Sound Theology by Colleen Butcher

I am so encouraged when young people have opportunities to pursue big dreams and become more of who they want to be. Many musical opportunities exist, but finding the ones that feed the soul, challenge the intellect, inspire the imagination, and develop the character, is often difficult. Finding opportunities to carry on a genre or tradition of music that has made people happy for generations it a rare find. Almost anyone can sing a pop song … not everyone can carry on in the footsteps of the generation of singers and instrumentalists who recorded the American Songbook. read more…

To coincide with the First Night of the 122nd Proms Festival, the BBC has commissioned a project that showcases music in a different way: projection of musical imagery onto the face of a 300-yr old cello. The soloist in the opening concert – Sol Gabetta – agreed to have her Goffriller cello modified to receive cutting-edge tracking and projection technology. According to the artists and technicians who created the project, this combination creates a “bespoke piece of animation” projected onto [the cello] while it is being played. “The animation both reacts to and visualizes elements of the piece whilst tracking … the instrument’s movement during [the] performance, creating a piece which shows the cello in a brand new light.” read more…

Of course, none of us knew, a week ago, what this past week would hold. The unexplainable violence. The continuing litany of names of those killed with guns. The shedding of blood in parking lots, on street corners, and inside cars! The sons and husbands and daddys who will never hold the hands of their loved ones again.

The weeping echoes and reverberates in bones and marrow, in oceans and mountains, in hearts and mouths … everywhere. read more…

I listened to Krista Tippett interviewing Pauline Boss this week. Ms. Boss is a writer and therapist who established a new field of research on grieving when she coined the phrase “ambiguous loss.” She realized that there are many, many types of loss that lack the “closure” we have been taught to desire when dealing with difficult experiences. The lack of closure, but very present experience of loss, she termed “ambiguous loss” – a severing or separation that can’t be easily boxed up or put aside or resolved. For example, the intimate loss that many are going through with loved ones affected by dementia. Relationships are significantly altered by the changes that occur, but the person is still physically present. The textbook case – a person’s expected and natural death in old age – has become the minority report, and what many experience is so much more complex and “ambiguous.” On a larger scale, the almost daily frequency of national and global tragedies influence us deeply, but do not affect us directly. Yet, despite physical or geographic separation, we experience profound emotion. read more…

Strip away all of the electronics. Abandon the floodlights and the mosh pit. Get close enough to your audience to see the whites of their eyes. Focus your energy on the simple and the significant. This is how NPR’s Tiny Concerts are formed.

The videos show the musicians crammed amidst the book shelves, desks and paraphernalia of a busy office, but the music is present, connected, and visceral.

When your place the artists in the midst, in the mess, the music takes center stage, but in a totally different way … the relationships have altered. read more…