to everything else on the planet. We begin to recognize, write into, and speak into the complex interdependence and interconnection of every gesture that we make on the planet. Most storytelling that I really respond to, whether it's from my own culture or from previous civilizations, acknowledges that we are in this complex relationship where every gesture we make is connected to the lives of every other creature on the planet. The more narratives we allow to be complex in that way and interconnected, the more we begin to change our brain chemistry around how we protect ourselves and everything that is in relation to us. The more that you have that evolving relationship with it, that's dynamic and alive to the moment you're in, and that's not afraid of the feelings of fear, hopelessness, grief, or pain that attend paying close attention to the world as it is evolving around you, the better we are able to be flexible in the relationship we need to form with fixing what we can and holding onto what we have.”
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion, Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her work includes her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary, the short film Becoming Oceanthatshe made with Scott Foley, and her novel All the Water in the World.
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“In an age of seeming isolationism, where some countries tend to isolate, this is such a great way to bring people together. When you're doing music and the arts, all those barriers just fall away. People are just collaborating and having fun. It’s such a bridge-building endeavor. I don't mean that to sound cheesy either, because I just think it is really amazing. They end up being ambassadors who go back to their own country and say, “Wow, I had a great time at this festival in America or in the Netherlands.” It ends up being one more step in our way, with our organization, of trying to connect people together in an age when so many people seem to want to hide out and not connect. We’re big advocates of connecting, and that’s another great reason why I think we love to do this. too.”
Today’s guests are composer Robert Paterson and violinist Victoria Paterson, the visionary duo behind Mostly Modern Festival & Projects, an organization dedicated to celebrating music by living composers through performance, education, and community outreach.
Robert’s work is known for its rhythmic energy, emotional range, and inventive themes—from environmentalism and mythology to technology and modern relationships. Based in Saratoga Springs and NYC, he’s been recognized with numerous honors, including the Classical Recording Foundation’s Composer of the Year at Carnegie Hall and a Grammy® for Three Way. His music is performed by major orchestras and ensembles across the globe and regularly featured on NPR. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Mostly Modern Festival, which takes place in both Saratoga Springs and the Netherlands.
Victoria has built a multifaceted career across classical, Broadway, and commercial music, performing everywhere from Carnegie Hall to The Today Show. As General Director of Mostly Modern Projects, she leads year-round programming that brings music into hospitals, public parks, and senior centers, while also mentoring emerging artists across the country.
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Season 3 of Business & Society focuses on CEOs, Sustainability & Environmental Solutions
Business & Society is a limited series co-hosted by Bruce Piasecki.
“ I've lived in Philadelphia for about 16 years. The book itself was inspired by my time spent in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia interviewing a lot of the people that I met there, both longtime residents of the neighborhood and also people who were transient, a lot of people struggling with addiction and a lot of women doing sex work to fund their physical addiction to opioids. You find out about their past, their road into addiction, their aspirations, their fears. I began to lead free writing workshops at an organization named St. Francis Inn, which is a longstanding food service organization in the community. They had a women's day shelter where I taught. I was really able to connect with people within the community on a quite personal level and loved my experiences in Kensington. And I still go, I'm still quite close with a number of the community workers, people who run free healthcare clinics. All of it ultimately informed the writing of Long Bright River.”
Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, and has been made into a Peacock series starring Amanda Seyfried. Set against the opioid crisis and a string of mysterious murders, it’s a love story between two very different sisters and their path to recovery. Moore is winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature. Her other books include The God of the Woods, Heft, and The Unseen World.
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We are privileged to present the voices of individuals dedicated to effecting change and mitigating the harm inflicted upon our precious planet. These are individuals deeply committed to the core values that drive positive transformation. Thank you for tuning in to our episodes and for your ongoing dedication to stewarding our planet, not just on Earth Day but throughout the year. We can’t save the planet overnight, but by acting mindfully, we can create a better future. Let’s make Every Day, Earth Day!
Composer MAX RICHTER on Nature's Sonic Landscape
Founder of PETA INGRID NEWKIRK on the Shared Traits between Humans and Animals
JULIAN LENNON (Musician and Founder of White Feather Foundation) on Balancing Our Relationship with Mother Earth
BERTRAND PICCARD (Explorer, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight) discusses his adventures and how climate change will change our quality of life
CARL SAFINA (Author and environmentalist) on the Miracle of Life on Earth
NAN HAUSER (Whale Researcher, President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation) on How a Whale Saved her Life
U.S. Poet Laureate ADA LIMÓN on Embracing Hope Amid Environmental Uncertainty
Environmental Writer DAVID FARRIER on Evaluating Our Environmental Legacy
Grammy & Emmy Award-winning Sound Engineer CYNTHIA DANIELS on The Role of Art and Compassion in Transforming Society
Economist ODED GALOR on Education's Role in Addressing Climate Change
President of EarthDay.ORG KATHLEEN ROGERS on Advocating for Global Environmental Education
Lead Author of IPCC 6th Assessment Report JOELLE GERGIS on Learning from Historical Climate Data
Fmr. Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director SIR GEOFF MULGAN on Imagining a Circular Future for Society
Free Solo Climber of 200+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers ALAIN ROBERT on The Consequences of Overproduction on the Planet
Director of Climate Hazards Center, UC Santa Barbara CHRIS FUNK on Adapting to a Two-Degree World
Environmental Writer DAVID FARRIER Stretching Time and Empathy for Future Generations
Author of Finding the Mother Tree DR. SUZANNE SIMARD on Trees: Advanced Communicators of the Natural World
“Most Influential Living Philosopher” PETER SINGER on the Ethical Imperative to Respect Animal Life
Fmr. Exec. Director, Greenpeace Int'l, Special Envoy for Int'l Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry JENNIFER MORGAN on the Importance of Resilience in Advocacy
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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“I'm really interested in the relation between performance and ritual. Where do those two separate?”
Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, attended the Juilliard School in New York, and then studied social relations at Harvard. Over the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism, The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling. Sennett has advised the United Nations on urban issues for the past thirty years and currently serves as member of the UN Committee on Urban Initiatives. He is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University.
“I want to show what is kind of the basic DNA that people use for good or for ill. What are the tools they use, if you like, of expression that they use in the creative process?”
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“We look at creative work as though the very creative process itself is something good. These are tools of expression, and like any tool, you can use them to damage something or to make something. They can be turned to very malign purposes, for instance, in the operas of Wagner. So I wanted to do this set of books, I want to show what is kind of the basic DNA that people use for good or for ill. What are the tools they use, if you like, of expression that they use in the creative process?”
Richard Sennettgrew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, attended the Juilliard School in New York, and then studied social relations at Harvard. Over the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism, The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling. Sennett has advised the United Nations on urban issues for the past thirty years and currently serves as member of the UN Committee on Urban Initiatives. He is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University.
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“When I was working at the Times and the Times Magazine, on one Tuesday morning, the towers fell. September 11, 2001. The magazine had a 10-day lead time, so it was a weekly that was essentially 10 days old by the time it came out. We came to work and realized the world had changed, and the entire process, the magazine had been made for over a hundred years, had to be thrown out the window. We had to create a new magazine in 36 hours that would in some way speak to this very different, scary, and interesting world we were now in. In those 36 hours, we usually would take months to produce a magazine. If you take all of its aspects, it’s a long journey. However, we made a magazine in 36 hours that, in some ways, was the best magazine I ever made because of the urgency of the moment.”
Adam Moss was the editor of New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and 7 Days. As editor of New York, he also oversaw the creation of five digital magazines: Vulture, The Cut, Daily Intelligencer, Grub Street, and The Strategist. During his tenure, New York won forty-one National Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year. He was an assistant managing editor of The New York Times with oversight of the Magazine, the Book Review, and the Culture, and Style sections, as well as managing editor of Esquire. He was elected to the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame in 2019. He is the Author of The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing.
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" I think the narrative structure of those story ballets, which were some of the biggest stories of my childhood. I grew up watching Swan Lake. Giselle, La Bayadère, these were stories that were as present to me as anything that I read. Those story ballets are often split in two parts in a way. You have the White Swan and the Black Swan. In Giselle, you have the young girl and then you have the shade, the kind of ghost who comes to haunt her, her lover. Very similar in La Bayadère. And the structure of this novel is in two parts and it's two versions, in a way, of the same character. And now that you said it, I wonder if in some way, without realizing it, that narrative structure had really seeped into my brain."
Katie Kitamura is the author five novels, most recently Audition and Intimacies, which was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021, longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and a finalist for a Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, fellowships from the Cullman Center and the Lannan Foundation, and many other honors. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
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“What I meant when I said there is no AI is that I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we confuse ourselves too easily. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”
Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.
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Episode Website
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“AI is obviously the dominant topic in tech lately, and I think occasionally there's AI that's nonsense, and occasionally there's AI that's great. I love finding new proteins for medicine and so on. I don't think we serve ourselves well when we put our own technology up as if it were a new God that we created. I think we're really getting a little too full of ourselves to think that. This goes back to Alan Turing, the main founder of computer science, who had this idea of the Turing test. In the test, you can't tell whether the computer has gotten more human-like or the human has gotten more computer-like. People are very prone to becoming more computer-like. When we're on social media, we let ourselves be guided by the algorithms, so we start to become dumb in the way the algorithms want us to. You see that all the time. It's really degraded our psychologies and our society.”
Jaron Lanier is a pioneering technologist, writer, and musician, best known for coining the term “Virtual Reality” and founding VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. He led early breakthroughs in virtual worlds, avatars, and VR applications in fields like surgery and media. Lanier writes on the philosophy and economics of technology in his bestselling book Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget. His book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality is an inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, and philosophy. Lanier has been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and serves as Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO—aka “Octopus.” As a musician, he’s performed with Sara Bareilles, Philip Glass, T Bone Burnett, Laurie Anderson, Jon Batiste, and others.
Episode Website
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Photo credit: Michael Springer
Peter Weller is a renowned theater and Hollywood actor. His performances in films such as RoboCop and Naked Lunch garnered him much critical and commercial success over the years. His television acting and directing credits include Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, and 24. Unbeknownst to most, Weller has spent decades honing his appreciation for the visual and musical arts through his studies of the Renaissance era. Earning a Master's in Roman architecture from Syracuse University before moving on to a PhD in Renaissance Art from UCLA. Dr. Weller has just written a book, Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting.
“Art transcends time and culture—the beauty of it. People worry about the world now. I remind them to go live in 1968, a time of preparing to go to the moon while people died for their beliefs. This is a difficult time in a republic that’s supposed to be free, but music was leading the way. It’s actually harmonious, transcending culture and time. That might be the greatest gift of our transcendence.”
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“I met Miles backstage at the Hollywood Bowl—the last gig he ever played. Miles asked, “Who’s that white boy?” I introduced him to Bob Thiele Jr., whose father produced Coltrane. When Miles discovered this, he said, “Well, you can hang,” following this friendly gesture with me walking Miles to his car. I did not know he was dying. I kissed him on both cheeks. And 18 days later, he was gone.”
Peter Weller is a renowned theater and Hollywood actor. His performances in films such as RoboCop and Naked Lunch garnered him much critical and commercial success over the years. His television acting and directing credits include Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, and 24. Unbeknownst to most, Weller has spent decades honing his appreciation for the visual and musical arts through his studies of the Renaissance era. Earning a Master's in Roman architecture from Syracuse University before moving on to a PhD in Renaissance Art from UCLA. Dr. Weller has just written a book, Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting.
Weller has also contributed an essay remembering his friend Miles Davis for Jazz and Literature. The book, co-edited by Mia Funk, features many of her interviews and artworks, as well as poetry, art, and essays by our contributors.
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“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist.
There is some kind of magic in the creative process. I am reaching for things in my unconscious that surprise me. I don't know what it's going to be. I'd like to do many, many things. It's all my life's work. I don't want to just write the same book over and over again as some other authors do. I don't want to become formulaic.”
T.C. Boyle is a novelist and short story writer based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has published 19 novels, such as The Road to Wellville and more than 150 short stories for publications like The New Yorker, as well as his many short story collections. His latest novel Blue Skies is a companion piece to A Friend of the Earth. His writing has earned numerous awards, including winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Best Novel of the Year for World's End.
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Why are we filled with so many contradictions? How does writing help us make sense of the absurdity and of the absurdity and chaos of the world?
T.C. Boyle is a novelist and short story writer based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has published 19 novels, such as The Road to Wellville and more than 150 short stories for publications like The New Yorker, as well as his many short story collections. His latest novel Blue Skies is a companion piece to A Friend of the Earth. His writing has earned numerous awards, including winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Best Novel of the Year for World's End.
“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist.
There is some kind of magic in the creative process. I am reaching for things in my unconscious that surprise me. I don't know what it's going to be. I'd like to do many, many things. It's all my life's work. I don't want to just write the same book over and over again as some other authors do. I don't want to become formulaic.”
Episode Website
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Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Spencer Boyle in Santa Barbara, CA
How do the arts help us find purpose and meaning? What role do stories play in helping us preserve memories, connect us to each other, and answer life’s big questions?
MAX RICHTER(Award-winning Composer & Pianist · His album Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time) reflects on the importance of creativity and how literature, music, and visual art offer windows into other people’s perceptions and experiences, fostering understanding and connection.
ETGAR KERET (Cannes Film Festival Award-winning Director · Author of Fly Already · Suddenly a Knock on the Door · The Seven Good Years) shares insights from his upbringing and how his mother's storytelling shaped his perception of creativity and authenticity.
ANTHONY JOSEPH (T.S. Eliot Prize-winning Poet, Novelist & Singer-songwriter · Author of Sonnets for Albert) discusses the fragmented documentation of Caribbean life and how his poetry attempts to piece together these fragments.
CLAUDIA FORESTIERI (Emmy Award-winning Writer · Creator of HBOMax’s Gordita Chronicles) talks about the crucial role of immigrants in building and revitalizing America, portraying them as "Born Again Americans."
BRIGITTE MUNOZ-LIEBOWITZ (Showrunner Gordita Chronicles · One Day at a Time) highlights the inevitability of adversity in life and its role in fostering growth. She underscores the importance of a positive outlook in overcoming the challenges of immigration.
JOHNJOE McFADDEN (Author of Life is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe · Professor of Molecular Genetics at University of Surrey) explores the communicative power of art, detailing how complex ideas and feelings can be conveyed holistically.
SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA (Booker Prize-winning Author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida) discusses his choice of writing in the second person to explore the spiritual dimension.
CATHERINE CURTIN (Actress · Stranger Things · Orange Is the New Black · Homeland) reflects on creative freedom, experimental theater and her work in film and television.
KATE MUETH (Founder/Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls) emphasizes the importance of connecting stories to meaning and how her creative process prioritizes authenticity and personal fulfillment over industry expectations.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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Where does our intuition come from? How are lifelong creative partnerships formed and what role do friendship and personal connection play? How do our personal lives influence the art we make?
Erland Cooper (Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist) explores the emotional and transformative effects of music and visual arts. He underscores how music can transport individuals to different places and evoke emotional responses and relates his personal experiences of homesickness for his native Orkney.
Debora Cahn (television creator, writer, and Emmy-nominated showrunner and executive producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat) discusses the craft of long-form storytelling in television. She highlights the process of building immersive worlds and the challenge of integrating ideas into narratives that resonate with audiences on a universal level.
Julian Lennon (singer-songwriter and documentary filmmaker, founder of The White Feather Foundation, and photographer/author of Life’s Fragile Moments) reflects on the influence of his heroes and teachers and remembers the thing his mother taught him. He speaks about the importance of empathy, respect, and positivity, and how these values shape his creative and humanitarian efforts.
Ed Zwick (Academy-Award-winning writer, director, and producer, and author of Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions) analyzes the elusive nature of talent and the magical moments in casting where undeniable potential shines through. Zwick shares insights into the subtle and unspoken aspects of directing that elevate a performance and bring a story to life.
Chris Blackwell (Founder of Island Records and inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) highlights the importance of instinct in recognizing and nurturing talent. He recounts his initial hesitation before signing Cat Stevens to Island Records. He shares how artistic partnerships grow out of personal connections and friendship.
Joy Gorman Wettels (Executive producer of UnPrisoned and the founder of Joy Coalition) highlights stigmatized social issues through her storytelling. She emphasizes that humanizing these issues by creating relatable, empathetic characters can lead to real-world change and understanding.
Rick Carnes (Songwriter and President of the Songwriters Guild of America) discusses the fundamental elements of songwriting and how music marks significant moments in people’s lives. He elaborates on his creative process and the importance of mindfulness and emotional awareness in writing meaningful songs.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
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“I think a lot of joy comes from helping others. One of the things that I've been really focusing on is finding that balance in life, what’s real and what’s true and what makes you happy. How can you help other people feel the same and have a happier life? I think whatever that takes. So if that's charity, if that's photography, if that's documentary, if that's music, and I can do it, then I'm going to do it.
From traveling, especially in Ethiopia, Kenya, and even South America, we just see these scenarios and situations where they don't have enough support or finances. Anything I’m involved in, a good percentage goes to The White Feather Foundation. From what I witnessed, I just wanted to be able to help. My best teacher ever was Mum because I watched her live through life with dignity, grace, respect, and empathy. To me, those are some of the key things that are most important in living life. I think you have to love everybody and yourself. Respect is a real key issue, not only for people but for this world that we live in, Mother Earth. It's of key importance that we honor and respect this beautiful little blue ball that we live on.”
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of the Touch the Earth children’s book trilogy. This autumn, Whispers – A Julian Lennon Retrospective is being presented at Le Stanze della Fotografia, culminating in the publication of Life’s Fragile Moments, his first photography book. It features a compilation of images that span over two decades of Lennon's unique life, career, adventures, and philanthropy. He founded The White Feather Foundation in 2007, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous cultures. He was the executive producer of Kiss the Ground and other environmental documentaries and was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
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Photo credit: © 2024, Julian Lennon. All rights reserved.
Life’s Fragile Moments, published by teNeues, www.teneues.com, August 2024. 27,5 x 34 cm |10 5/6 x 13 3/8 in., 240 pages, Hardcover, approx. 200 color photographs, texts English & German ISBN: 978-3-96171-614-2
What is the power of photography? How do images and songs bookmark our lives, reminding us of what we care about, who we love, and what it means to be alive?
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of the Touch the Earth children’s book trilogy. This autumn, Whispers – A Julian Lennon Retrospective is being presented at Le Stanze della Fotografia, culminating in the publication of Life’s Fragile Moments, his first photography book. It features a compilation of images that span over two decades of Lennon's unique life, career, adventures, and philanthropy. He founded The White Feather Foundation in 2007, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous cultures. He was the executive producer of Kiss the Ground and other environmental documentaries and was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
“I think a lot of joy comes from helping others. One of the things that I've been really focusing on is finding that balance in life, what’s real and what’s true and what makes you happy. How can you help other people feel the same and have a happier life? I think whatever that takes. So if that's charity, if that's photography, if that's documentary, if that's music, and I can do it, then I'm going to do it.
From traveling, especially in Ethiopia, Kenya, and even South America, we just see these scenarios and situations where they don't have enough support or finances. Anything I’m involved in, a good percentage goes to The White Feather Foundation. From what I witnessed, I just wanted to be able to help. My best teacher ever was Mum because I watched her live through life with dignity, grace, respect, and empathy. To me, those are some of the key things that are most important in living life. I think you have to love everybody and yourself. Respect is a real key issue, not only for people but for this world that we live in, Mother Earth. It's of key importance that we honor and respect this beautiful little blue ball that we live on.”
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Photo credit: © 2021 Marilyn Clark
"The state of being in flow and seeking out that state, sort of disappearing from the here and now... it must have been something that has been part of human cultures for many millennia. We know that, for example, dancing can bring you into these states. And we know from many anthropological works that people dance themselves into trance, a type of flow. So, there is that flow in this scientific sense of a state of well-being. And we will speak about what that does to our brain and our broader wellbeing, but also the flow in what cues enter into our senses. So that would be a scientific field that looks at brain synchrony, physiology synchrony, these waves that we see that sort of connect with us.”
Dr. Julia F. Christensen is a Danish neuroscientist and former dancer currently working as a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany. She studied psychology, human evolution, and neuroscience in France, Spain and the UK. For her postdoctoral training, she worked in international, interdisciplinary research labs at University College London, City, University London and the Warburg Institute, London and was awarded a postdoctoral Newton International Fellowship by the British Academy. Her new book The Pathway to Flow is about the science of flow, why our brain needs it and how to create the right habits in our brain to get it.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-julia-f-christensen-36539a144https://www.instagram.com/dr.julia.f.christensen?igsh=cHZkODgxczJqZmxl
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How can we unlock a state of flow in our daily lives? How does connecting with nature influence our mental and physical well-being? How do movement, dance and play help us feel more creative, connected, and content?
Dr. Julia F. Christensen is a Danish neuroscientist and former dancer currently working as a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany. She studied psychology, human evolution, and neuroscience in France, Spain and the UK. For her postdoctoral training, she worked in international, interdisciplinary research labs at University College London, City, University London and the Warburg Institute, London and was awarded a postdoctoral Newton International Fellowship by the British Academy. Her new book The Pathway to Flow is about the science of flow, why our brain needs it and how to create the right habits in our brain to get it.
"The state of being in flow and seeking out that state, sort of disappearing from the here and now... it must have been something that has been part of human cultures for many millennia. We know that, for example, dancing can bring you into these states. And we know from many anthropological works that people dance themselves into trance, a type of flow. So, there is that flow in this scientific sense of a state of well-being. And we will speak about what that does to our brain and our broader wellbeing, but also the flow in what cues enter into our senses. So that would be a scientific field that looks at brain synchrony, physiology synchrony, these waves that we see that sort of connect with us.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-julia-f-christensen-36539a144https://www.instagram.com/dr.julia.f.christensen?igsh=cHZkODgxczJqZmxl
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Photo credit: Hans Scherhaufer
What does it mean to live a good life? How can the arts help us learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What is the power of mentorship for forging character and creative vision? How can we hold onto our cultural heritage and traditions, while preparing students for the needs of the 21st century?
Alan Poul (Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director · Six Feet Under · Tales of the City · Tokyo Vice · My So-Called Life) shares his personal journey and the importance of mentorship in shaping one's creative path. He discusses his experiences with influential figures such as Stephen Sondheim, Paul Schrader, and Robert Wilson, emphasizing the value of learning from those you admire.
Rupert Sheldrake (Biologist · Author of The Science Delusion · The Presence of the Past · Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work) explores the significance of cultural and religious traditions in education. He argues that knowing the open questions in science, integrating arts, and learning by heart are crucial for a well-rounded education.
Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet · Director of Creative Writing Program at Emory University · Author of The Tradition · The New Testament) emphasizes the power and agency that young writers have to create change. He encourages persistence and the importance of trying, despite the fear of failure.
Sy Montgomery (Naturalist · Author of The Soul of an Octopus · The Hawk’s Way · Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell) reflects on how animals have been her mentors and teachers. From her Scottish Terrier, Molly, to wild emus in Australia, she shares how her interactions with animals have guided her career and life choices.
Manuela Lucá-Dazio (Exec. Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize · Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale · Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture) discusses the necessity of reconnecting with cultural heritage and expanding educational tools. She advocates for a more imaginative approach to integrating different fields of knowledge and teaching methods.
Jeffrey D. Sachs (Economist · President of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network · Director of Center for Sustainable Development · Columbia University) highlights the global consensus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the critical importance of education. He specifically advocates for SDG 4, which focuses on inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
Todd B. Kashdan (Psychologist · APA Award-winning Author of The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively · Curious? · The Upside of Your Dark Side · Leading Authority on Well-being, Curiosity, Courage & Resilience) analyzes the shortcomings of the current education system. He stresses the need to teach critical thinking and develop superior information-gathering strategies.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Founder · Host · Exec. Director of First Voices Radio · Founder of Akantu Intelligence · Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute) offers a unique perspective on our connection to the Earth. He delves into Indigenous wisdom about living in harmony with nature, our ancestors, and recognizing the timeless energy around us.
Erland Cooper (Songwriter · Producer · Multi-instrumentalist · Composer of Folded Landscapes) reminisces about his upbringing surrounded by nature and traditional folk music. He shares how these elements have influenced his work and creative process.
Peter Singer (Philosopher · Author of Animal Liberation · Founder of The Life You Can Save) examines the core philosophical questions about living a good life. He discusses the principles of Effective Altruism and the importance of using our resources wisely to make the world a better place.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
www.creativeprocess.info
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Have we entered what Earth scientists call a “termination event,” and what can we do to avoid the worst outcomes? How can we look beyond GDP and develop new metrics that balance growth with human flourishing and environmental well-being? How can the 15-minute city model revolutionize urban living, enhance health, and reduce our carbon footprint?
