Teaching Music

I have a fun career. Going to work is great when you play music with kids. Getting out of bed is hard, and dealing with occasional bad behavior can be difficult, but in general, I am always excited to be working in such a joyful environment. I am inspired by young people everyday and admire their playfulness and emotional investment in activities. They learn fast, locking into rhythm and tone as they walk and talk, and without inhibitions to mute the pure enjoyment. I often record classes and lessons to playback with the students and I pulled a few from…

Reality: 14th Street

I made my meander on 14th St. from Avenue C to the Hudson, then got back to Union Square before the battery drained completely. Rolling the audiovisual party cart across town while projecting videos of 14th Street onto the sidewalk, buildings and people, it felt good to share my music with the surprised public, who were appreciative of the brief encounter. I'm not quite sure why I felt compelled to join the Art in Odd Places Festival or manifest the project in this way, but I dreamed it up and made it happen. For both artist and audience, it is…

Supergood Reality: 14th Street @AiOP 2012

Raquel de Anda makes art happen! When Alaina's college roomie moved to Brooklyn a few months ago, she was immediately integrated in numerous projects and coordinating art of all varieties. One of these is Art in Odd Places, an annual community art festival taking place all along 14th Street in Manhattan for 10 days, so I decided I would perform a sidewalk version of Supergood Reality. Since then, I have been visualizing what it would look like and considering infinite possibilities. Last night, it came alive! My Studio has been untethered! Into a "granny-cart" frame, I loaded a 12V battery,…

World Music NYC

I love to travel around the world, but sometimes I don't even need to leave New York City to get my fill of exotic culture. In the past two days, I have seen three amazing bands hailing from three distinctly different pockets of our planet. Dengue Fever is based in L.A. but features a Cambodian singer and rocks a sonic tribute to the Cambodian pop sound of the 1960's. It is deliciously funky and her voice is transcendent; the Cambodian lyrics are indecipherable but her ethereal voice adds a perfect alien element to the grooves. Sharing the same bill at…

The Great Googa Mooga

The Nethermead in Prospect Park is one of the most beautiful and amazing areas of this city and a perfect spot for a music festival. The 9th St. Bandshell is a wonderful music venue, of course, but The Nethermead is completely natural and out of sight to cars or buildings.  I had seen a Carribean festival there about 10 years ago, but nothing since, so when The Great Googa Mooga, a craft food, beer and wine music festival, was announced there, I was amped! I dutifully claimed my free tickets the moment they went on sale (80,000 sold out in…

Kraftwerk

I'm pretty sure I laughed when I first heard "The Robots" for the first time in 9th grade. It was... ridiculous. I had never heard anything like it before and it truly seemed like a parody, yet there was something ingenious about it that I couldn't quite comprehend. When I finally came around and really started listening to electronic music ten years later, it dawned on me that Kraftwerk were true pioneers and far ahead of their time. I saw them perform seven years ago and they absolutely blew my mind with a triptych of video projections at Hammerstein Ballroom,…

Annik

Last night was a delightful romp in room 3 of Radio Stars Karaoke in celebration of Annie and Erik's engagement. They met through mutual friends and made out for the first time in the dark corner of a karaoke room so it was appropriate that we would congregate in a similar studio and sing our faces off all night long. Singing together makes bonding stronger and we are lucky to have friends who appreciate this and love to let it out from time to time. I get to sing in my classes everyday, but singing karaoke brings out the real…

Buster Keaton and Guitars

Buster Keaton films are the very definition of classic; they are time machines to an era of simplicity and authenticity, and I am always struck by how real it all seems, despite the obvious ridiculousness of the plots and slapstick. This was filmmaking in its purest magic, before special effects became the attraction. It is the characters and the core of their actions, be they brutal physical comedy or tender facial expressions, that hold our attention and connect with an audience a century later. Thia week I attended two evenings of the New York Guitar Festival featuring seven Buster Keaton…

Open Your Eyes

Godot is an artist who creates some amazing stop-action videos with all sorts of different media. He is an innovator and an activist who craves social justice, using art to promote Supergoodness in all aspects of life. He is also my brother-in-law and I have been lucky to work with him, producing soundtracks for a number of his videos. Here is one that I recently collaborated on, with video shot in the art jungle of Berlin. Enjoy! Open Your Eyes