Euan Nisbet (Earth Systems Scientist - Royal Holloway University of London) analyzes historical patterns that point to a potential termination event and emphasizes the urgency of addressing abrupt climate changes.
Daniel Susskind(Economist - Oxford & King’s College London - Author of Growth: A Reckoning - A World Without Work) discusses the economic trade-offs involved in pursuing net-zero emissions and the growing public discontent with the costs.
Carlos Moreno (Originator of the 15-Minute City concept - Author of The 15-Minute City: A Solution to Saving Our Time & Our Planet) explores how the 15-minute city model can enhance urban living, promote local commerce, and reduce our carbon footprint.
Richard Black(Author of The Future of Energy - Former BBC Environment Correspondent - Director of Policy & Strategy - Global Clean Energy Thinktank - Ember) explains the future energy landscape, critiques the contributions of oil and gas companies to the clean energy transition, and emphasizes the need for a realistic clean energy transition.
Carissa Carter (Academic Director at Stanford's d.school - Co-author of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future) highlights the importance of people critically interpreting climate data and understanding its emotional impact.
Gordon Lambert (World Economic Forum Global Council - Energy and Sustainability - Former Member of Alberta’s Climate Change Advisory Panel) shares his personal reflections on the harmony of nature and the necessity of aligning business strategies with renewable energy goals.
Dr. Ben Shofty(Functional Neurosurgeon - Professor - University of Utah) discusses the health benefits of exposure to nature and its positive impact on well-being and creativity.
Julia F. Christensen (Neuroscientist - Author of The Pathway To Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind) explores the neuroscience behind human interaction with nature and its restorative effects on the brain.
The episode examines critical issues surrounding climate change, economic growth, and urban development. Euan Nisbet highlighted the urgency of addressing abrupt climate changes, while Daniel Susskind shed light on the economic complexities of achieving net-zero emissions. Carlos Moreno presented the revolutionary concept of the 15-minute city, and Richard Black emphasized the need for a realistic clean energy transition. Carissa Carter underscored the importance of understanding and visualizing climate data, while Gordon Lambert, Dr. Julia F. Christensen, and Dr. Ben Shofty provided personal and scientific insights into the benefits of integrating nature into our lives. These conversations give us a deeper look into the challenges and potential solutions for creating a sustainable future.
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms?
Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph.
JAKE FERGUSON
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really – 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together, but because I'm not a spoken word person...well, I can write a good story. I can write a good essay, but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited, hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermain involved.
And Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemaine in a purely artistic capacity. And I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album. You know, I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
JERMAIN JACKMAN
There's something raw about The Architecture of Oppression, both part one and part two. There's a raw realness and authenticity in those songs that AI can't create. There's a lived experience that AI won't understand, and there's a feeling in those songs. And it's not just in the words from the spoken word artists, if it's not in the instruments that are being played. It's in the voice that you hear. You hear the pain, you hear the struggle, you hear the joy, you hear all of those emotions in all of those songs. And that's something that AI can't make up or create.
ANTHONY JOSEPH
I've known Jake for many, many, many years, probably since the nineties. Yeah, it's going all the way back. There's a lot of spillover between me and Jake in that way, both personal and music – which is the same thing, I think. So, I'm coming from that context. And in terms of the sort of political underpinnings, you know, you can't be a Black British artist and escape the sort of stuff that Jake is talking about because that's the kind of the mess that we work in. It's the mess that we sort of inherit and the mess that we try to push through to make art. We can't escape the sort of political ramifications of colonialism or racism.
They are the things that sort of underpin a lot of our lived experience, and I think Jake says it quite eloquently. I mean, he says he's not a writer, but he's definitely a thinker, and he knows what he's talking about. So, exactly as he said, "We're still dealing with these things in 2024." We shouldn't be, but I think records like the two volumes actually of this record are quite important because a lot of Black art, you know, there's hardly any sort of black artists are sort of directly addressing these issues in a very concentrated, focused way. You know, at the beginning you said, Mia, that it's not something you want to listen to before bed. And yeah, they're difficult records. I think the new one is a lot more accessible in a way than the first one was. The first one was...is a scary listen. You know, absolutely. It's not easy. It's not easy listening, but then the experience is not easy.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Lyle Hutchins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms?
Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph.
JAKE FERGUSON
I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really – 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together, but because I'm not a spoken word person...well, I can write a good story. I can write a good essay, but my ability to write stories or write lyrics is very limited, hence why I was so keen to get Anthony and Jermain involved.
And Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemaine in a purely artistic capacity. And I think the bringing together those two worlds really created the album. You know, I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.
JERMAIN JACKMAN
There's something raw about The Architecture of Oppression, both part one and part two. There's a raw realness and authenticity in those songs that AI can't create. There's a lived experience that AI won't understand, and there's a feeling in those songs. And it's not just in the words from the spoken word artists, if it's not in the instruments that are being played. It's in the voice that you hear. You hear the pain, you hear the struggle, you hear the joy, you hear all of those emotions in all of those songs. And that's something that AI can't make up or create.
ANTHONY JOSEPH
I've known Jake for many, many, many years, probably since the nineties. Yeah, it's going all the way back. There's a lot of spillover between me and Jake in that way, both personal and music – which is the same thing, I think. So, I'm coming from that context. And in terms of the sort of political underpinnings, you know, you can't be a Black British artist and escape the sort of stuff that Jake is talking about because that's the kind of the mess that we work in. It's the mess that we sort of inherit and the mess that we try to push through to make art. We can't escape the sort of political ramifications of colonialism or racism.
They are the things that sort of underpin a lot of our lived experience, and I think Jake says it quite eloquently. I mean, he says he's not a writer, but he's definitely a thinker, and he knows what he's talking about. So, exactly as he said, "We're still dealing with these things in 2024." We shouldn't be, but I think records like the two volumes actually of this record are quite important because a lot of Black art, you know, there's hardly any sort of black artists are sort of directly addressing these issues in a very concentrated, focused way. You know, at the beginning you said, Mia, that it's not something you want to listen to before bed. And yeah, they're difficult records. I think the new one is a lot more accessible in a way than the first one was. The first one was...is a scary listen. You know, absolutely. It's not easy. It's not easy listening, but then the experience is not easy.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sam Myers and Lyle Hutchins. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Associate Text Editor was Nadia Lam. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions). Listen on Apple,Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“One of the things I think about a lot is this. I vividly remember the desire throughout pretty much most of my twenties and certainly my teen years to be a famous artist and win big awards. And when you dig down into what you actually want from that, it's connection. The teen brain, in particular, is extremely geared toward connection and gets different brain chemical payouts for different things than adults. So certainly, when I think of like teenagers, I think of that drive for connection and fitting in and being accepted is so strong. And that was a part of my artistic output or desire as well was like, okay, if I write, you know, something world-changing, like then it could be like a really well-regarded composer and get that respect. Or if I go more of the songwriting and film route, I can be beloved or have people love my music and have this emotional experience with my music. There were all these dreams that I had that I think largely boiled down to just wanting to be accepted. And you can get that outside of your career and outside of the arts.”
How can we learn to flourish because of who we are, not in spite of it? What is the sensory experience of the world for people with autism and ADHD? How can music help heal trauma and foster identity?
Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer whose work centers around themes of perception, body, sensation, trauma, and resilience. Their scores for critically acclaimed films have been played in 13 countries. Their poems have been featured in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor's Poetry Program, Guerrilla Opera, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Mattia composes and performs on violin, voice, and piano, and has taught music for over 20 years. They have received a Master's of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory and a Bachelor's of Music from St. Olaf College. They also are an AUDHD coach, host the AuDHD Flourishing podcast and help other neurodivergent folks heal and find their creative flow in their course Love Your Brain.
http://mattiamauree.com
https://studio.com/mattia
https://mattiamauree.com/love-your-brain
https://www.audhdflourishing.com/hello
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can we learn to flourish because of who we are, not in spite of it? What is the sensory experience of the world for people with autism and ADHD? How can music help heal trauma and foster identity?
Mattia Maurée is an interdisciplinary composer whose work centers around themes of perception, body, sensation, trauma, and resilience. Their scores for critically acclaimed films have been played in 13 countries. Their poems have been featured in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor's Poetry Program, Guerrilla Opera, and Arc Poetry Magazine. Mattia composes and performs on violin, voice, and piano, and has taught music for over 20 years. They have received a Master's of Music in Composition at New England Conservatory and a Bachelor's of Music from St. Olaf College. They also are an AUDHD coach, host the AuDHD Flourishing podcast and help other neurodivergent folks heal and find their creative flow in their course Love Your Brain.
“One of the things I think about a lot is this. I vividly remember the desire throughout pretty much most of my twenties and certainly my teen years to be a famous artist and win big awards. And when you dig down into what you actually want from that, it's connection. The teen brain, in particular, is extremely geared toward connection and gets different brain chemical payouts for different things than adults. So certainly, when I think of like teenagers, I think of that drive for connection and fitting in and being accepted is so strong. And that was a part of my artistic output or desire as well was like, okay, if I write, you know, something world-changing, like then it could be like a really well-regarded composer and get that respect. Or if I go more of the songwriting and film route, I can be beloved or have people love my music and have this emotional experience with my music. There were all these dreams that I had that I think largely boiled down to just wanting to be accepted. And you can get that outside of your career and outside of the arts.”
http://mattiamauree.com
https://studio.com/mattia
https://mattiamauree.com/love-your-brain
https://www.audhdflourishing.com/hello
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"So in our projects, part of the creative process is learning how to interact with other disciplines. It’s not something academia in general does. I happen to be a saxophone player. In something like music, the richness comes from different instruments—their shortcomings and advantages combined together. My hope is that's what we end up doing in the academic field to try and address some of these messy problems.
I was my first generation going to college. There was one that stands out by miles—a teacher I had in elementary school when I was eight. He was from Jamaica and just arrived in England. He was a jazz musician. He would start off the day playing jazz. He taught math as well, but he brought in a technique, which I still use to this day, to multiply numbers together. I've never seen it taught anywhere, it was done in some kind of slanted table. We'd done multiplication the previous year and I couldn't understand it, but he drew these tables and I thought this was just remarkable. That set me off and it showed me there was this interesting thing called jazz, and you don't have to do much to actually change a lot. Passing on some idea that might be unusual, as long as you can back it up, can have a really positive benefit going forward for future generations.
I just wish I was a young scientist going into this because that's the question to answer: Why AI comes out with what it does. That's the burning question. It's like it's bigger than the origin of the universe to me as a scientist, and here's the reason why. The origin of the universe, it happened. That's why we're here. It's almost like a historical question asking why it happened. The AI future is not a historical question. It's a now and future question.”
How can physics help solve messy, real world problems? How can we embrace the possibilities of AI while limiting existential risk and abuse by bad actors?
Neil Johnson is a physics professor at George Washington University. His new initiative in Complexity and Data Science at the Dynamic Online Networks Lab combines cross-disciplinary fundamental research with data science to attack complex real-world problems. His research interests lie in the broad area of Complex Systems and ‘many-body’ out-of-equilibrium systems of collections of objects, ranging from crowds of particles to crowds of people and from environments as distinct as quantum information processing in nanostructures to the online world of collective behavior on social media. https://physics.columbian.gwu.edu/neil-johnson https://donlab.columbian.gwu.edu
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“When you're playing music with a group of people, there are those special moments when it all works, and you're in the groove. As soon as you begin to think about it, you lose it because you've introduced thought, and it's trying to take over. There's something at a lower level, a different level altogether, where all that is happening and working. And I think that's true of the whole body, that sometimes when we start thinking that introduces problems rather than solutions.”
Joseph LeDoux is a Professor of Neural Science at New York University at NYU and was Director of the Emotional Brain Institute. His research primarily focuses on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions, such as fear and anxiety. He has written a number of books in this field, including The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human, The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, Anxious, and The Deep History of Ourselves. LeDoux is also the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Amygdaloids.
www.joseph-ledoux.com
www.cns.nyu.edu/ebi
https://amygdaloids.net
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674261259
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Music courtesy of Joseph LeDoux
How does the brain process emotions? How are emotional memories formed and stored in the brain, and how do they influence behavior, perception, and decision-making? How does music help us understand our emotions, memories, and the nature of consciousness?
Joseph LeDoux is a Professor of Neural Science at New York University at NYU and was Director of the Emotional Brain Institute. His research primarily focuses on survival circuits, including their impacts on emotions, such as fear and anxiety. He has written a number of books in this field, including The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human, The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, Anxious, and The Deep History of Ourselves. LeDoux is also the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Amygdaloids.
“When you're playing music with a group of people, there are those special moments when it all works, and you're in the groove. As soon as you begin to think about it, you lose it because you've introduced thought, and it's trying to take over. There's something at a lower level, a different level altogether, where all that is happening and working. And I think that's true of the whole body, that sometimes when we start thinking that introduces problems rather than solutions.”
www.joseph-ledoux.com
www.cns.nyu.edu/ebi
https://amygdaloids.net
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674261259
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Music courtesy of Joseph LeDoux
Environmentalists, writers, artists, activists, and public policy makers explore the interconnectedness of living beings and ecosystems. They highlight the importance of conservation, promote climate education, advocate for sustainable development, and underscore the vital role of creative and educational communities in driving positive change.
00:00 "The Conditional" by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
01:27 The Secret Language of Animals: Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA
03:03 A Love Letter to the Living World: Carl Safina, Ecologist & Author
04:11 Exploring the Mysteries of Soil and Coral Reefs: Merlin Sheldrake, Biologist, Author of Entangled Life
04:47 Exploring Coral Reefs: Richard Vevers, Founder of The Ocean Agency
05:56 The Importance of Climate Education: Kathleen Rogers, President of EarthDay.org
07:02 The Timeless Wisdom of Turtles: Sy Montomery, Naturalist & Author
07:38 Optimism in the Face of Environmental Challenges: Richard Vevers
08:32 Urban Solutions for a Sustainable Future: Paula Pinho, Director, Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency & Innovation, European Commission
08:57 The Circular Economy: Walter Stahel, Founder & Director of the Product-Life Institute
09:39 The Power of Speaking Out for Sustainability: Paula Pinho
10:16 Empowering the Next Generation Through Education: Jeffrey Sachs, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
“As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that. So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts is an essential part of that.”
How is being an artist different than a machine that is programmed to perform a set of actions? How can we stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences? In this conversation with Max Cooper, we discuss the beauty and chaos of nature and the exploration of technology music and consciousness.
Max Cooper is a musician with a PhD in computational biology. He integrates electronic music with immersive video projections inspired by scientific exploration. His latest project, Seme, commissioned by the Salzburg Easter Festival, merges Italian musical heritage with contemporary techniques, was also performed at the Barbican in London.
He supplied music for a video narrated by Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis for COP26.
In 2016, Cooper founded Mesh, a platform to explore the intersection of music, science and art. His Observatory art-house installation is on display at Kings Cross until May 1st.
https://maxcooper.net
https://osterfestspiele.at/en/programme/2024/electro-2024
https://meshmeshmesh.net
www.kingscross.co.uk/event/the-observatory
The music featured on this episode was Palestrina Sicut, Cardano Circles, Fibonacci Sequence, Scarlatti K141. Music is from Seme and is courtesy of Max Cooper.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How is being an artist different than a machine that is programmed to perform a set of actions? How can we stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences? In this conversation with Max Cooper, we discuss the beauty and chaos of nature and the exploration of technology music and consciousness.
Max Cooper is a musician with a PhD in computational biology. He integrates electronic music with immersive video projections inspired by scientific exploration. His latest project, Seme, commissioned by the Salzburg Easter Festival, merges Italian musical heritage with contemporary techniques, was also performed at the Barbican in London.
He supplied music for a video narrated by Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis for COP26.
In 2016, Cooper founded Mesh, a platform to explore the intersection of music, science and art. His Observatory art-house installation is on display at Kings Cross until May 1st.
“Music, essentially, for me is: I can sit down, and I can make a chord progression, and make a musical structure that resonates with how I feel at that moment and seems to capture things which go beyond anything I can put into words. That was the idea of the Unspoken Words project: To try and capture those things and then interpret them with visual artists. For me, that's as close as I can get to describe what it's like being me. So I'd say you just have to listen to the music, and then you'll hear what it's like, I suppose. Music was always there as I was growing up. My mum was a music teacher, my dad was an engineer, so there was always music and science around me, but I didn't really engage with music seriously until I found electronic music. Something about the purity and the simplicity of it really grabbed me, and then I got into the whole club scene and started DJing and all that. I came to music in a serious way much later than I'd come to the sciences.”
https://maxcooper.net
https://osterfestspiele.at/en/programme/2024/electro-2024
https://meshmeshmesh.net
www.kingscross.co.uk/event/the-observatory
The music featured on this episode was Palestrina Sicut, Cardano Circles, Fibonacci Sequence, Scarlatti K141. Music is from Seme and is courtesy of Max Cooper.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"S. E. Hinton, Susie Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15 and 16. It was published when she was 17. She was told by one editor in particular that she couldn't have any swear words, so she was sort of forced to write about these very big, intense, love-and-death operatic themes where there's a boy who dies by suicide by cop. There's a boy who dies from a fire. So it's about grief. His parents die in a car crash prior to all that. There's this hugely stacked deck of grief that exists in the novel. But when you read the novel, there's a very sweet and loving tone to it. So when I started working on it, I recall childhood in Joliet, Illinois. My mom was a single parent, and she raised three kids on her own on a nurse's salary. So I had to give myself permission to take her great dark themes and actions that are in her novel and like give language to it that was also from an adult world.
Right now, live theater is probably much different than looking at a screen. It's much different than looking at your computer or your Game Boy or whatever. I see grown men on the subway playing video games on their phones. And we're not even looking at each other on the subways anymore. We're like deep in our in a screen. And I wonder what that's done. And so I think theater actually has a powerful ability to rewire us to the human experience. And maybe because of it, maybe we can find more empathy or more capacity toward kindness."
Dan Futterman is creator, executive producer, and writer of Amazon Prime's American Rust, the acclaimed crime drama starring Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and David Alvarez. Previously, Dan has written screenplays for Capote, Foxcatcher, In Treatment, and Gracepoint. He served as executive producer on The Looming Tower. Dan is also an actor, director, and two-time Oscar nominee.
Adam Rapp is the executive producer and writer of American Rust. He has written plays, films, and series, including Red Light Winter, The Sound Inside, In Treatment, Blackbird, The Looming Tower, and Dexter: New Blood. His latest novel is Wolf at the Table. He recently wrote the book for the new Broadway musical, The Outsiders.
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001246
www.imdb.com/name/nm1452688/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.imdb.com/title/tt1532495/
https://outsidersmusical.com/
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-rapp/wolf-at-the-table/9780316434164/?lens=little-brown
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What role do the families we’re born into or the traumas we experience shape the people we become? Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How can the arts increase our capacity for empathy, understanding, and kindness?
Dan Futterman is creator, executive producer, and writer of Amazon Prime's American Rust, the acclaimed crime drama starring Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and David Alvarez. Previously, Dan has written screenplays for Capote, Foxcatcher, In Treatment, and Gracepoint. He served as executive producer on The Looming Tower. Dan is also an actor, director, and two-time Oscar nominee.
Adam Rapp is the executive producer and writer of American Rust. He has written plays, films, and series, including Red Light Winter, The Sound Inside, In Treatment, Blackbird, The Looming Tower, and Dexter: New Blood. His latest novel is Wolf at the Table. He recently wrote the book for the new Broadway musical, The Outsiders.
"S. E. Hinton, Susie Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was 15 and 16. It was published when she was 17. She was told by one editor in particular that she couldn't have any swear words, so she was sort of forced to write about these very big, intense, love-and-death operatic themes where there's a boy who dies by suicide by cop. There's a boy who dies from a fire. So it's about grief. His parents die in a car crash prior to all that. There's this hugely stacked deck of grief that exists in the novel. But when you read the novel, there's a very sweet and loving tone to it. So when I started working on it, I recall childhood in Joliet, Illinois. My mom was a single parent, and she raised three kids on her own on a nurse's salary. So I had to give myself permission to take her great dark themes and actions that are in her novel and like give language to it that was also from an adult world.
Right now, live theater is probably much different than looking at a screen. It's much different than looking at your computer or your Game Boy or whatever. I see grown men on the subway playing video games on their phones. And we're not even looking at each other on the subways anymore. We're like deep in our in a screen. And I wonder what that's done. And so I think theater actually has a powerful ability to rewire us to the human experience. And maybe because of it, maybe we can find more empathy or more capacity toward kindness."
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001246
www.imdb.com/name/nm1452688/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.imdb.com/title/tt1532495/
https://outsidersmusical.com/
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-rapp/wolf-at-the-table/9780316434164/?lens=little-brown
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What will happen when Artificial General Intelligence arrives? What is the nature of consciousness? How are music and creativity pathways for reconnecting us to our humanity and the natural world?
Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.
"And I think when all of a sudden music and art started to come out of AI, it was a wake up call to what is our purpose. Like, what are we? What are we bringing to humanity, to the human story? And I think it's interesting because a lot of artists now are concerned about it. What is the value of our consciousness? Consciousness has been something that I've been reading about. It's a vastly understudied part of science, and it's going to become very, very relative very quickly. And I think that it's getting to the core of creativity. What is creativity and ultimately where do we want to go? How are we going to connect with each other?"
It started as a dance piece with choreographer dancer Fukiko Takase. And we had met when I was doing a dance piece with Wayne McGregor with another project that I do called the Winged Victory for the Sullen. We did a piece called Atomos, and Fukiko was one of Wayne's principal dancers. And I just loved how she was able to express in movement. It was a very profound experience to realize how connected music is to dance, this sense of communication without words, and how it gets elevated when you bring dance and movement into music."
https://dustinohalloran.com/
www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dustin-o-halloran
www.imdb.com/name/nm0641169/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Music courtesy of Dustin O’Halloran and Deutsche Grammophon
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.
https://dustinohalloran.com/
www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/dustin-o-halloran
www.imdb.com/name/nm0641169/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Music courtesy of Dustin O’Halloran and Deutsche Grammophon
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"I love Bernstein's excitement in talking about how he says, for Beethoven, was he the best harmonist? No. Was it his orchestral abilities? Absolutely not. It was just that each note that he chose was exactly the right note to follow the note that proceeded it as if he had 'a private telephone wire to Heaven' and that he was channeling the note that created and mirrored the divine harmonies of the universe.
And it was so striking to see John Adams compare the harmonies of a great piece by Handel to the harmonies of the State. And harmony is truth, which is reason, which is the Divine, according to the classical authority. And we have not only a right, but a duty to live according to reason in order to align ourselves with the divine harmonies of the universe.
Recently, I've started writing songs, and there's just something about the golden hour of the sunrise that waits for us each day. And whatever else is going on in the world or in our lives allows us to recommit to and experience once more the glorious beauty and harmony of the universe.”
Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pursuit-of-Happiness/Jeffrey-Rosen/9781668002476
https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness? What can we learn from the Founding Fathers about achieving harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery, and pursuing the public good?
Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.
"I love Bernstein's excitement in talking about how he says, for Beethoven, was he the best harmonist? No. Was it his orchestral abilities? Absolutely not. It was just that each note that he chose was exactly the right note to follow the note that proceeded it as if he had 'a private telephone wire to Heaven' and that he was channeling the note that created and mirrored the divine harmonies of the universe.
And it was so striking to see John Adams compare the harmonies of a great piece by Handel to the harmonies of the State. And harmony is truth, which is reason, which is the Divine, according to the classical authority. And we have not only a right, but a duty to live according to reason in order to align ourselves with the divine harmonies of the universe.
Recently, I've started writing songs, and there's just something about the golden hour of the sunrise that waits for us each day. And whatever else is going on in the world or in our lives allows us to recommit to and experience once more the glorious beauty and harmony of the universe.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pursuit-of-Happiness/Jeffrey-Rosen/9781668002476
https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/podcasts
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused.
The awareness in the industry, with acknowledging the injury from all those who came forward around the Weinstein allegations is the injury of when someone's coerced into doing something or that their career being threatened is emotional, psychological injury. It's really clear if you've got a stunt and someone's going to be jumping from roof to roof, they might fall down the cracks and break an ankle. Of course, the producers need to mitigate that risk and put in place everything so that the risk that you can perceive might happen is mitigated."
Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).
https://www.itaobrien.com/
https://www.itaobrien.com/intimacy-on-set-guidelines.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1357677/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can intimate scenes be brought to the screen in ways that respect the emotional well-being and privacy of the artists themselves? How do we make sure that we can create a story about abuse without anyone being abused in the process?
Ita O’Brien is the UK’s leading Intimacy Coordinator, founder of Intimacy on Set (and author of the Intimacy On Set Guidelines). Her company, set up in 2018 provides services to TV, film, and theatre when dealing with intimacy, and is a SAG-Aftra accredited training provider of Intimacy Practitioners. Intimacy on Set has supported numerous high-profile film and TV productions including Normal People & Conversations With Friends (BBC3/Hulu), Sex Education 1&2 (Netflix), I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO), It’s A Sin (Channel 4), (Neal Street Prods / Searchlight Pictures).
"For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused.
The awareness in the industry, with acknowledging the injury from all those who came forward around the Weinstein allegations is the injury of when someone's coerced into doing something or that their career being threatened is emotional, psychological injury. It's really clear if you've got a stunt and someone's going to be jumping from roof to roof, they might fall down the cracks and break an ankle. Of course, the producers need to mitigate that risk and put in place everything so that the risk that you can perceive might happen is mitigated."
https://www.itaobrien.com/
https://www.itaobrien.com/intimacy-on-set-guidelines.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1357677/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"When I did my show Positive Me, we were in the middle of a horrible crisis. The AIDS crisis was very real to me and my friends and not real to the people that I knew from New Jersey. They thought it was government hype. They didn't believe in it. And so I couldn't even fathom that. And I had taken a class with Elizabeth Swados about writing satire, and she was very encouraging in terms of what I was doing. And so maybe it was just gumption. I just thought, Okay, then this is what I'm going to do!"
From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House M.D, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons. She played a Holocaust survivor and adopted mother in the drama television series Little Bird. The story centres on a First Nations woman who was adopted into a Jewish family during the Sixties Scoop, as she attempts to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.
Lisa’s career began by writing, composing, and performing an original AIDS awareness musical Positive Me at the renowned La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York City. In the wake of COVID, Lisa began to paint using old family photographs as starting points. Her incredibly detailed paintings capture intimate relationships and spontaneous moments with honesty and compassion.
https://lisaedelstein.komi.io/
www.lisaedelsteinpaintings.com/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0249046
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Artworks:
“Beach Day”, “Marsha”, “Karen” Courtesy of the Artist
Lisa Edelstein in the Studio
Photo credit: Holland Clement, Courtesy of the artist
How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world?
From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits include Keeping the Faith, What Women Want, Daddy Daycare, As Good as It Gets, and Fathers and Sons. She played a Holocaust survivor and adopted mother in the drama television series Little Bird. The story centres on a First Nations woman who was adopted into a Jewish family during the Sixties Scoop, as she attempts to reconnect with her birth family and heritage.
Lisa’s career began by writing, composing, and performing an original AIDS awareness musical Positive Me at the renowned La Mama Experimental Theater Club in New York City. In the wake of COVID, Lisa began to paint using old family photographs as starting points. Her incredibly detailed paintings capture intimate relationships and spontaneous moments with honesty and compassion.
"When I did my show Positive Me, we were in the middle of a horrible crisis. The AIDS crisis was very real to me and my friends and not real to the people that I knew from New Jersey. They thought it was government hype. They didn't believe in it. And so I couldn't even fathom that. And I had taken a class with Elizabeth Swados about writing satire, and she was very encouraging in terms of what I was doing. And so maybe it was just gumption. I just thought, Okay, then this is what I'm going to do!"
https://lisaedelstein.komi.io/
www.lisaedelsteinpaintings.com/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0249046
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Mitch Stone
Courtesy of the artist
“When I was younger, I used to draw all the time, so cartoons, comic books, anything visual just got me really quickly when I was younger. And I wanted to be a cartoonist up until I was 14, 15. And then I had this idea to be a rapper, but animation cartoons, these were things that I was super passionate about. It's something that never changed throughout my life. You know, as I grew older, I still had an interest in comics. I still had an interest in animation. And reading comics as a kid
as a lot of my fans know, this Moon Man thing has been kind of my theme from the very beginning. And I think it wasn't until my fourth album, Indicud, where I really started to conjure up a world where this Moon Man character existed. A couple years ago, it kind of got to this point where I was like, man, this is something that I want to actually bring to life. And I thought telling it in comic form would be the best way. Karina, you mentioned Kyle, and I just did my research, and I was like, ‘Yes, he's the guy!’ You know, it was like a no-brainer. I was like–Wow, I really finally have an opportunity to make something that I've spent 15 years of my career building, making it a real thing and bringing him to life.” - Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi
Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.
Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.
moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)
What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future?
Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.
Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.
“When I was younger, I used to draw all the time, so cartoons, comic books, anything visual just got me really quickly when I was younger. And I wanted to be a cartoonist up until I was 14, 15. And then I had this idea to be a rapper, but animation cartoons, these were things that I was super passionate about. It's something that never changed throughout my life. You know, as I grew older, I still had an interest in comics. I still had an interest in animation. And reading comics as a kid
as a lot of my fans know, this Moon Man thing has been kind of my theme from the very beginning. And I think it wasn't until my fourth album, Indicud, where I really started to conjure up a world where this Moon Man character existed. A couple years ago, it kind of got to this point where I was like, man, this is something that I want to actually bring to life. And I thought telling it in comic form would be the best way. Karina, you mentioned Kyle, and I just did my research, and I was like, ‘Yes, he's the guy!’ You know, it was like a no-brainer. I was like–Wow, I really finally have an opportunity to make something that I've spent 15 years of my career building, making it a real thing and bringing him to life.” - Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi
moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)
"Climate change gives us a chance to re-imagine the world in a way that every single human being can participate in. And so whether you're in a remote part of the United States or some other country, when you learn about climate change, it shouldn't just be the science. It should be the opportunity." –Kathleen Rogers
Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process.
Voices on this episode are:
KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG
POORVA JOSHIPURA
Senior VP, PETA UK - Author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence
DAVID FENTON
Founder of Fenton Communications - Author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator
BRITT WRAY
Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University
DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme
ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON
Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker
Author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok
THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor
DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR
Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po
PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
ARMOND COHEN
Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force
MAYA K. VAN ROSSUM
Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations - Delaware Riverkeeper
Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode:
“Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed
“Vladimir’s Blues” from The Blue NotebooksMusic is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises,
and Mute Song.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Valdemaras D.
“The natural world has its own sonic language. Its own fingerprints. And that's one of the beautiful things about being out here. There is another acoustic environment, another sort of sonic fingerprint, and it is always changing. Every day is a sort of a different sound picture. I walk out the door and you do hear it changing over time. The leaves are coming in now, different kinds of bird song. The wind sounds different. It's a wonderful thing to be around and experience.” —Max Richter
Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process
SY MONTGOMERY
NYTimes Bestselling Author of Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, Secrets of the Octopus, The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty, and other books
MAX RICHTER
Award-winning Composer, Pianist & Environmentalist (The Blue Notebooks, Waltz with Bashir, Arrival, Ad Astra) His album SLEEP is the most streamed classical record of all time. Cofounder of Studio Richter Mahr
MERLIN SHELDRAKE
Biologist & Bestselling Author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021
THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor
TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE
Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute
ERLAND COOPER
Nature’s Songwriter - Composer of “Folded Landscapes”
RICK BASS
Environmentalist & Story Prize Award-winning Author of “Why I Came West”, “For a Little While” - Fmr. Geologist - Organizer of Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest
PETER SINGER
“Most Influential Living Philosopher” - Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save
KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
Photos courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Kyle Johnson, Sebastian Unrau, Abner abiu Castillo diaz, Deepak Nautiyal
"My most formative TV experience having been Six Feet Under, I tend to want to take a rather conservative approach to score, in that if a scene works brilliantly without music, why do you need music? And that score, especially, is usually there to provide an element that you're not getting fully from the dry–when there's no score, we call it dry. So with the dry footage, that was always our philosophy on Six Feet Under: if the scene works just as well without music, we don't need music. And that just runs a little counter to what was, and kind of still is, the prevailing philosophy on television, which is that everything needs music. Like, people won't know what to feel if you don't score it, which I think is a really very insulting underestimation of the intelligence of the audience. And so there's always pressure to put more music in, and our feeling is, no, if we don't need it, we don't need it. Now, that changes, like when we get to Tokyo Vice because of the genre elements of the show. You know, if you have an action sequence, you need music. If you have a really tense, suspenseful moment, it probably needs music.”
Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What does learning another language and living in another culture do for your humanity and creative process?
Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.
"My most formative TV experience having been Six Feet Under, I tend to want to take a rather conservative approach to score, in that if a scene works brilliantly without music, why do you need music? And that score, especially, is usually there to provide an element that you're not getting fully from the dry–when there's no score, we call it dry. So with the dry footage, that was always our philosophy on Six Feet Under: if the scene works just as well without music, we don't need music. And that just runs a little counter to what was, and kind of still is, the prevailing philosophy on television, which is that everything needs music. Like, people won't know what to feel if you don't score it, which I think is a really very insulting underestimation of the intelligence of the audience.
And so there's always pressure to put more music in, and our feeling is, no, if we don't need it, we don't need it. Now, that changes, like when we get to Tokyo Vice because of the genre elements of the show. You know, if you have an action sequence, you need music. If you have a really tense, suspenseful moment, it probably needs music.”
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Scientists, artists, psychologists, conservationists, and spiritual leaders share their stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.
00:05 Adapting to Earth: Indigenous Perspectives
TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE - Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Founder of Akantu Intelligence
https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org
https://akantuintelligence.org
01:06 The Beauty and Fragility of the Natural World
APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center
www.aprilgornik.com
www.thechurchsagharbor.org
02:01 The Importance of Whales in Ecosystems
NAN HAUSER - Whale Researcher - President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation - Director, Cook Islands Whale Research
https://whaleresearch.org
03:27 The Importance of Community and Collective Well-being
ROBERT WALDINGER - Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happinesshttps://www.robertwaldinger.com
04:19 The Power of Love, Respect, and Unity
JULIAN LENNON - Singer-songwriter, Photographer, Doc Filmmaker, Exec. Producer of the films Common Ground & Kiss the Ground
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
05:05 The Importance of Cultural and Scientific Knowledge
RUPERT SHELDRAKE - Biologist & Author of The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past
www.merlinsheldrake.com
0:6:18 Mastering Confidence & Human Potential
IAN ROBERTSON - Author of How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-belief - Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute
https://ianrobertson.org
07:01 The Magic of Coral Reefs
GATOR HALPERN - Co-Founder & President of Coral Vita - UN Young Champion of the Earth - Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur
https://coralvita.co
08:06 Lessons from Ancient Trees and Tundra
DOUG LARSON - Biologist - Expert on Deforestation - Author of Cliff Ecology - The The Dogma Ate My Homework
https://experts.uoguelph.ca/doug-larson
09:36 Understanding the Flow of Life
MASTER SHI HENG YI - 35th Generation of Shaolin Masters
Headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe
www.shihengyi.online
www.shaolintemple.eu
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth really mean? Like a bird we think has no intelligence. It just flies here and flies there, right? But we also understand that that bird is also using the tools as the tools of the Earth correctly or properly when...what does that mean?
Now, if you go deeper into Indigenous peoples, you can see the modernity and then so-called primitive people. You don't need to be in contact, in relationship, and in communication, have a language with all other life-technology taking us away from Earth because we feel like we're elite to anything having to do with Earth. That's why we want to go to a dead planet called Mars. So they're about controlling, getting you and all of us away from being magic...is how to use tools of the Earth properly. Not, you know, we should not abuse water, the air, the land, the food, anything. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth.”
Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.
https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence?
Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.
“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth really mean? Like a bird we think has no intelligence. It just flies here and flies there, right? But we also understand that that bird is also using the tools as the tools of the Earth correctly or properly when...what does that mean?
Now, if you go deeper into Indigenous peoples, you can see the modernity and then so-called primitive people. You don't need to be in contact, in relationship, and in communication, have a language with all other life-technology taking us away from Earth because we feel like we're elite to anything having to do with Earth. That's why we want to go to a dead planet called Mars. So they're about controlling, getting you and all of us away from being magic...is how to use tools of the Earth properly. Not, you know, we should not abuse water, the air, the land, the food, anything. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth.”
https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.
“It took me some time to understand where I was going to see myself. It’s true that, at home, me and my brothers had a beautiful cultural environment because my father was, not a professional musician, but a jazz lover. He was really into jazz music and really passionate about it. But he was never a professional musician. He was an amateur. My mother, also, was a teacher and a writer, so I think we had this environment at home that got us into music. We were always listening either to opera or to jazz. Of course, we had our preferences when we were kids– we loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But we always had this different approach because of our mother and father. Everything that influenced us came through them, even if we didn’t know it. When I was fourteen or fifteen I started to feel a need to play an instrument. And one thing that helped a lot was the fact that we were four brothers and we started to play music together. We had this small combo happening at home almost every day, every hour. And it was a quick sensation– immediately I understood that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”
Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet, the Mário Laginha trio, and singer Cristina Branco. In 2021, he released Enter Paredes, and in 2022, he led Cantina’s de Main and SUL.
www.clavenamao.org
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Yse2njeXg2XDiQmmxhAc5
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Music on this episode:
António Marinheiro, Bernardo Moreira Sextet, from the album Entre Paredes
PROMESSAS MIX V3 ULT from SUL
Courtesy of Bernardo Moreira
Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet, the Mário Laginha trio, and singer Cristina Branco. In 2021, he released Enter Paredes, and in 2022, he led Cantina’s de Main and SUL.
“It took me some time to understand where I was going to see myself. It’s true that, at home, me and my brothers had a beautiful cultural environment because my father was, not a professional musician, but a jazz lover. He was really into jazz music and really passionate about it. But he was never a professional musician. He was an amateur. My mother, also, was a teacher and a writer, so I think we had this environment at home that got us into music. We were always listening either to opera or to jazz. Of course, we had our preferences when we were kids– we loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But we always had this different approach because of our mother and father. Everything that influenced us came through them, even if we didn’t know it. When I was fourteen or fifteen I started to feel a need to play an instrument. And one thing that helped a lot was the fact that we were four brothers and we started to play music together. We had this small combo happening at home almost every day, every hour. And it was a quick sensation– immediately I understood that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”
www.clavenamao.org
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Yse2njeXg2XDiQmmxhAc5
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Music on this episode:
António Marinheiro, Bernardo Moreira Sextet, from the album Entre Paredes
PROMESSAS MIX V3 ULT from SUL
Courtesy of Bernardo Moreira
"I don't honestly know entirely where I'm headed musically. I still have a lot of songs that I haven't finished that are relatively recent and some that go back to 40 years ago, if not more. You know, projects like this last album Jude, partially songs that never had a home, you know, that didn't quite fit on an album or another project. And so, I mean, strangely enough, what I've been doing personally for the end of this year has been going through trying to get all the admin out the way, so to speak. For instance, in the last six months to a year, but intensely so in the last few weeks, I've been archiving over 100,000 photographs of mine so that I can put more collections together, so I know where things are, et cetera, to get on with the creativity of photography next year and hopefully get around to a few more charity trips. Same thing with the music, getting that under wraps on the admin side. I don't want to do work with another label again, I think. I prefer to be in a position, where things organically happen, creatively speaking. So, the idea is to be in a position next year where if I write, record, and produce a song in a few days or a week, that within a week or two or a few weeks, I can press a button and release it out to the world. That's my plan for the future. Probably no albums, probably. EPs and singles, as they come. That's the idea for the future. And to just be as happy and present and as creative as possible next year. And help the projects and people that need help. That's my goal for the future. That's how I am. Because, again, if I'm not in a position of focus and in a position of love, then, you know, I can't help anybody else. So that's my goal is to be fully in that headspace next year."
How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
https://kissthegroundmovie.com
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com
https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE
https://julianlennon-photography.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?
Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.
"I don't honestly know entirely where I'm headed musically. I still have a lot of songs that I haven't finished that are relatively recent and some that go back to 40 years ago, if not more. You know, projects like this last album Jude, partially songs that never had a home, you know, that didn't quite fit on an album or another project. And so, I mean, strangely enough, what I've been doing personally for the end of this year has been going through trying to get all the admin out the way, so to speak. For instance, in the last six months to a year, but intensely so in the last few weeks, I've been archiving over 100,000 photographs of mine so that I can put more collections together, so I know where things are, et cetera, to get on with the creativity of photography next year and hopefully get around to a few more charity trips. Same thing with the music, getting that under wraps on the admin side. I don't want to do work with another label again, I think. I prefer to be in a position, where things organically happen, creatively speaking. So, the idea is to be in a position next year where if I write, record, and produce a song in a few days or a week, that within a week or two or a few weeks, I can press a button and release it out to the world. That's my plan for the future. Probably no albums, probably. EPs and singles, as they come. That's the idea for the future. And to just be as happy and present and as creative as possible next year. And help the projects and people that need help. That's my goal for the future. That's how I am. Because, again, if I'm not in a position of focus and in a position of love, then, you know, I can't help anybody else. So that's my goal is to be fully in that headspace next year."
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
https://kissthegroundmovie.com
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com
https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE
https://julianlennon-photography.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Q: Who is David Byrne?
David Byrne: ...I have no idea.
Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is just on a different level. I wanted to create an experience that shows us we're not who we think we are. Theater of the Mind is an immersive Science Theater project. With this show, I've tried to marry a narrative to the experience of different scientific phenomena that reveal how malleable our perception memory, and identity really are.
To make a production like this work, it's a big invisible team. There's actors, lighting designers sound designers, technical people so it's a really complicated system. This is the Theater of the Mind. How do we operate in a world where we're not sure what's real and what's not. If things are unreliable, then what do we trust? People think of science as being intimidating, but it also doesn't mean that you can't understand it or can't enjoy it. Our emotions, our sense of self, our relationship to other people is all connected to our perception, that you can't separate one of these things from another. They all work together to make us what we are.
What is consciousness? The mind produces thoughts, sensations, perception, emotions. How can these inner felt experiences be produced within the darkness of the human skull?
Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation through their 'Science Sandbox' Initiative, he directed Theater of the Mind, which takes audiences into the creative inner workings of Musician and Artist David Byrne’s brain, showcasing Byrne’s immersive theater performance, which attempts to conceptualize the idea of our sense of self and how malleable the mind truly is.
He directed the award-winning healthcare justice documentary Not Going Quietly, executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass.
John Tracey is Program Director of Science, Society and Culture projects at the Simons Foundation whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The foundation champions basic science through grant funding, support for research and public engagement.
Ian Moubayed started his career as a cinematographer, collaborating with Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar-winning filmmakers. His work includes Netflix’s The Great Hack, NBC Peacock’s The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and HBO’s The Vow.
www.youtube.com/@sciencesandbox
www.davidbyrne.com
https://nickny.com/bio
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/john-tracey/
https://peoples.tv/director/ian-moubayed/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What is consciousness? The mind produces thoughts, sensations, perception, emotions. How can these inner felt experiences be produced within the darkness of the human skull?
Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation through their 'Science Sandbox' Initiative, he directed Theater of the Mind, which takes audiences into the creative inner workings of Musician and Artist David Byrne’s brain, showcasing Byrne’s immersive theater performance, which attempts to conceptualize the idea of our sense of self and how malleable the mind truly is.
He directed the award-winning healthcare justice documentary Not Going Quietly, executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass.
John Tracey is Program Director of Science, Society and Culture projects at the Simons Foundation whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The foundation champions basic science through grant funding, support for research and public engagement.
Ian Moubayed started his career as a cinematographer, collaborating with Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar-winning filmmakers. His work includes Netflix’s The Great Hack, NBC Peacock’s The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and HBO’s The Vow.
Q: Who is David Byrne?
David Byrne: ...I have no idea.
Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is just on a different level. I wanted to create an experience that shows us we're not who we think we are. Theater of the Mind is an immersive Science Theater project. With this show, I've tried to marry a narrative to the experience of different scientific phenomena that reveal how malleable our perception memory, and identity really are.
To make a production like this work, it's a big invisible team. There's actors, lighting designers sound designers, technical people so it's a really complicated system. This is the Theater of the Mind. How do we operate in a world where we're not sure what's real and what's not. If things are unreliable, then what do we trust? People think of science as being intimidating, but it also doesn't mean that you can't understand it or can't enjoy it. Our emotions, our sense of self, our relationship to other people is all connected to our perception, that you can't separate one of these things from another. They all work together to make us what we are.
www.youtube.com/@sciencesandbox
www.davidbyrne.com
https://nickny.com/bio
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/john-tracey/
https://peoples.tv/director/ian-moubayed/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Music is purely abstract sound capable of defining the undefinable. And it also happens to be a language that's universally spoken. We could play certain pieces of music in any society in the world and it would be to some extent or another perceived, understood. I recently read that there's never been a people that didn't have a music. And that can be a very small group of people. It doesn't have to be a gigantic society like Asian or Caucasian. It could be a small splinter group somewhere."
Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. Ralph Gibson has photographed The Beatles, Lou Reed (with whom he also made the documentary Red Shirley), Laurie Anderson, and created album artwork for Joy Division. Gibson composes and plays his own music.
Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.
www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Creative Center for Photography in Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. Ralph Gibson has photographed The Beatles, Lou Reed (with whom he also made the documentary Red Shirley), Laurie Anderson, and created album artwork for Joy Division. Gibson composes and plays his own music.
Gibson’s works reveal a meticulous aesthetic and visual territory edging on the surreal. His recent books include his memoir Self Exposure, Sacred Land: Israel before and after Time, and Secret of Light, which accompanied his exhibition at the Deichtorhallen House of Photography in Hamburg. He is a Leica Hall of Fame Inductee and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 2022, The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography devoted to his work opened in Busan, South Korea.
"Music is purely abstract sound capable of defining the undefinable. And it also happens to be a language that's universally spoken. We could play certain pieces of music in any society in the world and it would be to some extent or another perceived, understood. I recently read that there's never been a people that didn't have a music. And that can be a very small group of people. It doesn't have to be a gigantic society like Asian or Caucasian. It could be a small splinter group somewhere."
www.ralphgibson.com
www.deichtorhallen.de/en/ausstellung/ralph-gibson
www.gibsongoeunmuseum.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"So it's just a great joy to be passing this guitar made from the wood of an 800-year-old tree around to musicians and asking them to play a song of resistance or celebration. And that's what we're going to do at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest. We're going to have it be an annual event like Farm Aid. And we want it to be big. We want it to be Woodstock in its pivot point. The way the Children's Trust court case was pivotal, the way this Black Ram court case we had and won was pivotal.
We want Climate Aid to be a celebration. And this one guitar exploring the question: Can one tree save a forest? Can one song save a forest? And we think the answer is yes. We believe it will be. What we want to do with the forest that the guitar came from is establish it as a climate refuge, a place dedicated to storing as much carbon and long-term safekeeping as possible.
I went into this old forest called Black Ram that we were seeking to defend and did successfully defend for now. There are these 600, 700, and 800-year-old trees already spraypainted in orange and blue that they were going to cut down. And I thought let's make a guitar out of a piece of one of these giant spruces. And that's what I did. I went back with my chainsaw and cut out a length of it, wheel-barreled it out, and took the piece of wood to a man named Kevin Kopp."
Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him The Story Prize, multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes in addition to NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.
He’s an organizer and speaker at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest, a fundraiser event to benefit the grassroots environmental movement of Protect Ancient Forests & The Montana Project. Featuring Maggie Rogers and more great performers and speakers. The evening will advance the efforts to protect the Black Ram forest by designating the region as the nation’s first Climate Refuge. Portland, Maine, on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. ET, at the Merrill Auditorium. Tickets available at the Merrill’s box office and online at PortTIX.com.
www.rickbass.net
www.protectancientforests.org
www.montanaproject.org
www.PortTIX.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Rick Bass, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his memoir Why I Came West, was born and raised in Texas, worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi, and has lived in Montana's Yaak Valley for almost three decades. His short fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and The Paris Review, as well as numerous times in Best American Short Stories, has earned him The Story Prize, multiple O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prizes in addition to NEA and Guggenheim fellowships.
He’s an organizer and speaker at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest, a fundraiser event to benefit the grassroots environmental movement of Protect Ancient Forests & The Montana Project. Featuring Maggie Rogers and more great performers and speakers. The evening will advance the efforts to protect the Black Ram forest by designating the region as the nation’s first Climate Refuge. Portland, Maine, on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. ET, at the Merrill Auditorium. Tickets available at the Merrill’s box office and online at PortTIX.com.
"So it's just a great joy to be passing this guitar made from the wood of an 800-year-old tree around to musicians and asking them to play a song of resistance or celebration. And that's what we're going to do at Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest. We're going to have it be an annual event like Farm Aid. And we want it to be big. We want it to be Woodstock in its pivot point. The way the Children's Trust court case was pivotal, the way this Black Ram court case we had and won was pivotal.
We want Climate Aid to be a celebration. And this one guitar exploring the question: Can one tree save a forest? Can one song save a forest? And we think the answer is yes. We believe it will be. What we want to do with the forest that the guitar came from is establish it as a climate refuge, a place dedicated to storing as much carbon and long-term safekeeping as possible.
I went into this old forest called Black Ram that we were seeking to defend and did successfully defend for now. There are these 600, 700, and 800-year-old trees already spraypainted in orange and blue that they were going to cut down. And I thought let's make a guitar out of a piece of one of these giant spruces. And that's what I did. I went back with my chainsaw and cut out a length of it, wheel-barreled it out, and took the piece of wood to a man named Kevin Kopp."
www.rickbass.net
www.protectancientforests.org
www.montanaproject.org
www.PortTIX.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Have you ever experienced the feeling of being alone and not having a community? How can we build an atmosphere of inclusion and greater understanding?
Brooklyn-based artist Elliot Lee fuses dark pop melodies with edgy vocals and innovative electronic-rock soundscapes to create an unpredictable sound, acting as a voice for the voiceless. Elliot Lee holds an awareness of what music that is unhindered by norms can do for the underrepresented. Elliot’s single "Easy To Be You” is dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community and was released during PRIDE Month. Elliot confides that the release is, "about struggling with self image and identity expression as a queer person.
"I struggle a lot with the feeling of being alone and not having a community. And I did even more as a teenager. That's kind of what my music is about, finding those people who get it so you don't feel like you're alone anymore. And that's why I talk about things that maybe I wouldn't talk about outside of music, because in music it's a safer and easier way to find people who really get it."
www.elliotlee.com
https://song.space/2nldde/song/2477503
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Music has the ability to transport you to a place and create a sort of internal landscape. And we all have life-changing things that happened to us. And I remember I made it as a way to kind of ease a busy mind. And perhaps I was missing home. I still call Orkney home, even though I'm not there every day. I'm a thousand miles away today, and I still call Orkney home. For example, when I hear the voice of the curlew, it transports me back to Orkney with such a jolt. In a heartbeat. And music can do that too. It's very transformative. Visual arts have the ability to do that too. And you could stare at a Rothko painting and cry and not quite know why. It can take days to figure out perhaps certain meanings from it. But music I think is quite instant. It can really do that."
How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic?
Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements. Through music words and cinematography, he explores landscape, memory, and identity. Cooper also works across mixed media projects, including installation, art, theater, and film. He is widely known for burying the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Scotland, deleting all digital files, and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it. The tape has recently been found.
www.erlandcooper.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo by Alex Kozobolis
How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic?
Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements. Through music words and cinematography, he explores landscape, memory, and identity. Cooper also works across mixed media projects, including installation, art, theater, and film. He is widely known for burying the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Scotland, deleting all digital files, and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it. The tape has recently been found.
"Music has the ability to transport you to a place and create a sort of internal landscape. And we all have life-changing things that happened to us. And I remember I made it as a way to kind of ease a busy mind. And perhaps I was missing home. I still call Orkney home, even though I'm not there every day. I'm a thousand miles away today, and I still call Orkney home. For example, when I hear the voice of the curlew, it transports me back to Orkney with such a jolt. In a heartbeat. And music can do that too. It's very transformative. Visual arts have the ability to do that too. And you could stare at a Rothko painting and cry and not quite know why. It can take days to figure out perhaps certain meanings from it. But music I think is quite instant. It can really do that."
www.erlandcooper.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo by Alex Kozobolis
What is the role of music in cinema and why it is such an important part of the storytelling process? How does music increase our capacity for empathy and wonder?
Fabrizio Mancinelli is an Italian-American composer, songwriter, and conductor, best known for his musical contributions to the world of cinema. As a songwriter, he has created original scores for The Land of Dreams,The Snow Queen 3, The Boat, and the upcoming animated drama Mushka, among others. In 2017, he led the orchestral recording for the Academy Award-winning Green Book, and he recently scored the documentary Food 2050, which premiered at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2022.
"So Mushka, I wrote it that day my grandmother died. And it's a montage of a grandmother passing. And I feel like if our goal is to transmit what we are feeling in that moment, we can do it sometimes in a more subtle way. I don't need to take the head of my audience and say - Look, cry, cry. No, I need to hold the hand of my audience and through the vibration of music...
Everything is a painting and I always talk about colors in music as opposed to colors in vision. And I feel like it's a fitting comparison. But then, of course, the thing is as human beings, we'll always have our influences. Even if we find our artistic voice, we are like a complete sum of everything we've studied, we've appreciated in art, and we've lived.
Everything is a painting there, and when something communicates those colors, I always talk about colors in music as opposed to colors in vision.
We need to talk about storytelling and colors with directors. We don't need to talk about musical instruments with a director who's not a musician because 90% of the time we're going to end up in a direction that's not the one the director really wants. If we talk about emotional storytelling, we're going to find common ground. So the decision comes from the image. The film is calling for something, then I discuss it with the directors."
https://fabriziomancinelli.us
www.instagram.com/fabmancinelli
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
What role do the visual arts play in drawing upon history, activating democracy, and asking questions about what culture can do?
Australian artist Anthony White lives and works in Paris. White’s artistic work revolves around the notion of reclaiming the act of dissent through the production of cultural objects. His research is situated at the intersection of several fields in the social space including, politics, human rights, and postcolonialism. His practice is centered around concepts of design and its history as a form of social and political expression. He works with painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. Through this practice, he tackles relevant questions to our time, to encourage emancipation and new ways of thinking.
Anthony White’s artwork has been exhibited in Australia, Europe, and Asia. He has received support through cultural agencies such as The Trust Company Australia, The National Association for the Visual Arts,(NAVA) and The Copyright Agency Limited (CAL). He has also received critical acclaim by recognition in the form of art prizes and reviews most notably The Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship (2007) The Creative Art Fellowship at The National Library of Australia (2020) and acknowledgements in The Australia Financial Review, Art Collector Magazine Australia and also Elle Décor US edition. His exhibition Manifestation is on show from the 12–30 of July at Lennox Street Gallery, in Melbourne.
"It's about finding form through using your body. You can see throughout history that uh, repeated like with artists like from the Gutai Movement in Japan after World War II, when they used actual performances in mud and throwing themselves through rice paper barriers and doing performances around these things. And also other artists actually that use a lot of gestures and bodily movements. Artists like Emilio Vedova, the Italian artist, Venetian. He did a lot of work, and he said that art that was abstract had to be political, which was interesting because you'd actually think the opposite.
You would think that art would have to have a subject matter that related to some obvious political reference, whether it be an image of a protest or an image of a battle or a massacre or something that related to that. But no, his stance was the fact that his work was a resistance and he was involved in a resistance group during World War II."
www.anthonywhite.art
www.instagram.com/anthony_white_paris/
www.metrogallery.com.au/exhibitions/manifestation
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“Home of the Brave” performed by Laurie Anderson & Dickie Landry on The Late Show. Laurie Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects.
For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Keith Sonnier, Philip Glass, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matt Clarke, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, Lawrence Weiner, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, and Robert Wilson. Landry remains one of the few artists of his generation who made important waves within numerous creative idioms. Having been trained from a young age on saxophone, not only is he a remarkably respected solo performer and bandleader, but he was an early and long-standing member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, playing on seminal records like Music With Changing Parts, Music in Similar Motion / Music in Fifths, Music in Twelve Parts, North Star, and Einstein on the Beach, and played with Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and jazz giants like Johnny Hammond, Gene Ammons, and Les McCann. He was also one of the most important photographic documenters of the New York Scene, until he left the city for his native Louisiana, following 9/11. Listen to his music on Unseen Worlds.
http://www.dickielandry.com
https://unseenworlds.com/collections/dickie-landry
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Philip Glass, Keith Sonnier, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matt Clarke, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, Lawrence Weiner, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, and Robert Wilson.
Landry remains one of the few artists of his generation who made important waves within numerous creative idioms. Having been trained from a young age on saxophone, not only is he a remarkably respected solo performer and bandleader, but he was an early and long-standing member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, playing on seminal records like Music With Changing Parts, Music in Similar Motion / Music in Fifths, Music in Twelve Parts, North Star, and Einstein on the Beach, and played with Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and jazz giants like Johnny Hammond, Gene Ammons, and Les McCann. He was also one of the most important photographic documenters of the New York Scene, until he left the city for his native Louisiana, following 9/11.
http://www.dickielandry.com
https://unseenworlds.com/collections/dickie-landry
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
Happy World Oceans Day! Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists and artists with music courtesy of composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper.
Voices on this episode are
GIULIO BOCCALETTI
Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert
Chief Strategy Officer 2016–2020, The Nature Conservancy
PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
RON GONEN
Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners
Fmr. Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC
MARCIA DESANCTIS
Journalist, Essayist,
Author of A Hard Place to Leave: Stories from a Restless Life
JEAN WEINER
Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine, Haiti
DERRICK EMSLEY
Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.
DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme
NEIL GRIMMER
Brand President of SOURCE Global · Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel: Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air
ALAN JACOBSEN
Director of Photography
Emmy & Sundance Special Jury Award-Winning & Oscar Nominated Documentaries
RICHARD VEVERS
Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency
BRIAN WILCOX
Chief Engineer & Co-founder of Marine BioEnergy
Grows Kelp in the Ocean to Provide Carbon-neutral Fuels
SETH M. SIEGEL
Entrepreneur, Public Speaker & NYTimes Bestselling Author
Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World
Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink
JOELLE GERGIS
Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of Humanity’s Moment
JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast
ROB BILOTT
Environmental Lawyer, Partner Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont
JILL HEINERTH
Explorer, Presenter, Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver
OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE
Founder & Executive Director of the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network International
Author of Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature & Artist
JESS WILBER
International Outreach Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Coordinator, Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment
BERTRAND PICCARD
Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation
IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI
Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund
GARY GRIGGS
Global Oceans Hero Award-Winner · Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences
Director Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz 1991 to 2017
Sample Credits:
BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.
BBC News Excerpt, Public broadcast, 19th July. Fair usage, courtesy Simon Gurney, BBC Studios Limited.
UN Broadcast Excerpt, Greta Thunberg, Young Climate Activist at the Opening of the Climate Action Summit 2019, United Nations license 24 October 2022.
CBS News Excerpt 1970. Fair usage, archive courtesy Leah Hodge, CBS
www.erlandcooper.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Artworks by Mia Funk www.miafunk.com
Music from Folded Landscapes courtesy of Erland Cooper and Universal Music Enterprises.
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast or reflectors of our participating students.
Voices on this episode are
BRITT WRAY
Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford
JEFFREY SACHS
President of UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University
EVELINE MOL, Student Barnard College
BERTRAND PICCARD, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation
AVA CLANCY, Student
MIRA PATLA, Student
DARA DIAMOND, Student
ARIELLE DAVIS, Student
CLAIRE POTTER, Designer, Lecturer, Author of Welcome to the Circular Economy
MEGAN HEGENBARTH, Participating Student, University of Minnesota
GRACE PHILLIPS, Participating Student, Pitzer College
BIANCA WEBER, Participating Student, Syracuse University
ELLEN EFSTATHIOU, Participating Student, Oberlin College
SURYA VIR, Participating Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MACIE PARKER, Participating Student, Boston University
BEILA UNGAR, Participating Student, Columbia University
CARL SAFINA, Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center, Author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace”
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras.
“Calling England Home” and “Language (Poem for Anthony McNeill)” were released in 2021 by Anthony Joseph and appear on his album "The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives”.
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Listen to Part 4 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast:
INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
JEFFREY D. SACHS, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, Economist, Author
JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry
MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures”, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021
WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute
ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force
PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum
RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, Poet & Author of “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments”
ANA CASTILLO, Award-Winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist & Artist
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
Artwork: Saudade, Mia Funk
Listen to Part 3 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Voices on this episode:
PAULA PINHO, Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum
JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry
WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute
MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021
RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC
MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO, Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.
NICHOLAS ROYLE, Co-author of "An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory”, Author of “Mother: A Memoir”
MARK BURGMAN, Director, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, Editor-in-Chief, Conservation Biology
MIKE DAVIS, CEO of Global Witness
JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast
BRITT WRAY, Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University
RICHARD VEVERS, Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency
ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force
BILL HARE, Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist
DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, Activist, Professor & Author of “Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back”, Host of Speaking out of Place Podcast
IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI, Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund
GAIA VINCE, Science Writer, Broadcaster & Author of “Transcendence” & “Adventures in the Anthropocene”
INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
Listen to Part 2 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Voices on this episode:
MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.
BRITT WRAY - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University
WALTER STAHEL - Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy - Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute
MATHIS WACKERNAGEL - Founder & President of the Global Footprint Network - World Sustainability Award Winner
JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast
RICHARD VEVERS - Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency
ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force
PAULA PINHO - Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy
MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND - Indigenous Rights Activist - Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards - Founder of Fundacion Gaia Amazonas, named #40 NGOs of the World by The Global Journal
HAROLD P. SJURSEN - Professor of Philosophy - Science, Technology, the Arts - NYU, Beihang University, East China University
BILL HARE - Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist
SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health
LISA JACKSON PULVER - Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Sydney's Indigenous Strategy & Services
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode:
“Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed
Vladimir’s Blues” from The Blue Notebooks
"Lullaby From The Westcoast Sleepers” from 24 Postcards in Full Colour,
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers. Enjoy Part 1 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Voices on this episode are
MAX RICHTER
INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder of PETA
BERTRAND PICCARD, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation
CARL SAFINA, Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center
CLAIRE POTTER, Designer, Lecturer, Author of “Welcome to the Circular Economy”
ADA LIMÓN, U.S. Poet Laureate, Host of The Slowdown podcast
CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer, composer
JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of “Humanity’s Moment”
KATHLEEN ROGERS, President of EARTHDAY.ORG
ODED GALOR, Author of “The Journey of Humanity”, Founder of Unified Growth Theory
SIR GEOFF MULGAN, Fmr. Chief Executive of Nesta, Fmr, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director & Downing Street’s Head of Policy, Author of “Another World is Possible”
ALAIN ROBERT, Rock & Urban Climber known for Free Solo Climbing 150+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment
NOAH WILSON-RICH, Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company
CHRIS FUNK, Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara, Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes
DAVID FARRIER, Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils”
DR. SUZANNE SIMARD, Professor of Forest Ecology, Author of “Finding the Mother Tree”
PETER SINGER, “Most Influential Living Philosopher”, Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save
JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
“For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.
So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.”
Composer Max Richter is known for his ability to translate profound human emotions into music. Max’s record Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time and his catalogue has surpassed 3 billion streams.
A prolific collaborator, he scored and performed for Kim Jones for the Dior shows, and the new Wayne McGregor and Margaret Atwood ballet MADDADDAM, and arts collective Random International on the Rain Room installation.
Max has collaborated with film directors Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, and Ari Folman, and scored film & TV including Ad Astra, Black Mirror, Shutter Island, The Leftovers, Arrival and his Emmy-nominated score for Taboo.
He’s the co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr, with his partner and artist Yulia Mahr in Oxfordshire, UK. Max and Yulia built the studio around an old tractor barn, and have powered it with cutting-edge solar and heat-pump technology. It’s a haven for their family and community of musicians and artists which regularly come through. Set within 31 acres of woodland, Max and Yulia have a huge passion for using the land to farm and provide a sustainable working environment as well as using creativity as an elevating force within society. Operating as a free space for artists to develop their work, the studio also works with local partners to support the local community.
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Photo by William Waterworth
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Max Richter’s music featured in this episode is "On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.
Composer Max Richter is known for his ability to translate profound human emotions into music. Max’s record Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time and his catalogue has surpassed 3 billion streams.
A prolific collaborator, he scored and performed for Kim Jones for the Dior shows, and the new Wayne McGregor and Margaret Atwood ballet MADDADDAM, and arts collective Random International on the Rain Room installation.
Max has collaborated with film directors Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese, and Ari Folman, and scored film & TV including Ad Astra, Black Mirror, Shutter Island, The Leftovers, Arrival and his Emmy-nominated score for Taboo.
He’s the co-founder of Studio Richter Mahr, with his partner and artist Yulia Mahr in Oxfordshire, UK. Max and Yulia built the studio around an old tractor barn, and have powered it with cutting-edge solar and heat-pump technology. It’s a haven for their family and community of musicians and artists which regularly come through. Set within 31 acres of woodland, Max and Yulia have a huge passion for using the land to farm and provide a sustainable working environment as well as using creativity as an elevating force within society. Operating as a free space for artists to develop their work, the studio also works with local partners to support the local community.
“For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.
So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.”
www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com
Photo by William Waterworth
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
00:25 JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet, Author of “The Tradition” & “The New Testament”
00:39 JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver”
01:02 ALICE FULTON - Poet - Recipient of MacArthur “Genius”, NEA & Guggenheim Fellowships
01:31 BERTRAND PICCARD - Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions
02:31 CHRIS BLACKWELL - Founder of Island Records - Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, Roxy Music, Amy Winehouse…Author of “The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond"
03:31 ALICE NOTLEY - Poet & Artist - Academy of American Poets Award Winner
04:08 MIA FUNK - Artist, Writer & Host of The Creative Process reads “In My Dreams"
04:45 MAX STOSSEL - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Speaker - Creator of "Words That Move”
05:04 GERALD FLEMING - Poet, Author of the collections “The Choreographer”, “One”, “Night of Pure Breathing”, among others
05:29 MARGO BERDESHEVSKY - Award-winning Poet - "Kneel Said the Night”,"Before The Drought”, “Between Soul & Stone”
05:56 SAM LEVY - Award-winning Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Frances Ha” “While We’re Young” “Confess, Fletch”
06:31 CHAYSE IRVIN - Award-winning Cinematographer - “Blonde" starring Ana de Armas, “Beyonce: Lemonade”, Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman”
06:57 KARINA MANASHIL - President of Mad Solar - Creative Confidante for Kid Cudi - Executive Producer of Netflix’s “Entergalactic”, A24’s “Pearl”, “X”
07:37 CARL SAFINA - Ecologist - Founding President of Safina Center - NYTimes Bestselling Author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace”, among others
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Flower Duet - Leo Delibes
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Conducted by Philip Milman https://pmmusic.pro/
“Beyoncé has been a musician her whole life. She's been an icon since she was 14 or 15, so young. And when we were doing Lemonade, Kahlil Joseph and I, we talked a lot about how Beyoncé must have maybe skipped this moment in our lives that most people have where we're coming up in our twenties, sort of discovering ourselves. In Lemonade, we were really trying to explore that she's coming to herself now that she has a daughter and that she's married, and she's trying to harness a family life and these themes that she was singing about in the music. We were sort of trying to consider that and how we were going to tell that story, too.
And then also legacy and family, you know, that was the reason why we shot in New Orleans. On Lemonade, we didn't do any treatment or anything. Kahlil and I met in New Orleans, and we started scouting. And through the scouting period we came up with the concept and the ideas, but the scouting's unique because we we're basically connecting with liaisons. So we're connecting with the Beyoncé family member. We're connecting with the guy that runs security for Beyoncé there in New Orleans. And it's like all of a sudden you get to an alien part of a culture that exists as an underbelly that is so hard to access because everyone's basically presenting a stereotype, typically. So then that's sort of what we were trying to get to on that. And that was actually really intuitive for Kahlil's way of working, who I consider an auteur director.
That's the thing I think is really beautiful in film is actually the harmony. It's musical. It's the cinematography, the emotions acting in harmony to one another. And that doesn't always mean that they're like perfectly matched.”
Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for best adapted screenplay. Chayse’s first feature film Medeas won the prestigious Best Cinematography Debut at the Camerimage Film Festival in 2013. Hannah, starring Charlotte Rampling, won a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival. Chase is a member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. His latest films are Netflix’s Blonde starring Ana de Armas and A24’s God's Creatures starring Emily Watson.
www.chayseirvin.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Chase Irvin is a Canadian American cinematographer making waves in the film industry. Chayse has received immense critical acclaim for his vision and style. He has worked on features, shorts, and visual albums, most notably in his collaboration with Director Kahlil Joseph on the film Beyoncé: Lemonade. He lensed Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which received 6 Academy Award nominations, winning for best adapted screenplay. Chayse’s first feature film Medeas won the prestigious Best Cinematography Debut at the Camerimage Film Festival in 2013. Hannah, starring Charlotte Rampling, won a Silver Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival. Chase is a member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. His latest films are Netflix’s Blonde starring Ana de Armas and A24’s God's Creatures starring Emily Watson.
“Beyoncé has been a musician her whole life. She's been an icon since she was 14 or 15, so young. And when we were doing Lemonade, Kahlil Joseph and I, we talked a lot about how Beyoncé must have maybe skipped this moment in our lives that most people have where we're coming up in our twenties, sort of discovering ourselves. In Lemonade, we were really trying to explore that she's coming to herself now that she has a daughter and that she's married, and she's trying to harness a family life and these themes that she was singing about in the music. We were sort of trying to consider that and how we were going to tell that story, too.
And then also legacy and family, you know, that was the reason why we shot in New Orleans. On Lemonade, we didn't do any treatment or anything. Kahlil and I met in New Orleans, and we started scouting. And through the scouting period we came up with the concept and the ideas, but the scouting's unique because we we're basically connecting with liaisons. So we're connecting with the Beyoncé family member. We're connecting with the guy that runs security for Beyoncé there in New Orleans. And it's like all of a sudden you get to an alien part of a culture that exists as an underbelly that is so hard to access because everyone's basically presenting a stereotype, typically. So then that's sort of what we were trying to get to on that. And that was actually really intuitive for Kahlil's way of working, who I consider an auteur director.
That's the thing I think is really beautiful in film is actually the harmony. It's musical. It's the cinematography, the emotions acting in harmony to one another. And that doesn't always mean that they're like perfectly matched.”
www.chayseirvin.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I watched things with my grandparents, and I read books with my grandmother. And my mother was obsessed with Sondheim and Neil Simon, and she took me to standing-room-only Broadway shows for $5. And she held me during A Chorus Line. So the lyrics I was singing when I was four years old were very inappropriate. We did community theater, and my mom had this incredible network of gorgeous gay men who would drink coffee and eat biscotti and listen to show tunes in my tiny one-bedroom apartment.
I think that I was surrounded by storytellers and hams and charming, charismatic people who sang beautifully. I still can hear my mom's friend Bobby Cipolla's voice. I hear him playing the leading player in Pippin in our community theater production of Pippin, and my sisters and I all sang. So we were very theatrical for a bunch of girls who shared a couple of bedrooms in an apartment in Yonkers.
But my mother also just always showed us how New York City was only 10 miles away, and like greatness was attainable. And you can do fabulous, cool, fun things. You didn't have to be rich to do them. And she would walk me around the Columbia campus and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we would go to the nosebleed seats to the ballet. And so I think the storytelling came from a combination of that exposure to the arts and closeness to New York City.
Brian Yorkey is my dear friend. We went to college together. Brian and Tom Kitt wrote Next to Normal, which was the very first Broadway show that dealt with mental health and mental illness. I had a grandmother who was bipolar and institutionalized, and when Brian told me when we were like 21 years old that he was writing a musical about electro-shock therapy, I was like, great idea! 10, 12 years later, and many iterations and workshops later with Tom and Brian, the show went to Broadway and got the Pulitzer and 11 Tony nominations, and it was groundbreaking.”
Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).
Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award.
www.joycoalition.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm2229726
www.imdb.com/title/tt20228406/mediaviewer/rm1596470273/?ref_=tt_ov_i
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).
Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award.
“I watched things with my grandparents, and I read books with my grandmother. And my mother was obsessed with Sondheim and Neil Simon, and she took me to standing-room-only Broadway shows for $5. And she held me during A Chorus Line. So the lyrics I was singing when I was four years old were very inappropriate. We did community theater, and my mom had this incredible network of gorgeous gay men who would drink coffee and eat biscotti and listen to show tunes in my tiny one-bedroom apartment.
I think that I was surrounded by storytellers and hams and charming, charismatic people who sang beautifully. I still can hear my mom's friend Bobby Cipolla's voice. I hear him playing the leading player in Pippin in our community theater production of Pippin, and my sisters and I all sang. So we were very theatrical for a bunch of girls who shared a couple of bedrooms in an apartment in Yonkers.
But my mother also just always showed us how New York City was only 10 miles away, and like greatness was attainable. And you can do fabulous, cool, fun things. You didn't have to be rich to do them. And she would walk me around the Columbia campus and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we would go to the nosebleed seats to the ballet. And so I think the storytelling came from a combination of that exposure to the arts and closeness to New York City.
Brian Yorkey is my dear friend. We went to college together. Brian and Tom Kitt wrote Next to Normal, which was the very first Broadway show that dealt with mental health and mental illness. I had a grandmother who was bipolar and institutionalized, and when Brian told me when we were like 21 years old that he was writing a musical about electro-shock therapy, I was like, great idea! 10, 12 years later, and many iterations and workshops later with Tom and Brian, the show went to Broadway and got the Pulitzer and 11 Tony nominations, and it was groundbreaking.”
www.joycoalition.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm2229726
www.imdb.com/title/tt20228406/mediaviewer/rm1596470273/?ref_=tt_ov_i
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“There's a great David Bowie song called ‘Memory of a Free Festival.’ It's a song about a concert that he organized in Beckenham in August 1969, the same weekend of Woodstock. He wrote this song about that concert. And in August 1969, also, his father died just 10 days or so before the concert. And his funeral took place days before.
So the song that Bowie wrote is, I think, deeply resonant of the death of his father, as well as about the concert itself. And it's an extraordinary song about the end of the 1960s as well. I think there's a sort of critical consensus that it's with this song that Bowie really started coming into his own. And the second part is just kind of chorus. ‘The Sun Machine is coming down, and we are going to have a party.’ And it's kind of demonic. It's an extraordinary refrain, which really, it's hypnotic. It's mesmerizing.
And I found myself trying to think about this idea of a sun machine. What is a sun machine? How might we describe a sun machine? What do we feel about the idea of a sun machine? Something affirmative but strange that is arriving, that's coming down, and that we are going to celebrate. We're going to have a party. So the sun machine in the book is in part an attempt to think about what music does to me, or what music might do to people more generally.
And that's another key way, I suppose, in which I'm interested in the wordless. The power of listening. The power of music. The capacity that music has to transport and to transform, but also the power of music. And this is something that David Bowie realized very early on. I think the power of music and its links with memory. So the relationship between music and mourning, but also the way in which our memories of our lives are bound up with music and how listening to music can be like opening a portal into the past. And into particular ways of thinking about memory.”
Nicholas Royle is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Sussex, England, where he has been based since 1999. He has also taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Tampere, and the University of Stirling; and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Århus, Santiago del Compostela, Turku, Manitoba, and Lille. He is a managing editor of the Oxford Literary Review and director of Quick Fictions. He has published many books, including Telepathy and Literature, E.M. Forster, Jacques Derrida, The Uncanny, Veering: A Theory of Literature, How to Read Shakespeare, and Hélène Cixous: Dreamer, Realist, Analyst, Writing, as well as the novels Quilt and An English Guide to Birdwatching, and Mother: A Memoir. In addition, he is co-author with Andrew Bennett of three books: Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, and An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory Sixth edition, 2023. Royle’s current projects include a detective novel, a collection of essays about new approaches to narrative theory, and a collaborative work with Timothy Morton on Covid-19. His latest book, David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine, is due to be published in November 2023.
www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Literature-Criticism-and-Theory/Bennett-Royle/p/book/9781032158846
https://myriadeditions.com/creator/nicholas-royle/
https://quickfiction.co.uk/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Nicholas Royle is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Sussex, England, where he has been based since 1999. He has also taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Tampere, and the University of Stirling; and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Århus, Santiago del Compostela, Turku, Manitoba, and Lille. He is a managing editor of the Oxford Literary Review and director of Quick Fictions. He has published many books, including Telepathy and Literature, E.M. Forster, Jacques Derrida, The Uncanny, Veering: A Theory of Literature, How to Read Shakespeare, and Hélène Cixous: Dreamer, Realist, Analyst, Writing, as well as the novels Quilt and An English Guide to Birdwatching, and Mother: A Memoir. In addition, he is co-author with Andrew Bennett of three books: Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, and An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory Sixth edition, 2023. Royle’s current projects include a detective novel, a collection of essays about new approaches to narrative theory, and a collaborative work with Timothy Morton on Covid-19. His latest book, David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine, is due to be published in November 2023.
“There's a great David Bowie song called ‘Memory of a Free Festival.’ It's a song about a concert that he organized in Beckenham in August 1969, the same weekend of Woodstock. He wrote this song about that concert. And in August 1969, also, his father died just 10 days or so before the concert. And his funeral took place days before.
So the song that Bowie wrote is, I think, deeply resonant of the death of his father, as well as about the concert itself. And it's an extraordinary song about the end of the 1960s as well. I think there's a sort of critical consensus that it's with this song that Bowie really started coming into his own. And the second part is just kind of chorus. ‘The Sun Machine is coming down, and we are going to have a party.’ And it's kind of demonic. It's an extraordinary refrain, which really, it's hypnotic. It's mesmerizing.
And I found myself trying to think about this idea of a sun machine. What is a sun machine? How might we describe a sun machine? What do we feel about the idea of a sun machine? Something affirmative but strange that is arriving, that's coming down, and that we are going to celebrate. We're going to have a party. So the sun machine in the book is in part an attempt to think about what music does to me, or what music might do to people more generally.
And that's another key way, I suppose, in which I'm interested in the wordless. The power of listening. The power of music. The capacity that music has to transport and to transform, but also the power of music. And this is something that David Bowie realized very early on. I think the power of music and its links with memory. So the relationship between music and mourning, but also the way in which our memories of our lives are bound up with music and how listening to music can be like opening a portal into the past. And into particular ways of thinking about memory.”
www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Literature-Criticism-and-Theory/Bennett-Royle/p/book/9781032158846
https://myriadeditions.com/creator/nicholas-royle/
https://quickfiction.co.uk/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"When I think about the most amazing things that humans can do, I can't help but think about high level jazz musicians. The amount of information that they're processing—harmonic, melodic, rhythmic information all on the spot—and the act of not only taking it all in and figuring out where they fit in it, but also responding to it and creating something with a certain form and meaningfulness to it is, I think, one of the most impressive things that I've known any human being to do.
And that's worth thinking about in terms of human capacities. And it's also, of course, going back to this idea that music is sophisticated as something like what Duke Ellington would create was labeled as 'jungle music' in the twenties. It's a sign of the way race was and continues to be a way in which all sorts of human creativeness and inventiveness and intelligence is under-recognized or dismissed."
Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.
www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/bruceb
www.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240
https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.
"When I think about the most amazing things that humans can do, I can't help but think about high level jazz musicians. The amount of information that they're processing—harmonic, melodic, rhythmic information all on the spot—and the act of not only taking it all in and figuring out where they fit in it, but also responding to it and creating something with a certain form and meaningfulness to it is, I think, one of the most impressive things that I've known any human being to do.
And that's worth thinking about in terms of human capacities. And it's also, of course, going back to this idea that music is sophisticated as something like what Duke Ellington would create was labeled as 'jungle music' in the twenties. It's a sign of the way race was and continues to be a way in which all sorts of human creativeness and inventiveness and intelligence is under-recognized or dismissed."
www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/bruceb
www.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240
https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"Well, I think if it's 'closer to the surface' as you so beautifully put it, it's usually that you see it through their personality a lot more. It's just not just their actions or the products that they create, but they somehow are sort of glowing with it, in a sense. And you usually see that when they essentially embody specific traits that we know to be very important for creativity. And one is a sort of openness to new experiences that is one of the most consistent findings of creativity research that people across the board, whether you're looking at artists or scientists who've reached some level of creative eminence, they're all marked by a specific kind of openness to new experience. Very deeply curious and game for anything, if you want, for what a possibility can tell them, or the level which you can take them to next. So they are open to it, and excited by it.
And the second thing is that they exude a certain kind of confidence. Creative confidence is something that really can't be taught. And you can tell people 'you should be more confident,'' but it's something that they have to...that can be cultivated by the person themselves. But usually what you see is this enormous confidence. Sometimes they'll say it with these sort of destiny kind of words. Like 'I was put here for this reason. I know that I have a purpose in life and that is...' And that stems from a sort of profound confidence about what they have to offer the world and what lies within them. And so I would say those two features are perhaps the things that those sorts of people embody."
Anna Abraham, Ph.D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia (USA). She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination, including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, social and self-referential cognition, and mental state reasoning. She is the author of the 2018 book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020).
www.anna-abraham.com
https://coe.uga.edu/directory/torrance-center
www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/elements/elements-in-creativity-and-imagination
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Anna Abraham, Ph.D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia (USA). She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination, including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, social and self-referential cognition, and mental state reasoning. She is the author of the 2018 book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020).
"Well, I think if it's 'closer to the surface' as you so beautifully put it, it's usually that you see it through their personality a lot more. It's just not just their actions or the products that they create, but they somehow are sort of glowing with it, in a sense. And you usually see that when they essentially embody specific traits that we know to be very important for creativity. And one is a sort of openness to new experiences that is one of the most consistent findings of creativity research that people across the board, whether you're looking at artists or scientists who've reached some level of creative eminence, they're all marked by a specific kind of openness to new experience. Very deeply curious and game for anything, if you want, for what a possibility can tell them, or the level which you can take them to next. So they are open to it, and excited by it.
And the second thing is that they exude a certain kind of confidence. Creative confidence is something that really can't be taught. And you can tell people 'you should be more confident,'' but it's something that they have to...that can be cultivated by the person themselves. But usually what you see is this enormous confidence. Sometimes they'll say it with these sort of destiny kind of words. Like 'I was put here for this reason. I know that I have a purpose in life and that is...' And that stems from a sort of profound confidence about what they have to offer the world and what lies within them. And so I would say those two features are perhaps the things that those sorts of people embody."
www.anna-abraham.com
https://coe.uga.edu/directory/torrance-center
www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/elements/elements-in-creativity-and-imagination
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
“I think you need to be aware and see people be open to what can happen and get a feel, get an instinct. I think I've been blessed with instinct. I mean, I did not do well at school. I passed zero exams. I'm unemployable, but I've been blessed with having instincts. The instinct of U2 was seeing their determination, the fact that the music itself initially wasn't close to what most of my music was because most of my music was bass and drum. And most of their music was vocal, so it wasn't a certain kind of music that I like all the time. I like music from all different kinds of levels…I absolutely felt for Bob Marley to really make it worldwide as it were, he needed to change something a little bit. I didn't want him to change what he was doing, not his lyrics and everything else like that. It was more the instrumentation of it. I felt for Bob to be able to reach a wider audience that he needed to move away a little bit from that and focus more and more on his lyrics.
When I finally met Cat Stevens, and we just sort of sat down and then when he played the song ‘Father and Son,’ then suddenly the lyrics of the song and what it meant and everything, I suddenly felt this guy is fantastic. You know, the I person I'd seen on television had nothing to do with this person sitting in front of me. And so that's really when I said to him, I opened up to him and I said, ‘Honestly, I wasn't really interested to meet, but this song that you've just sung for me is such an incredible song.’ I felt that I could definitely connect with him. ‘Where Do the Children Play', that was the one that, just the fact that he was somebody who was thinking like that.
There was one time when Mick Jagger asked me to come and meet with him because I think he'd heard the records that were coming up from me, mainly Jamaican records and things, and that's why he wanted me to come and meet with him. He was leaving Decca, and wanted to go to another level. And I said, ‘It makes absolutely no sense for you to come to my label because you already are huge.’
Grace Jones, she's a stunning-looking lady. They put on the record and there was a drum machine, and all it played was a drum machine. There was no vocal, there were no instruments, nothing for about two and a half to three minutes before I heard a voice. I thought, Oh my gosh, this is a disaster. This is going to end in tears. And then suddenly I heard the voice, and the voice sounded great.”
Chris Blackwell, an inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is widely considered responsible for turning the world on to reggae music. As the founder of Island Records, he helped forge the careers of Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, U2, Roxy Music, among many other high-profile acts, and produced records including Marley’s Catch a Fire and Uprising. Blackwell currently runs Island Outpost, a group of elite resorts in Jamaica, which includes GoldenEye—the former home of author Ian Fleming. He received the A&R Icon Award in recognition of his lasting influence on the music business. He is author, with Paul Morley, of The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond.
www.islandoutpost.com
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Islander/Chris-Blackwell/9781982172701
www.islandrecords.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Chris Blackwell, an inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is widely considered responsible for turning the world on to reggae music. As the founder of Island Records, he helped forge the careers of Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, U2, Roxy Music, among many other high-profile acts, and produced records including Marley’s Catch a Fire and Uprising. Blackwell currently runs Island Outpost, a group of elite resorts in Jamaica, which includes GoldenEye—the former home of author Ian Fleming. He received the A&R Icon Award in recognition of his lasting influence on the music business. He is author, with Paul Morley, of The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond.
“I think you need to be aware and see people be open to what can happen and get a feel, get an instinct. I think I've been blessed with instinct. I mean, I did not do well at school. I passed zero exams. I'm unemployable, but I've been blessed with having instincts. The instinct of U2 was seeing their determination, the fact that the music itself initially wasn't close to what most of my music was because most of my music was bass and drum. And most of their music was vocal, so it wasn't a certain kind of music that I like all the time. I like music from all different kinds of levels…I absolutely felt for Bob Marley to really make it worldwide as it were, he needed to change something a little bit. I didn't want him to change what he was doing, not his lyrics and everything else like that. It was more the instrumentation of it. I felt for Bob to be able to reach a wider audience that he needed to move away a little bit from that and focus more and more on his lyrics.
When I finally met Cat Stevens, and we just sort of sat down and then when he played the song ‘Father and Son,’ then suddenly the lyrics of the song and what it meant and everything, I suddenly felt this guy is fantastic. You know, the I person I'd seen on television had nothing to do with this person sitting in front of me. And so that's really when I said to him, I opened up to him and I said, ‘Honestly, I wasn't really interested to meet, but this song that you've just sung for me is such an incredible song.’ I felt that I could definitely connect with him. ‘Where Do the Children Play', that was the one that, just the fact that he was somebody who was thinking like that.
There was one time when Mick Jagger asked me to come and meet with him because I think he'd heard the records that were coming up from me, mainly Jamaican records and things, and that's why he wanted me to come and meet with him. He was leaving Decca, and wanted to go to another level. And I said, ‘It makes absolutely no sense for you to come to my label because you already are huge.’
Grace Jones, she's a stunning-looking lady. They put on the record and there was a drum machine, and all it played was a drum machine. There was no vocal, there were no instruments, nothing for about two and a half to three minutes before I heard a voice. I thought, Oh my gosh, this is a disaster. This is going to end in tears. And then suddenly I heard the voice, and the voice sounded great.”
www.islandoutpost.com
www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Islander/Chris-Blackwell/9781982172701
www.islandrecords.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Florian Hoffmeister is a prolific director of photography. Recent works by Hoffmeister include his lensing on the Apple TV+ series Pachinko, the critically-acclaimed political thriller Official Secrets starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Smith, and TÁR starring Cate Blanchett. Hoffmeister is well-known for his collaboration with Terence Davies on feature films The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russel-Beale, and A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle. His work on Brian Kirk’s television phenomenon Great Expectations earned him further distinction as well as numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy, a BAFTA, and an ASC Award.
"I enjoy dancing, but I would not call myself a dancer by any means compared to the people I'm working with here who are so wonderful at it. I worked with a lot of in this piece, especially immersive theater actors and dancers. So there's a show called Sleep No More in New York, which is like an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's immersive theater. You walk through the room and all these different actors have these interactions with the people as they're moving through this entire building. And I love immersive theater so much, and I was really glad to work with these very talented, immersive theater actors as I just think they're such good captures of humanity, and they tend to be very good dancers as well.
There's a lot of dance in those shows. Then Sleep No More and Then She Fell are both just truly spectacular immersive theater programs. And Taylor Myers, Isabel Umali, Jonothon Lyons, and Rachel Berman, they were all part of those shows, and they worked with me on the Aliens piece and on Subway Love."
Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.
www.wordsthatmove.com/
www.instagram.com/maxstossel/
www.humanetech.com
https://vimeo.com/690354718/54614a2318
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.
"I enjoy dancing, but I would not call myself a dancer by any means compared to the people I'm working with here who are so wonderful at it. I worked with a lot of in this piece, especially immersive theater actors and dancers. So there's a show called Sleep No More in New York, which is like an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's immersive theater. You walk through the room and all these different actors have these interactions with the people as they're moving through this entire building. And I love immersive theater so much, and I was really glad to work with these very talented, immersive theater actors as I just think they're such good captures of humanity, and they tend to be very good dancers as well.
There's a lot of dance in those shows. Then Sleep No More and Then She Fell are both just truly spectacular immersive theater programs. And Taylor Myers, Isabel Umali, Jonothon Lyons, and Rachel Berman, they were all part of those shows, and they worked with me on the Aliens piece and on Subway Love."
www.wordsthatmove.com/
www.instagram.com/maxstossel/
www.humanetech.com
https://vimeo.com/690354718/54614a2318
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
"For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue. When I do a video dance for a Japanese audience or a sci-fi comedy for a French audience then I do try to think about if I want to shock the audience at a certain moment. I think that the same things that would shock a French person would not necessarily shock an Israeli or a Japanese person, you know? I think that what's funny is that for a lot of people, the fact that my TV show The Middleman (L'Agent Immobilier) is very extreme, but in Israel when they watched it, they never thought it was extreme. They said it was very funny, but because the Israeli reality is much more extreme, so the idea of people shouting at each other or breaking a wall or punching each other or doing weird stuff, the French said, 'Oh, it's over the top.' In Israel, they felt that it was just like the way things are. So it's very, very interesting."
"Some people, it doesn't matter who they speak to, they will speak in the same way they would speak to a five-year-old or to an intellectual or to somebody who doesn't speak the language very well. They would speak the same way and they don't care because this is what they have to say, but I think that the natural thing in the dialogue is really to look into the eyes of the person you speak to and see when he understands or when she doesn't understand or when she's moved or when he's angry. And basically out of that, kind of create your own language. And I think the same way that people are excited about learning and speaking different languages - because I think each language has different merits and different aspects."
Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collections Fly Already, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and his memoir The Seven Good Years. Etgar’s work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,The New York Times, and This American Life.
A frequent collaborator with visual and performing artists, an exhibition inspired by his mother called Inside Out is currently showing at the Jewish Museum in Berlin until February 5th, 2023.
www.etgarkeret.com
The Middleman www.imdb.com/title/tt11523800
www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-inside-out-etgar-keret
https://etgarkeret.substack.com
Jellyfish http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807721
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photos:
Outside- a video dance by Etgar Keret and Inbal Pinto
The Inconsistent Pedaler, Keret in collaboration with Pilobolus Dance Company, Photo by Grant Halverson
Author, Screenwriter, and Director Etgar Keret is a recipient of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, the Charles Bronfman Prize, and the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Jellyfish, which he directed with his wife Shira Geffen. Most recently, they created the TV mini series The Middleman (L’Agent Immobilier) starring Mathieu Amalric. His books include the short story collections Fly Already, Suddenly a Knock on the Door, and his memoir The Seven Good Years. Etgar’s work has been translated into forty-five languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,The New York Times, and This American Life.
A frequent collaborator with visual and performing artists, an exhibition inspired by his mother called Inside Out is currently showing at the Jewish Museum in Berlin until February 5th, 2023.
"For me, there is something about art, it's not a monologue. When I do a video dance for a Japanese audience or a sci-fi comedy for a French audience then I do try to think about if I want to shock the audience at a certain moment. I think that the same things that would shock a French person would not necessarily shock an Israeli or a Japanese person, you know? I think that what's funny is that for a lot of people, the fact that my TV show The Middleman (L'Agent Immobilier) is very extreme, but in Israel when they watched it, they never thought it was extreme. They said it was very funny, but because the Israeli reality is much more extreme, so the idea of people shouting at each other or breaking a wall or punching each other or doing weird stuff, the French said, 'Oh, it's over the top.' In Israel, they felt that it was just like the way things are. So it's very, very interesting."
"Some people, it doesn't matter who they speak to, they will speak in the same way they would speak to a five-year-old or to an intellectual or to somebody who doesn't speak the language very well. They would speak the same way and they don't care because this is what they have to say, but I think that the natural thing in the dialogue is really to look into the eyes of the person you speak to and see when he understands or when she doesn't understand or when she's moved or when he's angry. And basically out of that, kind of create your own language. And I think the same way that people are excited about learning and speaking different languages - because I think each language has different merits and different aspects."
www.etgarkeret.com
The Middleman www.imdb.com/title/tt11523800
www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-inside-out-etgar-keret
https://etgarkeret.substack.com
Jellyfish http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807721
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Photo credit: Lielle Sand
"I've always thought that filmmaking rhymes with classical music, the process of making classical music that I observed as a child. When I discovered filmmaking, I thought these things, they're very similar. They rhyme with each other. I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but what operating a camera does resemble the physicality of conducting an orchestra. I was in a certain proximity to my father's orchestra playing on Stephen Spielberg's and Clint Eastwood's soundtracks, and I grew up playing the cello.
My favorite conductor that I ever got to see was Seiji Ozawa, who was the musical director of the Boston Symphony and the Tokyo Symphony. But he was my father's orchestra was the Boston Symphony, and he was musical director for 35 years or something like that. And this was like, he was like a dancer, really beautiful, elegant movements. And I watched him rehearse and perform for so many hours when I was a child. And I think subconsciously as a camera operator, that it informed my sensibility, and maybe if I'm able to pull off like an elegant, smooth camera move, like on Noah Baumbach's Mistress America movie we did a lot of big flourishy movements all in one shot. And I think Seiji was a huge influence on me in terms of movement. And even if, Confess, Fletch, I didn't operate the camera, but I had an amazing operator named Julian Delacruz. And just being able to communicate like what the movement should be and just speak that language, I think getting to watch Seiji as a kid really helped that for me.”
Sam Levy studied film in Paris with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer and began his career as an apprentice to legendary cinematographer Harris Savides. Sam first gained recognition as a cinematographer when he photographed Wendy and Lucy for director Kelly Reichardt - voted “One of the Best 25 Films of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. He went on to shoot Frances Ha, Mistress America and While We’re Young for director Noah Baumbach, Changers and Frank Ocean's Blonded for Spike Jonze, Sermon on The Mount for Jerrod Carmichael, Maggie’s Plan for Rebecca Miller and Green Porno for Isabella Rossellini. Sam also photographed Lady Bird for writer/director Greta Gerwig - nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and winner of The Golden Globe for Best Picture. Other new films include Mayday, which he also produced, Confess, Fletch, and She Came to Me.
https://samlevydp.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm1240085/
www.instagram.com/samlevydp/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
Sam Levy studied film in Paris with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer and began his career as an apprentice to legendary cinematographer Harris Savides. Sam first gained recognition as a cinematographer when he photographed Wendy and Lucy for director Kelly Reichardt - voted “One of the Best 25 Films of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. He went on to shoot Frances Ha, Mistress America and While We’re Young for director Noah Baumbach, Changers and Frank Ocean's Blonded for Spike Jonze, Sermon on The Mount for Jerrod Carmichael, Maggie’s Plan for Rebecca Miller and Green Porno for Isabella Rossellini. Sam also photographed Lady Bird for writer/director Greta Gerwig - nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and winner of The Golden Globe for Best Picture. Other new films include Mayday, which he also produced, Confess, Fletch, and She Came to Me.
"I've always thought that filmmaking rhymes with classical music, the process of making classical music that I observed as a child. When I discovered filmmaking, I thought these things, they're very similar. They rhyme with each other. I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but what operating a camera does resemble the physicality of conducting an orchestra. I was in a certain proximity to my father's orchestra playing on Stephen Spielberg's and Clint Eastwood's soundtracks, and I grew up playing the cello.
My favorite conductor that I ever got to see was Seiji Ozawa, who was the musical director of the Boston Symphony and the Tokyo Symphony. But he was my father's orchestra was the Boston Symphony, and he was musical director for 35 years or something like that. And this was like, he was like a dancer, really beautiful, elegant movements. And I watched him rehearse and perform for so many hours when I was a child. And I think subconsciously as a camera operator, that it informed my sensibility, and maybe if I'm able to pull off like an elegant, smooth camera move, like on Noah Baumbach's Mistress America movie we did a lot of big flourishy movements all in one shot. And I think Seiji was a huge influence on me in terms of movement. And even if, Confess, Fletch, I didn't operate the camera, but I had an amazing operator named Julian Delacruz. And just being able to communicate like what the movement should be and just speak that language, I think getting to watch Seiji as a kid really helped that for me.”
https://samlevydp.com
www.imdb.com/name/nm1240085/
www.instagram.com/samlevydp/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"I met the founders Alan and Joshua who started NeueHouse in 2013. They are lovely gentlemen, and they called me aside and said, 'We'd love to get you involved in our coworking space that we are doing.’ And we really curated an interesting community of people. And have had a lot of interesting people do talks, from Paul Smith to Salman Rushdie to Wu-Tang Clan, Tom Sachs, and Ariana Huffington. And I've hosted Prince William and Princess Kate. We've had some incredible people here and I love talking to people, and I love hosting these conversations. I did one last night with my dear friend Carlos Alomar, who was the musical director and long-time collaborator with David Bowie for 30 years. And I just love people's stories. So for me, it's inspirational. The one thing I like to do is to inspire people -not me - but if I can show them someone's life, it's a way for people to learn."
Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the creative and branding agency, My Young Auntie. Since she founded the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with and managed an array of notable clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food and lifestyle sectors, including Hermès, Vivienne Westwood, Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum, Selfridges, Rizzoli Books, Island Records, David Lee Roth, among others. Oberon is known as the Queen of Kale for reviving an interest in the superfood across the world. She’s a Founding Member of NeueHouse where she moderates talks.
https://myyoungauntie.com
www.instagram.com/myyoungauntiepr
www.neuehouse.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
Photo: Oberon hosting friends Duran Duran at NeueHouse for their press day in 2021
Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the creative and branding agency, My Young Auntie. Since she founded the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with and managed an array of notable clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food and lifestyle sectors, including Hermès, Vivienne Westwood, Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum, Selfridges, Rizzoli Books, Island Records, David Lee Roth, among others. Oberon is known as the Queen of Kale for reviving an interest in the superfood across the world. She’s a Founding Member of NeueHouse where she moderates talks.
"I met the founders Alan and Joshua who started NeueHouse in 2013. They are lovely gentlemen, and they called me aside and said, 'We'd love to get you involved in our coworking space that we are doing.’ And we really curated an interesting community of people. And have had a lot of interesting people do talks, from Paul Smith to Salman Rushdie to Wu-Tang Clan, Tom Sachs, and Ariana Huffington. And I've hosted Prince William and Princess Kate. We've had some incredible people here and I love talking to people, and I love hosting these conversations. I did one last night with my dear friend Carlos Alomar, who was the musical director and long-time collaborator with David Bowie for 30 years. And I just love people's stories. So for me, it's inspirational. The one thing I like to do is to inspire people -not me - but if I can show them someone's life, it's a way for people to learn."
https://myyoungauntie.com
www.instagram.com/myyoungauntiepr
www.neuehouse.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"Einstein on the Beach, it's a masterpiece. America, in 1976, was to be celebrating its 200th year of existence, and Michel Guy, the French Minister of Culture, came to New York to offer a commission to Philip Glass and Robert Wilson to write an opera. This was the gift that France would give for America's two-hundredth anniversary. That was the first time I met Robert Wilson."
"My son had died, and I had taken to two years to recover. So I went to New York. I had dinner with Laurie Anderson, and as I was getting up to leave, she said, 'What are you doing in New York?' I said, "I'm looking for work' She said, 'What are you doing next week?' I said, 'Well, I'm supposed to be in Atlanta, Georgia doing a music film with David Byrne and Talking Heads. Well, what do you have?' She said, 'I'm doing a piece next week at Brooklyn Academy of Music with Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg, Set and Reset. Why don't you come? Bring your sax, we'll work it out then.' Two weeks after that concert, Laurie's manager called and said, 'Do you want to go on a 20-city tour of America with Laurie? Home of the Brave?' Of course, we did that. That was the beginning of the reconstruction of my career in New York through Laurie Anderson."
For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Keith Sonnier, Philip Glass, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matt Clarke, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, Lawrence Weiner, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, and Robert Wilson.
Landry remains one of the few artists of his generation who made important waves within numerous creative idioms. Having been trained from a young age on saxophone, not only is he a remarkably respected solo performer and bandleader, but he was an early and long-standing member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, playing on seminal records like Music With Changing Parts, Music in Similar Motion / Music in Fifths, Music in Twelve Parts, North Star, and Einstein on the Beach, and played with Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and jazz giants like Johnny Hammond, Gene Ammons, and Les McCann. He was also one of the most important photographic documenters of the New York Scene, until he left the city for his native Louisiana, following 9/11.
http://www.dickielandry.com
https://unseenworlds.com/collections/dickie-landry
Music on this episode courtesy of Dickie Landry:
E-mu & Alto Saxophone composed by D.L. for Robert Wilson's production of "1433 The Grand Voyage" based on the story of Zheng He. Premier National Theater Taipei, Taiwan 2009
Philip Glass’"Einstein on the Beach”. Original recording on Tomato Records 1977. D.L. on flute
“Home of the Brave” on the Late Show with Laurie Anderson
Image: "Solo Concerts" by Dickie Landry and Philip Glass held on April 13th and 14th, 1973 at 112 Workshop. Photos by Gerard Murrell, Robert Mapplethorpe
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Keith Sonnier, Philip Glass, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matt Clarke, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, Lawrence Weiner, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, and Robert Wilson.
Landry remains one of the few artists of his generation who made important waves within numerous creative idioms. Having been trained from a young age on saxophone, not only is he a remarkably respected solo performer and bandleader, but he was an early and long-standing member of Philip Glass’ ensemble, playing on seminal records like Music With Changing Parts, Music in Similar Motion / Music in Fifths, Music in Twelve Parts, North Star, and Einstein on the Beach, and played with Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and jazz giants like Johnny Hammond, Gene Ammons, and Les McCann. He was also one of the most important photographic documenters of the New York Scene, until he left the city for his native Louisiana, following 9/11.
"Einstein on the Beach, it's a masterpiece. America, in 1976, was to be celebrating its 200th year of existence, and Michel Guy, the French Minister of Culture, came to New York to offer a commission to Philip Glass and Robert Wilson to write an opera. This was the gift that France would give for America's two-hundredth anniversary. That was the first time I met Robert Wilson."
"My son had died, and I had taken to two years to recover. So I went to New York. I had dinner with Laurie Anderson, and as I was getting up to leave, she said, 'What are you doing in New York?' I said, "I'm looking for work' She said, 'What are you doing next week?' I said, 'Well, I'm supposed to be in Atlanta, Georgia doing a music film with David Byrne and Talking Heads. Well, what do you have?' She said, 'I'm doing a piece next week at Brooklyn Academy of Music with Trisha Brown and Robert Rauschenberg, Set and Reset. Why don't you come? Bring your sax, we'll work it out then.' Two weeks after that concert, Laurie's manager called and said, 'Do you want to go on a 20-city tour of America with Laurie? Home of the Brave?' Of course, we did that. That was the beginning of the reconstruction of my career in New York through Laurie Anderson."
http://www.dickielandry.com
https://unseenworlds.com/collections/dickie-landry
Music on this episode courtesy of Dickie Landry:
E-mu & Alto Saxophone composed by D.L. for Robert Wilson's production of "1433 The Grand Voyage" based on the story of Zheng He. Premier National Theater Taipei, Taiwan 2009
“Gloria” for Robert Wilson’s “Oedipus Rex”
Philip Glass’"Einstein on the Beach”. Original recording on Tomato Records 1977. D.L. on flute
"Are Years What" Phillip Glass. Composed for D.L. playing 3 soprano saxophones. On his lp "North Star”,1977
Swing Kings 1965, D.L. on flute
“Home of the Brave” on the Late Show with Laurie Anderson
"Taideco" Zydeco, for Wilson's production of "1433" Cedric Watson, Jermain Prejean, D.L.
“Ghosties” from “Dickie Landry Solo”
"It Keeps Rainin'", Robert Plant with Lil' Band O' Gold
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"It's because I consider life a dance, really. A dance. Some dancers are clunky, and some dancers are graceful, but it's a dance, a compromise, a puzzle, kind of, and it just has a lot of elements that I can draw comparisons with life. You know, the dance of the planets. There are so many dances all the time, all around us. And do you know what they're all saying? Yes, no, maybe...but that's what we're in. And we're trying to figure out why are we here? Why do I have to do this dancing? And what's animating me? I just like the way there are a lot of analogies between life and dance, between the way people interact. You know, people who are not dancers. I just like that. Lines can be drawn between regular life and dancing. But also the advantage that this art has over dance is it freezes the moment. A moment you miss because time goes by and the dancer has got to keep moving, but you miss something unless somebody freezes it."
Gloria Pacis is a painter dividing her time between New York City and Hoboken, where she has her studio. She received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1976. She credits her years working as a set designer and scene artist for the dramatic, character-based elements of her paintings. She has participated in exhibitions at public institutions and universities, including Wing Luke Museum, Mana Contemporary, University of Washington, Henry Art Gallery, Monroe Arts Centre, Seattle University, Act Theatreand Seattle Center Art Museum, where her work was chosen to showcase International Women’s Day. She has designed sets for many leading theatres, including notable productions of A Christmas Carol, Hamlet, The Doctors Dilemma, Hedda Gabler, and Salome.
IG @gloriapacis
www.artofgloriapacis.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
Gloria Pacis is a painter dividing her time between New York City and Hoboken, where she has her studio. She received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1976. She credits her years working as a set designer and scene artist for the dramatic, character-based elements of her paintings. She has participated in exhibitions at public institutions and universities, including Wing Luke Museum, Mana Contemporary, University of Washington, Henry Art Gallery, Monroe Arts Centre, Seattle University, Act Theatreand Seattle Center Art Museum, where her work was chosen to showcase International Women’s Day. She has designed sets for many leading theatres, including notable productions of A Christmas Carol, Hamlet, The Doctors Dilemma, Hedda Gabler, and Salome.
"It's because I consider life a dance, really. A dance. Some dancers are clunky, and some dancers are graceful, but it's a dance, a compromise, a puzzle, kind of, and it just has a lot of elements that I can draw comparisons with life. You know, the dance of the planets. There are so many dances all the time, all around us. And do you know what they're all saying? Yes, no, maybe...but that's what we're in. And we're trying to figure out why are we here? Why do I have to do this dancing? And what's animating me? I just like the way there are a lot of analogies between life and dance, between the way people interact. You know, people who are not dancers. I just like that. Lines can be drawn between regular life and dancing. But also the advantage that this art has over dance is it freezes the moment. A moment you miss because time goes by and the dancer has got to keep moving, but you miss something unless somebody freezes it."
IG @gloriapacis
www.artofgloriapacis.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Instagram @creativeprocesspodcast
"Just open mind, open heart, that's it. I think the music speaks for itself, right? So when you start to trauma shape it, and this is how I want you to listen... And I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. Of course, but what that means is that means that if somebody's been listening to Territorial. Like this album is freaking amazing! And you know how when you listen to something amazing, then you start looking into the artist and stuff because now you want to know where's this person from? Or how did this person write the songs? But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario."
Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists. As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikely, but unstoppable duo. Young is a Jewish New Yorker who has not experienced incarceration. Shirelle is a queer, Black woman from Philadelphia who has been heavily impacted by police violence and incarceration. The two formed an inseparable bond. As friends, musical collaborators and now Co-Executive Directors of Die Jim Crow Records, their leadership and commitment to values of representation, fairness, passion for the cause, and a love for art, are at the core of DJC.
www.diejimcrow.com
http://www.blshirelle.com
http://www.furyyoung.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Fury Young and BL Shirelle are the powerhouse team behind Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label in United States history for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. DJC Records’ mission is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison in America by amplifying the voices of our artists.
As a pair, Fury Young and BL Shirelle form a perhaps unlikely, but unstoppable duo. Young is a Jewish New Yorker who has not experienced incarceration. Shirelle is a queer, Black woman from Philadelphia who has been heavily impacted by police violence and incarceration. The two formed an inseparable bond. As friends, musical collaborators and now Co-Executive Directors of Die Jim Crow Records, their leadership and commitment to values of representation, fairness, passion for the cause, and a love for art, are at the core of DJC.
"Just open mind, open heart, that's it. I think the music speaks for itself, right? So when you start to trauma shape it, and this is how I want you to listen... And I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. Of course, but what that means is that means that if somebody's been listening to Territorial. Like this album is freaking amazing! And you know how when you listen to something amazing, then you start looking into the artist and stuff because now you want to know where's this person from? Or how did this person write the songs? But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario."
www.diejimcrow.com
http://www.blshirelle.com
http://www.furyyoung.com
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"I listened to something recently by Philip Glass. It was fantastic kind of symphonic stuff with dance and video and kind of theater in it, as well. And it's throwing all of this at you. And the hope, I think, of the artist is they're doing this kind of multisensory projection to try to grow in your mind the idea that Philip Glass had in his mind when he was writing this music. And just talking it through, if Philip Glass just said I was thinking this and this, then it's dissected and it's gone. The magic of it was its holistic nature. Somehow you've got to recreate this holistic nature in someone else's mind.
And I think that's really what art is all about is communicating these big, complex objects, which are ideas inside our head, but in a non-dissected way in which the object isn't completely dissected, or it's dissected in such a way it can be reassembled in somebody else's mind. So you get a full experience of what the artist had or as close as he or she can make it. So I think that to me is what art does. It's a way of communicating these wonderful ideas and feelings that we have inside our heads. And they're trapped there, and art allows you - by playing music or painting, or writing poetry... - it allows you to communicate this in this holistic kind of way."
Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other books are Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse, and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on a wide range of subjects and lectures around the world. His present post is Associate Dean (International) and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.
www.surrey.ac.uk/people/johnjoe-mcfadden
https://johnjoemcfadden.co.uk
www.basicbooks.com/titles/johnjoe-mcfadden/life-is-simple/9781549112119
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other books are Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse, and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (co-authored with Jim Al-Khalili). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on a wide range of subjects and lectures around the world. His present post is Associate Dean (International) and Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey.
"I listened to something recently by Philip Glass. It was fantastic kind of symphonic stuff with dance and video and kind of theater in it, as well. And it's throwing all of this at you. And the hope, I think, of the artist is they're doing this kind of multisensory projection to try to grow in your mind the idea that Philip Glass had in his mind when he was writing this music. And just talking it through, if Philip Glass just said I was thinking this and this, then it's dissected and it's gone. The magic of it was its holistic nature. Somehow you've got to recreate this holistic nature in someone else's mind.
And I think that's really what art is all about is communicating these big, complex objects, which are ideas inside our head, but in a non-dissected way in which the object isn't completely dissected, or it's dissected in such a way it can be reassembled in somebody else's mind. So you get a full experience of what the artist had or as close as he or she can make it. So I think that to me is what art does. It's a way of communicating these wonderful ideas and feelings that we have inside our heads. And they're trapped there, and art allows you - by playing music or painting, or writing poetry... - it allows you to communicate this in this holistic kind of way."
www.surrey.ac.uk/people/johnjoe-mcfadden
https://johnjoemcfadden.co.uk
www.basicbooks.com/titles/johnjoe-mcfadden/life-is-simple/9781549112119
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"Scott [aka Kid Cudi] sees music in color, so what the visuals of music meant to him. So he wanted to create a new experience and that alongside Kenya Barris and ideating what it could be led to Entergalactic, which essentially Scott wrote an original album, which is his 10th Studio album, and pieced those songs in before the creation of this love story, which runs 90 minutes from start to finish, and essentially the two parts exist simultaneously. So you've got the album on its own, and then you've got the event, which allows you to hear beats of each piece of music in all of these key beats of Jabari (Scott's character) and Meadow’s (Jessica Williams' character) love story. Scott had tweeted out that Entergalactic was the greatest piece he's ever created. This is the thing he's most proud of. Scott feels that this was an opportunity to create that new moment for his audience where they're going to get to experience something that they'd never had the opportunity to before because it feels so new."
"Scott lives in between the notes. So the things that you would expect, he lives right in the center, which is why his music is so interesting. The nuance and creativity of his choices is so indicative of the way that he hears sound."
Karina Manashil is the President of Mad Solar Productions. She began her career in the mailroom at WME (William Morris Endeavor) where she became a talent agent. She represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas. In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed by BRON Studios. Manashil then went on to Executive Produce SXSW fan-favorite X and its sequel, Pearl, directed by Ti West. Manashil is an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated series Entergalactic directed by Fletcher Moules. Entergalactic was created by Kid Cudi and features voiceover from Jessica Williams and Timothée Chalamet. It was released alongside its album of the same name from Kid Cudi on September 30th. Manashil is a native of Los Angeles and graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production.
Manashil www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
www.kidcudi.com
Mad Solar https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0831164
Entergalactic www.netflix.com/title/81053303
Pearl www.imdb.com/title/tt18925334/
X www.imdb.com/title/tt13560574/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Karina Manashil is the President of Mad Solar Productions. She began her career in the mailroom at WME (William Morris Endeavor) where she became a talent agent. She represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas.
In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed by BRON Studios. Manashil then went on to Executive Produce SXSW fan-favorite X and its sequel, Pearl, directed by Ti West. Manashil is an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated series Entergalactic directed by Fletcher Moules. Entergalactic was created by Kid Cudi and features voiceover from Jessica Williams and Timothée Chalamet. It was released alongside its album of the same name from Kid Cudi on September 30th.
Manashil is a native of Los Angeles and graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production.
"Scott [aka Kid Cudi] sees music in color, so what the visuals of music meant to him. So he wanted to create a new experience and that alongside Kenya Barris and ideating what it could be led to Entergalactic, which essentially Scott wrote an original album, which is his 10th Studio album, and pieced those songs in before the creation of this love story, which runs 90 minutes from start to finish, and essentially the two parts exist simultaneously. So you've got the album on its own, and then you've got the event, which allows you to hear beats of each piece of music in all of these key beats of Jabari (Scott's character) and Meadow’s (Jessica Williams' character) love story. Scott had tweeted out that Entergalactic was the greatest piece he's ever created. This is the thing he's most proud of. Scott feels that this was an opportunity to create that new moment for his audience where they're going to get to experience something that they'd never had the opportunity to before because it feels so new."
"Scott lives in between the notes. So the things that you would expect, he lives right in the center, which is why his music is so interesting. The nuance and creativity of his choices is so indicative of the way that he hears sound."
Manashil www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
www.kidcudi.com
Mad Solar https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0831164
Entergalactic www.netflix.com/title/81053303
Pearl www.imdb.com/title/tt18925334/
X www.imdb.com/title/tt13560574/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"So I could be in his studio, and he could be carrying on a conversation, and there'd be music, and he wouldn't stop painting, which was really exciting. I mean, there's all this stuff going on, and then you're watching it, this masterpiece. And I played with Bob Marley. I played in his band, and I was living in his house for three years in Jamaica before he became this big thing. And we were struggling to find an audience, but I was a harmonica player, and I would sit with him while he was on acoustic guitar. And he'd be making up these songs. It just seemed like it was coming from some otherworldly place, this incredible inspiration. It was like, I would just be shaky. I'd be like playing harmonica, and I didn't know whether I should stop because it was just so brilliant or I better keep going not to lose, not to interrupt his feeling. And watching Jean-Michel paint. It was like that. It was like Bob Marley making a song. I have to tell you, I felt like I was witnessing these cultural events, and I just happened to be there. I was just like, Wow, playing harmonica. I'm not the best harmonica player, but I'm okay. But I happened to be there."
Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens.
“For me, watching him [Jean-Michel] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics,” Jaffe says. “With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place.”
Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music. It was the early 1980s in New York. Jaffe had been a member of Bob Marley’s band, producer on Peter Tosh’s first solo album. and collaborated with art world figures Helio Oiticica, Gordon Matta Clark, and Vito Acconci. Jaffe is the author of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads.
www.leejaffe.com
www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847871841/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens.
“For me, watching him [Jean-Michel] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics,” Jaffe says. “With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place.”
Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music. It was the early 1980s in New York. Jaffe had been a member of Bob Marley’s band, producer on Peter Tosh’s first solo album. and collaborated with art world figures Helio Oiticica, Gordon Matta Clark, and Vito Acconci. Jaffe is the author of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads.
"So I could be in his studio, and he could be carrying on a conversation, and there'd be music, and he wouldn't stop painting, which was really exciting. I mean, there's all this stuff going on, and then you're watching it, this masterpiece. And I played with Bob Marley. I played in his band, and I was living in his house for three years in Jamaica before he became this big thing. And we were struggling to find an audience, but I was a harmonica player, and I would sit with him while he was on acoustic guitar. And he'd be making up these songs. It just seemed like it was coming from some otherworldly place, this incredible inspiration. It was like, I would just be shaky. I'd be like playing harmonica, and I didn't know whether I should stop because it was just so brilliant or I better keep going not to lose, not to interrupt his feeling. And watching Jean-Michel paint. It was like that. It was like Bob Marley making a song. I have to tell you, I felt like I was witnessing these cultural events, and I just happened to be there. I was just like, Wow, playing harmonica. I'm not the best harmonica player, but I'm okay. But I happened to be there."
www.leejaffe.com
www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847871841/
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Photo: Bob Marley reading the Bible in front of the house where he was born, in the tiny village of Nine Mile in the mountains of St. Ann Parish, Jamaica. Courtesy of Lee Jaffe
"One of the first songs that I wrote was - I was asked to write poetry for a little show that was Poets Respond to Music. And we were given a Pretenders album and my song was Thumbelina, and so I said, "Well, how about I respond with a song instead of a poem?" And so I wrote this song. And making decisions that are about vowel sounds and repetition was new to me because whenever I write poetry, I still do read it aloud to listen to how it sounds, but it's not quite the same as composing the sound in the moment."
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books.
https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books.
"One of the first songs that I wrote was - I was asked to write poetry for a little show that was Poets Respond to Music. And we were given a Pretenders album and my song was Thumbelina, and so I said, "Well, how about I respond with a song instead of a poem?" And so I wrote this song. And making decisions that are about vowel sounds and repetition was new to me because whenever I write poetry, I still do read it aloud to listen to how it sounds, but it's not quite the same as composing the sound in the moment."
https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"My relationship with improvisational music is something that I'm still trying to theorize and trying to understand exactly why it is that it works. So all I know is that, in approaching a poem, it's about form and content. It's about matching process to content. And for me, the act of writing poetry is kind of like a jazz soloist puts together a solo. It's related in that way because as a writer, as a poet, you are always looking for the new. You're looking for something, a new way of saying something. You're using language that everyone uses, but you're always trying to reuse it in an original way. Always trying to have a phrase or metaphor that is new."
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives.
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music.
As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives.
"My relationship with improvisational music is something that I'm still trying to theorize and trying to understand exactly why it is that it works. So all I know is that, in approaching a poem, it's about form and content. It's about matching process to content. And for me, the act of writing poetry is kind of like a jazz soloist puts together a solo. It's related in that way because as a writer, as a poet, you are always looking for the new. You're looking for something, a new way of saying something. You're using language that everyone uses, but you're always trying to reuse it in an original way. Always trying to have a phrase or metaphor that is new."
www.anthonyjoseph.co.uk
https://open.spotify.com/artist/622cbugSJevUkEanSBCab9
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"I think music has changed the world. I think if you look at most social movements that have challenged the status quo and challenged even just the establishment at the time, there's been a soundtrack to those movements. And I think that is what maintains and fosters the movement and fosters the people to get behind it. So there's no question that music can change the world. It already has.
It's actually right in our mission statement that 'we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.' And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry."
The GRAMMY Museum believes that music is a gateway to learning. Their mission is to explore and celebrate the enduring legacies of the creative process behind all forms of music through immersive and interactive exhibits and essential music education programs. Michael Sticka serves as President/CEO. He’s responsible for the creation of the Museum's growth and sustainability as an independent nonprofit arts organization, overseeing the Museum Foundation™’s national programming, including GRAMMY In The Schools®, grants for music research and preservation and national affiliates. Their many projects include the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Museum in downtown Los Angeles, building the only gallery dedicated to Latin music in California; GRAMMY Museum at Home, a collection of virtual exhibits, artist programs and educational content available free to educators and music lovers worldwide; and their official streaming service COLLECTION:live™. An advocate for accessibility, the GRAMMY Museum became the only museum named as a Certified Autism Center™ in California.
Prior to joining the Academy, Sticka consulted for nonprofit organizations and co-founded the Zoot Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio.
Grammymuseum.org
IG, FB, TW: @grammymuseum
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
The GRAMMY Museum believes that music is a gateway to learning. Their mission is to explore and celebrate the enduring legacies of the creative process behind all forms of music through immersive and interactive exhibits and essential music education programs. Michael Sticka serves as President/CEO. He’s responsible for the creation of the Museum's growth and sustainability as an independent nonprofit arts organization, overseeing the Museum Foundation™’s national programming, including GRAMMY In The Schools®, grants for music research and preservation and national affiliates. Their many projects include the multimillion-dollar renovation of the Museum in downtown Los Angeles, building the only gallery dedicated to Latin music in California; GRAMMY Museum at Home, a collection of virtual exhibits, artist programs and educational content available free to educators and music lovers worldwide; and their official streaming service COLLECTION:live™. An advocate for accessibility, the GRAMMY Museum became the only museum named as a Certified Autism Center™ in California.
Prior to joining the Academy, Sticka consulted for nonprofit organizations and co-founded the Zoot Theatre Company in Dayton, Ohio.
"I think music has changed the world. I think if you look at most social movements that have challenged the status quo and challenged even just the establishment at the time, there's been a soundtrack to those movements. And I think that is what maintains and fosters the movement and fosters the people to get behind it. So there's no question that music can change the world. It already has.
It's actually right in our mission statement that 'we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.' And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry."
Grammymuseum.org
IG, FB, TW: @grammymuseum
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"Some of those people who came through my first day at A&R, Steely Dan was recording Gaucho. Dressed to Kill, which was a very big film, and Annie, the musical Annie was being recorded in studio A1, and Paul Simon had just finished One-Trick Pony, and Billy Joel had just finished Glass Houses and was launching into his Nylon Curtain album.
There was nowhere else you would want to be, but A&R Recording were four rooms going 24 hours a day, and to be part of that... And that - a moment where I closed my eyes - is because that is the time when I removed myself from the verbal idea and actually try to explain to you what the purpose is of my job, which is to channel and be of service to music and to understand every aspect of music, no matter how many years that takes, be part of another creative process and to have your own creative process as a person who is channeling other people's music.”
Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter.
www.cynthiadaniels.net
Monk Music Radio
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer and composer working extensively in film, television, and music. Her career has led her around the world, initially specializing in orchestral pop from Big Band Jazz to Broadway, and then crossing over into producing records for young and seasoned artists in the rock, country, and folk-rock world. She is owner and chief engineer at The Hamptons first world-class recording studio, MonkMusic. She has hosted or engineered sessions for Chaka Khan, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Nile Rogers, Alec Baldwin, Julie Andrews, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Porter.
"Some of those people who came through my first day at A&R, Steely Dan was recording Gaucho. Dressed to Kill, which was a very big film, and Annie, the musical Annie was being recorded in studio A1, and Paul Simon had just finished One-Trick Pony, and Billy Joel had just finished Glass Houses and was launching into his Nylon Curtain album.
There was nowhere else you would want to be, but A&R Recording were four rooms going 24 hours a day, and to be part of that... And that - a moment where I closed my eyes - is because that is the time when I removed myself from the verbal idea and actually try to explain to you what the purpose is of my job, which is to channel and be of service to music and to understand every aspect of music, no matter how many years that takes, be part of another creative process and to have your own creative process as a person who is channeling other people's music.”
www.cynthiadaniels.net
Monk Music Radio
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
The Classical Theatre of Harlem provides theatrical productions, educational and literary programs for free or at little cost to Harlem residents, organizations, and all who seek Harlem as a cultural destination. Its productions have received a Drama Desk, OBIE, and New York Times Critics Pick Awards. From July 5th to 29th they bring an Afrofuturistic take on Twelfth Night to Marcus Garvey Park.
NAACP and OBIE Award Winner, Ty Jones is Producing Artistic Director responsible for creating the Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series and other community initiatives.
Allen Gilmore has played Othello, Iago, and created the role of James Hewlett in The African Company presents Richard The Third at the Public Theater. He makes his CTH debut in Twelfth Night.
“I am a person that my taste, my aesthetic is to always put music and dance in a theatrical production. That's just what I like to do. And in terms of this play Twelfth Night, the spark that creates the whole flame is that very line, "If music be the food of love, play on." And music is threaded throughout this entire play. I think that every human being, regardless of your taste, connects to music in some way, and that connection to music - again, how we are far more alike than we are different - that's what's so beautiful about this play. And that's what I love about music.
During the summer, we invite Young People's Chorus of NYC, Chamber Music Center of NYC, Jazz Mobile, Harlem Opera, Harlem Chamber Players to do pre-shows. It's one of these things where I think it's important that multiple cultural organizations have to know that we're all essentially singing from the same sheet of music and being of support to one another.”
www.cthnyc.org
www.cthnyc.org/dt_team/ty-jones-producing-artistic-director-cth-actor
www.cthnyc.org/twelfth-night
www.allengilmore.com
Twelfth Night photo credit: Richard Termine
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
The Classical Theatre of Harlem provides theatrical productions, educational and literary programs for free or at little cost to Harlem residents, organizations, and all who seek Harlem as a cultural destination. Its productions have received a Drama Desk, OBIE, and New York Times Critics Pick Awards. From July 5th to 29th they bring an Afrofuturistic take on Twelfth Night to Marcus Garvey Park.
NAACP and OBIE Award Winner, Ty Jones is Producing Artistic Director responsible for creating the Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series and other community initiatives.
Allen Gilmore has played Othello, Iago, and created the role of James Hewlett in The African Company presents Richard The Third at the Public Theater. He makes his CTH debut in Twelfth Night.
“I am a person that my taste, my aesthetic is to always put music and dance in a theatrical production. That's just what I like to do. And in terms of this play Twelfth Night, the spark that creates the whole flame is that very line, "If music be the food of love, play on." And music is threaded throughout this entire play. I think that every human being, regardless of your taste, connects to music in some way, and that connection to music - again, how we are far more alike than we are different - that's what's so beautiful about this play. And that's what I love about music.
During the summer, we invite Young People's Chorus of NYC, Chamber Music Center of NYC, Jazz Mobile, Harlem Opera, Harlem Chamber Players to do pre-shows. It's one of these things where I think it's important that multiple cultural organizations have to know that we're all essentially singing from the same sheet of music and being of support to one another.”
www.cthnyc.org
www.cthnyc.org/dt_team/ty-jones-producing-artistic-director-cth-actor
www.cthnyc.org/twelfth-night
www.allengilmore.com
Photo credits: Lia Chang, Jill Jones
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
"There were three different music palettes that we wanted to draw from. The first being the eighties. What were the songs that were contemporary at the time? Because music really creates a whole vibe, as the kids say. And we combined that with Latinx music of the time, and the fusion of the two. We worked with a wonderful composer named Joachim Horseley who is a Latin music specialist who worked with us to create the score that combined all those elements... and [collaboration] from a music supervisor can change the feeling of the whole scene. An idea of lifting a scene or leaving a scene at a certain point from an editor can really make a big difference.”
"We came up with this idea that we were going to make a 'Juan Hughes' film, which is like in the world of John Hughes, the look of John Hughes, the way it was shot, the color palette, but with Latinos. And so we put a little bit of a Latinx spin on that."
Claudia Forestieri and Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz serve as the creator and showrunner of the Latin-focused comedy series for HBO Max, Gordita Chronicles, making them the first female Latinx showrunner and creator duo. The series is executive produced by Zoe Saldana and Eva Longoria.
Inspired by Claudia’s own life experience, the show centers around a Latina reporter looking back on her childhood as a chubby, willful and reluctant Dominican immigrant growing up with her eccentric family in 1980s Miami. The lighthearted series addresses themes around immigration, xenophobia, and body positivity and stars newcomer Olivia Goncalves, Diana Maria Riva, and Juan Javier Cardenas.
Gordita Chronicles on HBO Max
IMDB
Claudia Forestieri
Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz
Claudia Forestieri and Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz serve as the creator and showrunner of the Latin-focused comedy series for HBO Max, Gordita Chronicles, making them the first female Latinx showrunner and creator duo. The series is executive produced by Zoe Saldana and Eva Longoria.
Inspired by Claudia’s own life experience, the show centers around a Latina reporter looking back on her childhood as a chubby, willful and reluctant Dominican immigrant growing up with her eccentric family in 1980s Miami. The lighthearted series addresses themes around immigration, xenophobia, and body positivity and stars newcomer Olivia Goncalves, Diana Maria Riva, and Juan Javier Cardenas.
Claudia’s previous work for Telemundo earned her five Emmys and a GLAAD Media Award. Brigitte is known for her work on Brooklyn Nine Nine, People of Earth, and Love Life.
"There were three different music palettes that we wanted to draw from. The first being the eighties. What were the songs that were contemporary at the time? Because music really creates a whole vibe, as the kids say. And we combined that with Latinx music of the time, and the fusion of the two. We worked with a wonderful composer named Joachim Horseley who is a Latin music specialist who worked with us to create the score that combined all those elements... and [collaboration] from a music supervisor can change the feeling of the whole scene. An idea of lifting a scene or leaving a scene at a certain point from an editor can really make a big difference.”
Gordita Chronicles on HBO Max
IMDB
Claudia Forestieri
Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz
“I do think that in cinematography in a film is all about rhythm and timing. When you operate a camera, which I did for 20 years, it is like a musical instrument in a way. It’s a visual musical instrument that doesn't make sounds, but the way that you follow somebody, or the way that you pan…”
Florian Hoffmeister is a prolific director of photography. Recent works by Hoffmeister include his lensing on the Apple TV+ series Pachinko, the critically-acclaimed political thriller Official Secrets starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Smith, and the forthcoming film TÁR starring Cate Blanchett..
Hoffmeister is well-known for his collaboration with Terence Davies on feature films The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russel-Beale, and A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle.
His work on Brian Kirk’s television phenomenon Great Expectations earned him further distinction as well as numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy, a BAFTA, and an ASC Award.
http://florianhoffmeister.de
Pachinko
Great Expectations
Official Secrets
The Deep Blue Sea
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Florian Hoffmeister is a prolific director of photography. Recent works by Hoffmeister include his lensing on the Apple TV+ series Pachinko, the critically-acclaimed political thriller Official Secrets starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Smith, and the forthcoming film TÁR starring Cate Blanchett.
Hoffmeister is well-known for his collaboration with Terence Davies on feature films The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russel-Beale, and A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle.
His work on Brian Kirk’s television phenomenon Great Expectations earned him further distinction as well as numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy, a BAFTA, and an ASC Award.
“I do think that in cinematography in a film is all about rhythm and timing. When you operate a camera, which I did for 20 years, it is like a musical instrument in a way. It’s a visual musical instrument that doesn't make sounds, but the way that you follow somebody, or the way that you pan…”
http://florianhoffmeister.de
Pachinko
Great Expectations
Official Secrets
The Deep Blue Sea
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Mario Alberto Zambranois the Associate Director of Juilliard Dance. He was born in Houston, danced for Batsheva Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and Ballet Frankfurt between 1994 and 2005. He then returned to school and earned an MFA in English at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes fellowship for excellence in fiction. His first novel, Lotería (Harper Collins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick in 2013 and a finalist for the 2014 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Zambrano, who was awarded the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Some of You,” has been a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Princess Grace Award winner. He has been awarded literary fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle. Before joining Juilliard, he was a lecturer in theater, dance, and media at Harvard. He serves as program director for Orsolina28’s summer program and curates The LIT Series, a library of interdisciplinary thinking consisting of series of lectures, interviews, classes and discussions.
“In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?”
· IG @juilliardschool
· IG @malberto777
· IG @thelitseries
· www.thelitseries.com
· www.juilliard.edu/dance/faculty/zambrano-mario-alberto
· marioalbertozambrano.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Photo by Julien Benhamou
Mario Alberto Zambrano is the Associate Director of Juilliard Dance. He was born in Houston, danced for Batsheva Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, and Ballet Frankfurt between 1994 and 2005. He then returned to school and earned an MFA in English at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes fellowship for excellence in fiction. His first novel, Lotería (Harper Collins), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick in 2013 and a finalist for the 2014 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Zambrano, who was awarded the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Some of You,” has been a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Princess Grace Award winner. He has been awarded literary fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle. Before joining Juilliard, he was a lecturer in theater, dance, and media at Harvard. He serves as program director for Orsolina28’s summer program and curates The LIT Series, a library of interdisciplinary thinking consisting of series of lectures, interviews, classes and discussions.
“In both writing a first draft and in the improvisation of a dancing body, what is so key and relevant and exposed is voice. That internal voice of the artist of what they're writing on the page or what they're writing in space. If you go to fiction workshop, you talk about plot, structure, and you talk about character development, but there are very few classes within a dance curriculum where you break down an improvisation and you talk about voice, point of view, metaphor, or musical composition within a phrase. The lifespan of a phrase. And so this realisation is helping me understand that a one minute post of improvisation or even a ten-minute span of improvisation if it’s recorded is very similar to a first draft of creative writing, where then the artist is in a position to evaluate those 10 minutes and identify what is the setting? What is the voice that has come out of my experience of writing this first draft of an improvisation? And how can I give it structure? How can I give it form?”
www.marioalbertozambrano.com
IG @juilliardschool
IG @malberto777
IG @thelitseries
www.thelitseries.com
www.juilliard.edu/dance/faculty/zambrano-mario-alberto
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
“There's a real decrease in functional connectivity between regions of the brain that modulate the ego and a sense of self for Gabriela Montero when she's improvising. That's not a region of the brain in particular, it’s the connections between a lot of them and that together as well and also our sense of self and also our conscious memory and our ability to anticipate and plan for the future. So our knowledge of ourselves in these different spheres of time, the light of that activity is dimmed during improvisation. There really is a biological reason behind her feeling that she gets out of the way and something else comes to the fore. The study asks why are her improvisations still so coherent, why did they hold together in time. They refer to it as this form of embodied creativity or embodied cognition, where it’s a deeper kind of memory. a more physical memory in her fingers in her body that know how to play and kind of takes over and allows for ego to kind of dissolve in that moment as she performs.”
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music, and lives in Denver, Colorado. Uncommon Measure is her first book.
· www.nataliehodges.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Born and raised in Denver, Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music, and lives in Denver, Colorado. Uncommon Measure is her first book.
· www.nataliehodges.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Photo by Krista Mercer Buchenau
“I do feel that we are infinite choice makers. You make millions of choices all the time. Make the right choice and if you make the wrong choice, understand that mistakes are great teachers. Learn from that and move on. I do have this sense of responsibility of passing something on a love of dance history that really informs my process. Speaking in old language in a new way with a contemporary accent.
Something so wonderful about dance and the arts is that you never stop learning. It is like always just this long process, and I continue. Students teach me every day. It is such a gift.
It is probably the most important thing I can think of. Especially when I think of two things. In terms of history, the humanities show us how we were, why we were, and while we were...But then I also think about the future. What are we doing now? What seeds are we planting to inform the future?...And I said it earlier about making sense out of a chaotic universe where bad things happen to good people. Arts will help you figure that out.”
Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival. Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons’ production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran’s work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, Denmark’s Upper Cut Company, Sweden’s Skanes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.
· www.seancurrancompany.com
· tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/dance/109207637.html
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival.Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons’ production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran’s work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, Denmark’s Upper Cut Company, Sweden’s Skanes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.
· www.seancurrancompany.com
· tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/dance/109207637.html
· www.creativeprocess.info
· www.oneplanetpodcast.org
Ms. Johnson is a 30-year veteran of the dance field, has appeared in over 50 tours and taught for dance companies and colleges on five continents. An honors graduate of the National Ballet School, she was a soloist with The National Ballet of Canada and principal dancer and researcher with Ballet Frankfurt.A world-renowned expert on choreographer William Forsythe, Ms. Johnson has been a close collaborator of Forsythe’s for over two decades. She stages and produces Forsythe’s ballets on companies worldwide, including The Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, The Norwegian National Ballet, Alterballetto, Netherlands Dans Theater, Scottish Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Batsheva Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and Boston Ballet. Her recent choreographic work includes The Copier for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet; Room/Room for NYU; 27 for 17 for The New School University; As Yet Unnamed for the Movement Invention Project Collective; Folding Articulation for Princeton University, Waterline for Barnard College at Columbia University, Solo for Jeff for The Juilliard School; Strut for Boston Ballet II (2017 premiere), and a new commissioned work for The National Ballet School of Canada’s Assemblée Internationale 2017.At Harvard, Ms. Johnson choreographed 13 original works for students including, The Art of Survival, for Harvard’s 10th Anniversary Observance of September 11th and a collaboration between the Mahindra Center for Humanities and the American Repertory Theater 2011; RE: RE: RE: a dance installation in 2011/12, and works which were a part of curricular courses: The Sound of Distance in Itself in 2012, Dog in a Sweater in 2013, Paper Wing and SEESAW in 2014, LOOK UP and Degrees of Difference in 2015, and WHAT MOVES YOU? with Francesca Harper and Mario Zambrano and WUNDER with artist-in-residence Sidra Bell for the Harvard Dance Project in 2016.
· https://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/dance/about-dance
· www.creativeprocess.info
Ms. Johnson is a 30-year veteran of the dance field, has appeared in over 50 tours and taught for dance companies and colleges on five continents. An honors graduate of the National Ballet School, she was a soloist with The National Ballet of Canada and principal dancer and researcher with Ballet Frankfurt.A world-renowned expert on choreographer William Forsythe, Ms. Johnson has been a close collaborator of Forsythe’s for over two decades. She stages and produces Forsythe’s ballets on companies worldwide, including The Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, The Norwegian National Ballet, Alterballetto, Netherlands Dans Theater, Scottish Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Batsheva Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and Boston Ballet. Her recent choreographic work includes The Copier for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet; Room/Room for NYU; 27 for 17 for The New School University; As Yet Unnamed for the Movement Invention Project Collective; Folding Articulation for Princeton University, Waterline for Barnard College at Columbia University, Solo for Jeff for The Juilliard School; Strut for Boston Ballet II (2017 premiere), and a new commissioned work for The National Ballet School of Canada’s Assemblée Internationale 2017.At Harvard, Ms. Johnson choreographed 13 original works for students including, The Art of Survival, for Harvard’s 10th Anniversary Observance of September 11th and a collaboration between the Mahindra Center for Humanities and the American Repertory Theater 2011; RE: RE: RE: a dance installation in 2011/12, and works which were a part of curricular courses: The Sound of Distance in Itself in 2012, Dog in a Sweater in 2013, Paper Wing and SEESAW in 2014, LOOK UP and Degrees of Difference in 2015, and WHAT MOVES YOU? with Francesca Harper and Mario Zambrano and WUNDER with artist-in-residence Sidra Bell for the Harvard Dance Project in 2016.
· https://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/dance/about-dance
· www.creativeprocess.info
“Creativity is perhaps the ultimate mystery. I veer wildly between opposing views on it and have different feelings depending on whether the creator is isolated or a collaborator. Gropius said the artist is an exalted craftsman. “In rare moments of inspiration, moments beyond the control of his will, the grace of Heaven may cause his work to blossom into art, but proficiency in his craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the source of creative imagination." And Steve Sondheim said, "Art is craft, not inspiration." And Rilke mistrusted any artist's knowing participation in his own creative process.”
Tony Walton was an award-winning director and production designer. His work was vast and stretches from Broadway productions and operas to films and television. Over the course of his long and coveted career Tony was honored with 16 Tony Award Nominations for his Broadway sets and costumes. Of those nominations he received awards for Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and Dolls. In his television career he worked on over 20 films and received tremendous recognition for his work on Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz where he won an Oscar and Death of a Salesman where he received an Emmy. In 1991, Tony Walton was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame. Until his passing in 2022, he lived in New York City with his wife Gen LeRoy Walton.
This interview was originally aired in 2019.
· www.tonywalton.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
Tony Walton was an award-winning director and production designer. His work was vast and stretches from Broadway productions and operas to films and television. Over the course of his long and coveted career Tony was honored with 16 Tony Award Nominations for his Broadway sets and costumes. Of those nominations he received awards for Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and Dolls. In his television career he worked on over 20 films and received tremendous recognition for his work on Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz where he won an Oscar and Death of a Salesman where he received an Emmy. In 1991, Tony Walton was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame. Until his passing in 2022, he lived in New York City with his wife Gen LeRoy Walton.
www.tonywalton.net
www.creativeprocess.info
Since 1971, Pilobolus Dance Company has toured more than 65 countries, performing to over a quarter of a million people each year. Pilobolus has appeared on Oprah, the Academy Awards, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s TODAY Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MTV’s Video Music Awards. Their honors include a TED Fellowship, a Grammy® Award Nomination, a Primetime Emmy® Award, and several Cannes Lion Awards. Pilobolus has collaborated with more than 75 brands and organizations to create bespoke performances for television, film, and live events.
· www.pilobolus.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Since 1971, Pilobolus Dance Company has toured more than 65 countries, performing to over a quarter of a million people each year. Pilobolus has appeared on Oprah, the Academy Awards, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s TODAY Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MTV’s Video Music Awards. Their honors include a TED Fellowship, a Grammy® Award Nomination, a Primetime Emmy® Award, and several Cannes Lion Awards. Pilobolus has collaborated with more than 75 brands and organizations to create bespoke performances for television, film, and live events.
· www.pilobolus.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Sharon Kovacs is a soul-inspired singer from the Netherlands. Her unique and unorthodox vocal style made her stand out and she found international success when her debut single, “My Love” became a number one hit in Europe.
Kovacs is honest about the struggles and inner-demons that she continues to face and how they inspire her art. “Shades of Black” reached the top of the charts in the Netherlands and garnered over 60 million views on YouTube. She’s won many awards and performed at Glastonbury and other major festivals.
· https://kovacsmusic.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Sharon Kovacs is a soul-inspired singer from the Netherlands. Her unique and unorthodox vocal style made her stand out and she found international success when her debut single, “My Love” became a number one hit in Europe.
Kovacs is honest about the struggles and inner-demons that she continues to face and how they inspire her art. “Shades of Black” reached the top of the charts in the Netherlands and garnered over 60 million views on YouTube. She’s won many awards and performed at Glastonbury and other major festivals.
· https://kovacsmusic.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
“I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.”
Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.
· https://francoisclemmons.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a recording of Porgy and Bess; in 1986, he founded and directed the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble; and from 1997 until his retirement in 2013, Clemmons was the Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he currently resides.
· https://francoisclemmons.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
“Dance is for everyone. That’s the mission. We see people that might not be able to encounter dance in so many ways because it’s not something that their school offers. I had a family that subscribed to the New York City Ballet, most families don’t do that, so for us to be able to offer that level of exposure…and I think traditionally ballet has felt like it can be an elitist art form. Only certain people are invited. You have to have a certain type of foot. You have to have a long neck. You may have to have finances to be able to study ballet. We would like to eliminate that and make sure that it’s available for everybody to sort of dip their toe in and get a sense of it and have an experience of dance.”
Artistic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and director of PNB’s Ballet School, Peter Boal was raised in Bedford, New York. He began studying at the School of American Ballet at the age of 9 and became a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet in 1989. Serving the company for 22 years, Mr. Boal was featured in many ballets, including George Balanchine’s Apollo and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as works by Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, William Forsythe, and many others.
· https://www.pnb.org
· https://www.pnb.org/aboutpnb/staff/
· www.creativeprocess.info
Artistic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and director of PNB’s Ballet School, Peter Boal was raised in Bedford, New York. He began studying at the School of American Ballet at the age of 9 and became a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet in 1989. Serving the company for 22 years, Mr. Boal was featured in many ballets, including George Balanchine’s Apollo and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as works by Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, William Forsythe, and many others.
· https://www.pnb.org
· https://www.pnb.org/aboutpnb/staff/
· www.creativeprocess.info
Latest ARTS interview from The Creative Process’ MAIN CHANNEL. To listen to more of our interviews across the arts, visit tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This MUSIC & DANCE podcast focuses on interviews about music, dance and the performing arts, but you can find hundreds more conversations across the arts, culture, society & the environment on our main channel. We hope you’ll check it out!
“Literally during the last week of production, we kept having this conversation. We are part of a cultural moment and we know we are, which is a very out of body experience… Any iconic black show, did they know? Because a lot of those when you look back at their history they were one the bubble, and I always think about Girlfriends and Living Single––did they know that people would still be talking about them?”
Amy Aniobi is a writer, director and Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy-nominated comedy, “Insecure,” starring Issa Rae. “Insecure” will premiere its fifth and final season on October 24th with Aniobi behind the camera as director of the seventh episode (#507) to be broadcast on December 5th. She also served as showrunner/head writer/EP for season one of the HBO stand-up special “2 Dope Queens.” Under her new production shingle “SuperSpecial” and overall deal with HBO, Aniobi already is in development on several projects, as well as two features set up at Universal. Amy recently directed the award-winning short film, "Honeymoon," which explores a modern-day Nigerian couple's arranged marriage. She also co-created, co-directed and starred in the web series, “Lisa and Amy Are Black,” created the web series, “The Slutty Years” and wrote for both seasons of “Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” Amy is Nigerian, hails from North Texas, graduated from Stanford University and UCLA, and has lived both in the US (New York, the Bay Area) and abroad (France, Morocco).
· amyaniobi.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
(Photo Credit: Merie W. Wallace/HBO)
“All the themes are very contemporary. I think what moves this story is the search for instantaneous celebrity. That’s what the girls are all about, Roxie and Velma. They want to be famous. Of course everything that you cited, corruption, crimes, the press focusing on sensational stories–it’s all there. And I think that’s why the public relates so much to it.”
Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his Broadway debut at Emile de Becque in the 2008 Tony-winning revival of South Pacific. This performance also netted him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards. Szot’s opera credits include performances at the Metropolitan, Scala di Milano, Paris Opera, Carnegie Hall, and others. He’s currently starring as Billy Flynn in Chicago, the longest-running American musical in Broadway history.
· www.pauloszot.com
· chicagothemusical.com
· chicagothemusical.com/cast/#cast-gallery-3
· www.creativeprocess.info
Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his Broadway debut at Emile de Becque in the 2008 Tony-winning revival of South Pacific. This performance also netted him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards. Szot’s opera credits include performances at the Metropolitan, Scala di Milano, Paris Opera, Carnegie Hall, and others. He’s currently starring as Billy Flynn in Chicago, the longest-running American musical in Broadway history.
· www.pauloszot.com
· chicagothemusical.com
· chicagothemusical.com/cast/#cast-gallery-3
· www.creativeprocess.info
Noelani Pantastico is from Oahu, Hawaii. She trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and attended summer courses at Pacific Northwest Ballet School from 1994 to 1996. She joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 1997. She was promoted to corps de ballet in 1998, soloist in 2001, and principal in 2004. In 2008, she left PNB to join Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo as a soloist and was promoted to first soloist in 2009. In 2015, Ms. Pantastico returned to PNB as a principal dancer.
In addition to her PNB repertory, Ms. Pantastico danced leading roles at Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Altro Canto, La Belle, Cendrillon, Choré, Faust, Men’s Dance for Women, Opus 40, Roméo et Juliette, Scheherazade, Le Songe, and Vers un Pays Sage; Marie Chouinard’s Body Remix; Alexander Eckman’s Rondo; Nicolo Fonte’s Quiet Bang; William Forsythe’s New Sleep; Emio Greco and Peter Scholten’s Le Corps du Ballet; Natalia Horeçna’s Tales Absurd, Fatalistic Visions Predominate; Johan Inger’s In Exact; Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort; Pontus Lidberg’s Summer’s Winter Shadow; Matjash Mrozewski’s Pavillon d’Armide; and Jeroen Verbruggen’s Kill Bambi. She originated roles in Maillot’s Casse-Noisette Compagnie and Lac.
Ms. Pantastico was featured in the BBC’s 1999 film version of PNB’s production of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, filmed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London. In 2004, she performed the second movement of Balanchine’s Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet as a guest artist for New York City Ballet’s Balanchine Centennial.
In 2017, Ms. Pantastico choreographed Picnic for Sculptured Dance, a collaboration between Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Art Museum presented at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. www.png.org · www.creativeprocess.info
Noelani Pantastico is from Oahu, Hawaii. She joined the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seatte, Washington in 1997 and rose to a principal dancer in 2004. From 2008, she danced with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and in 2015, Noelani returned to PNB as a principal dancer. In addition to her PNB repetoire, she danced leading roles in Monte-Carlo in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s **Altro Canto, La Belle, Cendrillon; William Forsythe’s New Sleep, and others. She originated roles in Maillot’s Casse-Noisette Compagnie and Lac. She starred in BBC’s version of PNB’s production of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, filmed at Sadler’s Wells, and performed as a guest artist for New York City Ballet’s Balanchine Centennial. Noelani choreographed Picnic for a collaboration between PNB and Seattle Art Museum presented at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. The Creative Process speaks to Noelani in Paris while the Pacific Northwest Ballet was on tour. www.png.org · www.creativeprocess.info
“Choreography is always, also, a Visual Art…
The etymology of crisis is very productive and constructive because krísis in the Greco-Roman etymology is what happens when there is a germ in the body, so this heat from the krísis creates fever, and fever and the breaking of fever tends to flush out the germ. Healing the germ through crisis is the etymology. And crisis gave birth and rebirth to criticism. Criticism and crisis have the same root word.”
Jonah Bokaer is an international choreographer and media artist known for his groundbreaking cross-disciplinary collaborations. Bokaer's dances and films have been presented at the Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, the New Museum, the Whitney, and many other venues across 34 countries. He has received dozens of awards and grants, including a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, two New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Awards, and a Rockefeller New York City Cultural Innovation Award.
· http://jonahbokaer.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
is an international choreographer and media artist known for his groundbreaking cross-disciplinary collaborations. Bokaer's dances and films have been presented at the Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, the New Museum, the Whitney, and many other venues across 34 countries. He has received dozens of awards and grants, including a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, two New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Awards, and a Rockefeller New York City Cultural Innovation Award.
· http://jonahbokaer.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
“Songwriters create the meaning in people’s lives. When you’re married, you have a song. When you fall in love, you have a song. At a funeral, they play a song. When people go off to war, they’re singing a war ballad. Songs create the meaningful moments in people’s lives. People bookmark the moment they met and kissed for the first time with a song. Songs are the bookmarks of your life. Your life is not going to have those meaningful moments cemented into your heart and soul without those songs. That’s a critically important job. That’s worth paying for.”
Rick Carnes is the President of the Songwriters Guild of America and a songwriter himself, with credits on 40 platinum albums. His songs have been recorded by artists such as Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Alabama, and Dean Martin. Since 1931 the SGA has fought to legally protect songwriters, the music they create, and their ability to earn a living from it. Rick has served as president of the SGA since 2004.
· www.songwritersguild.com
· https://rickcarnes.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo: Rick & Janice Carnes
Rick Carnes is the President of the Songwriters Guild of America and a songwriter himself, with credits on 40 platinum albums. His songs have been recorded by artists such as Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Alabama, and Dean Martin. Since 1931 the SGA has fought to legally protect songwriters, the music they create, and their ability to earn a living from it. Rick has served as president of the SGA since 2004.
· www.songwritersguild.com
· https://rickcarnes.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
“There’s this children’s book called Miss Rumphius, and I’ve carried it around with me my entire life. It’s about a woman who grandfather tells her three things, and the last one in the most difficult thing of all and that’s to fill the world with beauty. And I give this book to every one of my friends who are having babies, I have a copy with me almost at all times, and I’m reminded of that feeling that Jonathan Larson had in Tick, Tick…Boom! Of how much time do we have to do something great.”
Alice Brooks is a cinematographer who has worked on award-winning features, television and commercials. She is a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where her creative partnership with director Jon Chu first began. Since, they have worked on several projects together, most recently on the film In The Heights based on the musical by Lin Manuel Miranda. Brooks is known for her use of dramatic lighting and compassionate camerawork. Her latest film is Tick, Tick…Boom! which is set to release on Netflix this fall.
· www.alicebrooks.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Alice Brooks is a cinematographer who has worked on award-winning features, television and commercials. She is a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where her creative partnership with director Jon Chu first began. Since, they have worked on several projects together, most recently on the film In The Heights based on the musical by Lin Manuel Miranda. Brooks is known for her use of dramatic lighting and compassionate camerawork. Her latest film is Tick, Tick…Boom! which is set to release on Netflix this fall.
· www.alicebrooks.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. His film credits include Starship Troopers , the Harold and Kumar series, and Gone Girl.
www.creativeprocess.info
Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. His film credits include Starship Troopers , the Harold and Kumar series, and Gone Girl.
www.creativeprocess.info
Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the largest and most highly regarded ballet companies in the United States, was founded in 1972. In July 2005, Peter Boal became artistic director, succeeding Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, artistic directors since 1977. The Company of nearly fifty dancers presents more than 100 performances each year of full-length and mixed repertory ballets at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in Seattle and on tour. The Company has toured to Europe, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, and throughout the United States, with celebrated appearances at Jacob’s Pillow and in New York City and Washington DC.
In this interview, we speak with soloist Price Suddarth and corps de ballet Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan.
· www.pnb.org
· www.pnb.org/artists/price-suddarth/
· www.pnb.org/artists/christopher-dariano/
· www.pnb.org/artists/amanda-morgan
· www.creativeprocess.info
Price Suddarth | Soloist
Price Suddarth is from Westfield, Indiana. He studied at Central Indiana Dance Ensemble, the School of American Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and he attended summer courses on scholarship at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, the Rock School, the School of American Ballet, and Miami City Ballet. Mr. Suddarth joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2010. He was promoted to corps de ballet in 2011 and soloist in 2018.
Mr. Suddarth has performed as a guest artist with Panama National Ballet. He has choreographed for the Regional Dance America gala in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s NEXT STEP, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s annual School Performance. In 2015, he choreographed Signature for PNB’s mainstage repertory, and in 2017, he choreographed Shifted Figures for Sculptured Dance, a collaboration between Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Art Museum presented at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
Christopher D’Ariano | Corps de Ballet
Christopher D’Ariano is from The Bronx, New York. He studied at Ballet Tech, the School of American Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and he attended summer courses at Ballet Tech, Boston Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. He was the recipient of the School of American Ballet Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise. Mr. D’Ariano joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2017 and was promoted to corps de ballet later that year.
Mr. D’Ariano also has danced with Lunge Dance Collective, and he has choreographed for the Seattle International Dance Festival.
Amanda Morgan | Corps de Ballet
Amanda Morgan is from Tacoma, Washington. She studied at Dance Theatre Northwest and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and she attended summer courses at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Boston Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet. She participated in PNB School’s exchange with the Palucca University of Dance in Dresden, where she also performed with Dresden Semperoper Ballett. Ms. Morgan joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2016 and was promoted to corps de ballet in 2017.
Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the largest and most highly regarded ballet companies in the United States, was founded in 1972. In July 2005, Peter Boal became artistic director, succeeding Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, artistic directors since 1977. The Company of nearly fifty dancers presents more than 100 performances each year of full-length and mixed repertory ballets at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in Seattle and on tour. The Company has toured to Europe, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, and throughout the United States, with celebrated appearances at Jacob’s Pillow and in New York City and Washington DC.
In this interview, we speak with soloist Price Suddarth and corps de ballet Christopher D’Ariano and Amanda Morgan.
· www.pnb.org
· www.pnb.org/artists/price-suddarth/
· www.pnb.org/artists/christopher-dariano/
· www.pnb.org/artists/amanda-morgan
· www.creativeprocess.info
Price Suddarth | Soloist
Price Suddarth is from Westfield, Indiana. He studied at Central Indiana Dance Ensemble, the School of American Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and he attended summer courses on scholarship at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, the Rock School, the School of American Ballet, and Miami City Ballet. Mr. Suddarth joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2010. He was promoted to corps de ballet in 2011 and soloist in 2018.
Mr. Suddarth has performed as a guest artist with Panama National Ballet. He has choreographed for the Regional Dance America gala in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s NEXT STEP, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s annual School Performance. In 2015, he choreographed Signature for PNB’s mainstage repertory, and in 2017, he choreographed Shifted Figures for Sculptured Dance, a collaboration between Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Art Museum presented at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
Christopher D’Ariano | Corps de Ballet
Christopher D’Ariano is from The Bronx, New York. He studied at Ballet Tech, the School of American Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and he attended summer courses at Ballet Tech, Boston Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. He was the recipient of the School of American Ballet Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise. Mr. D’Ariano joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2017 and was promoted to corps de ballet later that year.
Mr. D’Ariano also has danced with Lunge Dance Collective, and he has choreographed for the Seattle International Dance Festival.
Amanda Morgan | Corps de Ballet
Amanda Morgan is from Tacoma, Washington. She studied at Dance Theatre Northwest and Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and she attended summer courses at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Boston Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet. She participated in PNB School’s exchange with the Palucca University of Dance in Dresden, where she also performed with Dresden Semperoper Ballett. Ms. Morgan joined Pacific Northwest Ballet as an apprentice in 2016 and was promoted to corps de ballet in 2017.
“‘Architecture is frozen music.’…There is something about when you’re exploring not knowing exactly where it’s going to go or how it’s going to turn out which creates an element of surprise and an element of intrigue.”
Michael Daugherty is one of the ten most performed living American composers. Recordings of his pieces Metropolis, Deus ex Machina and Tales of Hemmingway have earned him a total of 6 GRAMMY Awards, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2011 and 2017. Daugherty has written music for orchestra, band, and chamber ensemble. He is currently a Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan.
· michaeldaugherty.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
Michael Daugherty is one of the ten most performed living American composers. Recordings of his pieces Metropolis, Deus ex Machina and Tales of Hemmingway have earned him a total of 6 GRAMMY Awards, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2011 and 2017. Daugherty has written music for orchestra, band, and chamber ensemble. He is currently a Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan.
· michaeldaugherty.net
· www.creativeprocess.info
“I try to preserve the Chinese music flavor. So, you imagine in Chinese band, the country music that people usually reserve for weddings or for big moments or for funerals. That kind of a feeling. Drums and music playing. I try to preserve it from my memory because what we have now is just a tune. You can probably recognize the tune, but the execution of translating that for a Western orchestra and make it sound like it’s a Chinese band playing Chinese instruments.”
Bright Sheng is a composer, conductor, and pianist. His work has been commissioned and performed by many prestigious institutions throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and special commissions from the White House and for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sheng has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, David Henry Hwang, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others.
· www.brightsheng.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo: Santa Fe performance of Madame Mao
Bright Sheng is a composer, conductor, and pianist. His work has been commissioned and performed by many prestigious institutions throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and special commissions from the White House and for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sheng has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, David Henry Hwang, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others.
· www.brightsheng.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo by Peter Shin
“The harp or the instrument that I play is a traditional instrument from Columbia (I’m from Bogota, Columbia). We have traditional music there called Janetta music. It’s the music from the plains of Colombia and Venezuala. It’s like the cowboy music… I met the harp when I was seven years old. That’s the first time I saw this instrument. I was like–Wow! I knew I was born to play the harp that day!”
Colombian-born harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda has forged his own path in music by bringing the harp into an unexpected genre–jazz. Castaneda’s style mixes jazz with the South American folk style harobo, and other Latin American styles. He has four acclaimed albums as a leader and several others in collaboration with artists like trombonist Marshall Gilkes and pianist Hiromi. He has performed with Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Paco De Lucia and many other acclaimed musicians.
· www.edmarcastaneda.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Colombian-born harp virtuoso Edmar Castaneda has forged his own path in music by bringing the harp into an unexpected genre–jazz. Castaneda’s style mixes jazz with the South American folk style harobo, and other Latin American styles. He has four acclaimed albums as a leader and several others in collaboration with artists like trombonist Marshall Gilkes and pianist Hiromi. He has performed with Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Paco De Lucia and many other acclaimed musicians.
· www.edmarcastaneda.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Political, outspoken and passionate, Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Nano Stern has created his own musical language – an otherworldly sound that blends the youthful exuberance of folk music mixed with years of classical and jazz training against the powerful force of traditional Chilean revolutionary songs. What has emerged is a brilliantly layered confluence of indigenous African, European and North and South American musical influences that reverberate with a soulfulness and originality unlike any other South American artist performing today. He appeared with Joan Baez in 2016 at her 75th birthday celebration at the Beacon Theater in New York where she praised him as the best young Chilean songwriter of his generation.
· https://www.nanostern.cl
· www.creativeprocess.info
Political, outspoken and passionate, Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Nano Stern has created his own musical language – an otherworldly sound that blends the youthful exuberance of folk music mixed with years of classical and jazz training against the powerful force of traditional Chilean revolutionary songs. What has emerged is a brilliantly layered confluence of indigenous African, European and North and South American musical influences that reverberate with a soulfulness and originality unlike any other South American artist performing today. He appeared with Joan Baez in 2016 at her 75th birthday celebration at the Beacon Theater in New York where she praised him as the best young Chilean songwriter of his generation.
· https://www.nanostern.cl
· www.creativeprocess.info
Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her success expands to the world of films, where she has directed the likes of PItch Perfect 3 and Step Up: All In, using her dance and choreography experience to make magic happen on camera. Along with the Grammy, Trish has won a number of awards such as the Youtube award for most creative video, the smithsonian ingenuity award, and multiple accolades for best short film at various film festivals. www.bigbadtrish.com · www.creativeprocess.info
Trish Sie is a multi-talented director whose work spans the realms of music videos, commercials, and short and feature films. After spending a decade as a professional dancer, championship ballroom competitor and choreographer, she built a successful and championed career in filmmaking. The first music video that she produced, “Here it Goes Again” for the band OK Go, won her a Grammy award. Her success expands to the world of films, where she has directed the likes of PItch Perfect 3 and Step Up: All In, using her dance and choreography experience to make magic happen on camera. Along with the Grammy, Trish has won a number of awards such as the Youtube award for most creative video, the smithsonian ingenuity award, and multiple accolades for best short film at various film festivals. www.bigbadtrish.com · www.creativeprocess.info
A veteran composer with many high-profile film and television scores to his credit, Brazilian pianist Marcelo Zarvos was born in São Paulo. Initially studying classical music, Zarvos attended Berklee College of Music and CalArts, and later became active in the jazz world, releasing a highly praised collaboration with saxophonist, Peter Epstein called Dualism. His creative endeavors also expanded to include rock, electronic, and world music, a versatility that he would eventually parlay into a highly successful career composing film music. Zarvos’ credits include The Good Shepherd, The Words, Brooklyn’s Finest, The Face of Love, Reaching for the Moon, Sin Nombre, Hollywoodland, Adult Beginners, The Humbling, Little Accidents, American Ultra, and Enough Said. Twice nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards, Zarvos’ television works include Too Big to Fail, The Big C, Extant, Phil Spector, and two Showtime series, The Affair and Ray Donovan. http://zarvos.com · www.creativeprocess.info
“This museum, this institution has a long history and actually, the idea of a museum goes back to maybe 100 years ago when Civil War veterans wanted a monument recognizing the service and the sacrifice of African Americans during the war effort. It wasn't until the mid-late 80s when congressman John Lewis with some other colleagues started to bring forth the idea that the Smithsonian needed to have a presence to recognize the significance and contributions of African Americans to the history of this country.”
Dr. Dwandalyn Reece is a storyteller, ethnomusicologist, and museum professional. Reece studied American Studies and Music at Scripps College, American Culture and Museum Practice at the University of Michigan, and Musical Performance at New York University. Her research and projects include exhibitions at the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Motown Historical Museum, as well as being the former senior program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Reece is currently the Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she co-curated the Smithsonian Year of Music and “Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration.” Reece also curated one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions, Musical Crossroads, and received the Secretary’s Research Prize to do so in 2017. Reece is a community-driven artist, and she uses her experience and works in the community to inspire the work she collaboratively produces.
· nmaahc.si.edu
· music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece
· www.creativeprocess.info
Dr. Dwandalyn Reece is a storyteller, ethnomusicologist, and museum professional. Reece studied American Studies and Music at Scripps College, American Culture and Museum Practice at the University of Michigan, and Musical Performance at New York University. Her research and projects include exhibitions at the Louis Armstrong House and Archives, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Motown Historical Museum, as well as being the former senior program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Reece is currently the Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she co-curated the Smithsonian Year of Music and “Freedom Sounds: A Community Celebration.” Reece also curated one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions, Musical Crossroads, and received the Secretary’s Research Prize to do so in 2017. Reece is a community-driven artist, and she uses her experience and works in the community to inspire the work she collaboratively produces.
· https://nmaahc.si.edu
· https://music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece
· www.creativeprocess.info
Photo credit: AlanKarchmer
Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, Green Zone, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Italian Job, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Solo: A Star Wars Story, among others.
Nominated for multiple Grammys, BAFTAs and other awards, his score for How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination. His concert music includes "A Prussian Requiem", an oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I which premiered at The Royal Festival Hall.
· https://johnpowellmusic.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Composer John Powell is a multiple Annie Award winner for “Best Music in an Animated Feature Production” and “Best Original Score”. Since rising to prominence with his scores to the Matt Damon Bourne trilogy, he has become known for family animated films, scoring Shrek, Chicken Run, Ice Age (2 & 3), Bolt, Rio, Happy Feet (1 & 2) and Kung Fu Panda (1 & 2) and action music for Hancock, Green Zone, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Italian Job, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Solo: A Star Wars Story, among others.
Nominated for multiple Grammys, BAFTAs and other awards, his score for How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination. His concert music includes "A Prussian Requiem", an oratorio to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of World War I which premiered at The Royal Festival Hall.
· https://johnpowellmusic.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
Aaron Dworkin is a multifaceted artist and entrepreneur with passion for diversifying and amplifying the arts. Epitomizing how art, leadership, and diversity all play a vital role in advancing our society, Dwokin founded The Sphinx Organization, a non-profit organization that molds Black and Latinx classical musicians, and he serves on the advisory board for several prestigious arts organizations. Dworkin is an educator of both Arts Leadership and Entrepreneurial Leadership at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. Aaron Dworkin, decorated in awards and accolades, continues to be a force in his community, driving the need for diversity, arts education, and leadership. aarondworkin.com · www.creativeprocess.info
Aaron Dworkin is a multifaceted artist and entrepreneur with passion for diversifying and amplifying the arts. Epitomizing how art, leadership, and diversity all play a vital role in advancing our society, Dwokin founded The Sphinx Organization, a non-profit organization that molds Black and Latinx classical musicians, and he serves on the advisory board for several prestigious arts organizations. Dworkin is an educator of both Arts Leadership and Entrepreneurial Leadership at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. Aaron Dworkin, decorated in awards and accolades, continues to be a force in his community, driving the need for diversity, arts education, and leadership. aarondworkin.com · www.creativeprocess.info
Itamar Kubovy, Executive Director of Pilobolus Dance Company, speaks with The Creative Process Founder Mia Funk about play, collaboration, and dance as a mode of storytelling.
The Creative Process exhibition and international educational initiative is traveling to leading universities, culture centers, museums, and libraries. The exhibition is composed of interviews and portraits of notable creative thinkers, alongside projection elements of works by contributors from over fifty countries.
Made with the participation of students and faculty, it is a celebration of the humanities and education.
Visit www.creativeprocess.info to find out more about how to get involved.
“To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.”
Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.
· www.imdb.com/name/nm1342128
· www.creativeprocess.info
Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and fight for marriage equality.
· www.gavincreel.com
· www.creativeprocess.info
HELLO, DOLLY! Photo by Julieta Cervantes
Kate Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls. In their 13th year of devised theater making, NPC continues to present bold, "Mind bending" theater that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience theater. Committed to shining light on female-identifying theater makers, NPC produces and supports work by women+ in a myriad of ways to create parity on the stage. NPC's Arts Education Outreach programming has been called "Crucial to our community" for their tireless work in using the Arts to creatively address social (in)justice, education and conflict. She trained in the prestigious Arts Leadership program at Lincoln Center, Circle in the Square Conservatory and Shakespeare & Company, and is Co-VP of Communications of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She has worked as actress/director/ choreographer with such luminaries as Blythe Danner, Tony Walton, Simon Jones, Cathy Curtin, Liz Larsen, Heather Lind, Joe Pintauro, Joy Behar, and others at Lincoln Center, John Drew Theater, Bay Street Theater and other notable venues.
· www.npcowgirls.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
Kate Mueth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning dance theater company The Neo-Political Cowgirls. In their 13th year of devised theater making, NPC continues to present bold, "Mind bending" theater that seeks to deepen and challenge the ways in which audiences experience theater. Committed to shining light on female-identifying theater makers, NPC produces and supports work by women+ in a myriad of ways to create parity on the stage. NPC's Arts Education Outreach programming has been called "Crucial to our community" for their tireless work in using the Arts to creatively address social (in)justice, education and conflict. She trained in the prestigious Arts Leadership program at Lincoln Center, Circle in the Square Conservatory and Shakespeare & Company, and is Co-VP of Communications of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She has worked as actress/director/ choreographer with such luminaries as Blythe Danner, Tony Walton, Simon Jones, Cathy Curtin, Liz Larsen, Heather Lind, Joe Pintauro, Joy Behar, and others at Lincoln Center, John Drew Theater, Bay Street Theater and other notable venues.
· www.npcowgirls.org
· www.creativeprocess.info
"When I look at a film, I normally think what is missing from that, and that's what I'm trying to bring. I'm trying to find something that I think isn't there and that I could bring that would make it more interesting, make it more cinematic, more dramatic."
Carter Burwell is an Academy Award nominated composer of film soundtracks. He has had a long working relationship with filmmakers the Coen brothers, scoring every film they have made, as well as all of Spike Jonze's films. His credits include Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Hudsucker Proxy, Rob Roy, Fargo, The Spanish Prisoner, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Before Night Falls, Adaptation, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, Burn After Reading, Where The Wild Things Are, Twilight, The Kids Are All Right, Seven Psychopaths, Anomalisa, and a number of scores for dance and theater. In his varied career, he has been a computer scientist and award-winning film animator. Burwell lives in Amagansett with his wife, the artist Christine Sciulli.
www.creativeprocess.info
Carter Burwell is an Academy Award nominated composer of film soundtracks. He has had a long working relationship with filmmakers the Coen brothers, scoring every film they have made, as well as all of Spike Jonze's films. His credits include Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, True Grit, Carol, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Hudsucker Proxy, Rob Roy, Fargo, The Spanish Prisoner, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Before Night Falls, Adaptation, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, Burn After Reading, Where The Wild Things Are, Twilight, The Kids Are All Right, Seven Psychopaths, Anomalisa, and a number of scores for dance and theater. In his varied career, he has been a computer scientist and award-winning film animator. Burwell lives in Amagansett with his wife, the artist Christine Sciulli.
www.creativeprocess.info
Grammy nominated songwriter Terry Radigan mixes her gritty Brooklyn girl sensibility with a deep respect for classic American roots, country and soul. Her solo releases have been oft played and well-received. She has had her songs covered by a wide variety of artists and her songs can be heard on big and small screens alike. She is also a member of the musical group Vickikristinabarcelona.
· www.terryradigan.com
· www.creativeprocess.info