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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Habits from the Muse

At the request of several students, and in partnership with several musicians and music educators who desired to have resources to help support their musical and creative practice, I have created the following Resources that I want you to know about!

We are also interested in YOUR ideas about what habits you can share that support your creativity, too.




Habits from the Muse is a free weekly email resource to support creativity in daily life.

Click here to subscribe.

Click here to submit an idea for the email.






Habits for Your Healthy Music Habitat is a weekly video to support musicianship.

This is a free benefit for all of my Patrons and Students and Premium members of DulcimerCrossing.

If you are a teacher and have a Habit to share, please contact Steve.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Liturgy Featured at Rocky Mountain Synod Assembly

When I served as the Director of Music for the Lutheran Campus Ministry at Colorado State University (1998-2014), I composed liturgical settings (music for worship) in several different styles.

Christ Is Our Peace, is one that I've described as the Blues-Jazz-Grunge-Islands Fiesta.

Several congregations across the USA have made regular use of this setting for their congregation's use, and even more have made legal use of portions of the liturgy through their CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc.) license.

It was very nice to learn that the Rocky Mountain Synod (ELCA) (which encompasses the inter-mountain west—Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and part of Texas) chose to use this setting for its annual gathering assembly.

It was even more gratifying when we learned that our daughter (now on her internship in her final year of seminary) had been invited to preach for the opening worship.

She expressed some (as expected) nervousness at this responsibility, but when I told her that they had chosen this liturgical setting for that evening's worship she was both excited and comforted!

This was being composed at the end of the last century and was recording and published in 2002.  Now, 14 years later, it continues to find a way to help people worship.  That is gratifying for this composer.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Patreon Progress!

Sound the trumpets!  Lay a festive table!  Thanks to my Patrons, we have surpassed yet another Milestone Goal

I am scheduling a private Patrons-Only Concert Window show as a reward, but the work that they support provides benefits for everyone else, too!

You can be part of this special-access to the creative process as well.  The idea behind Patreon is to update the time-honored model of patronage for artists by helping lots of people provide smaller, affordable support to add up to the freedom for musicians and other artists to creative, document and perform their art.  For as little $1 a month ($5 is the first level to receive special rewards) you can become my patron and have a back-stage pass.

I published demos of my new songs from the Grunewald Guild on my patreon site first!
The Center Calls

and

Barefoot Ballet  (see the video below)

But in addition, I've also been able to create digital downloads for my legacy products, Happy Are They:  Psalms to Sing and Sway By (Book/CD)
and  
Mr. Steve's Folk Music for Little Folks (EP)
that are available to everyone!





Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Local 1000 Gathering @ Ashokan

Earlier this month, for the 5th time, I coordinated the gathering of my union brothers and sisters (Local 1000 AFM--American Federation of Musicians) as we gathered at this amazing and historic Ashokan Center in Olive Bridge, New York.

Members Jay Ungar and Molly Mason (pictured here) sang us a lovely song about living in the Catskill Mountains.

This camp is the home of the music and dance camps that they have facilitated for decades, and which gave birth to the famous "Ashokan Farewell" song that Ken Burns featured in his Civil War documentary series.

The topic of this year's gathering was mentoring.

Remembering who has helped us get to where we are, and also paying attention to who we are currently helping along the way. 

With my good sister, Tret Fure, I led a Crowdfunding workshop which then our other faithful sister, Erin Mae Lewis led in our Virtual Union hall meeting later in the month.

Two insights from this gathering:

First:

My friend and brother, Scott Berwick, shared this story from a classical guitar instructor who demonstrates to student visitors a piece of music, then comments:

"That was correct.
All the notes were played in the right order and with the correct timing.
But that wasn't musical."

Then he plays it again with expression and dynamics and the two performances are nearly unrecognizable to each other.

He then says to the students,

"Students come here playing guitar. 

What I teach them is how to play music on the guitar."


Second is a question upon which I will chew and chew

How do we measure success?

If it is by comparison to someone or something...we'll probably never measure up.  So I need (and am finding) a different definition.


This commencement address by Maria Popovich of Brainpickings Weekly, underscores that point.

Here is an excerpt:

"...I also practically live on my bike — that’s how I get everywhere — and the other week, on one of those first days of spring, I was riding from Brooklyn to Harlem. I had somewhere to be and was pedaling pretty fast — which I like doing and must admit I take a certain silly pride in — but I was also very much enjoying the ride and the river and the spring air that smelled of plum blossoms. And then, I sensed someone behind me in the bike path, catching up, going even faster than I was going. It suddenly felt somehow competitive. He was trying to overtake me. I pedaled faster, but he kept catching up. Eventually, he did overtake me — and I felt strangely defeated.
But as he cruised past me, I realized the guy was on an electric bike. I felt both a sort of redemption and a great sense of injustice — unfair motorized advantage, very demoralizing to the honest muscle-powered pedaler. But just as I was getting all self-righteously existential, I noticed something else — he had a restaurant’s name on his back. He was food delivery guy. He was rushing past me not because he was trying to slight me, or because he had some unfair competitive advantage in life, but because this was his daily strife — this is how this immigrant made his living.
My first response was to shame myself into gratitude for how fortunate I’ve been — because I too am an immigrant from a pretty poor country and it’s some miraculous confluence of choice and chance that has kept me from becoming a food delivery person on an electric bike in order to survive in New York City. And perhaps the guy has a more satisfying life than I do — perhaps he had a good mother and goes home to the love of his life and plays the violin at night. I don’t know, and I never will. But the point is that the second I begin comparing my pace to his, my life to his, I’m vacating my own experience of that spring day and ejecting myself into a sort of limbo of life that is neither mine nor his."


Sunday, May 1, 2016

Grunewald Songwriting Workshop

Jan Krist, visual artist and song-writer, led us through a powerful creative process at the Songwriting Workshop she hosted at the Grünewald Guild in Leavenworth Washington this Spring.

The Grunewald Guild is named for Matthias Grünewald, 
"a German painter who ignored the classicism and idealism of the current Renaissance style and painted in a more expressive and intense style than his contemporaries."
The Guild is a retreat center and a community that facilitates the exploration between art and faith/spirituality.
At the beginning of 2016  had committed to set aside some time and resources for my first continuing education time in many years so when my daughter invited me to join her at this songwriting workshop, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.
My Assigned writing companion.
For a long time I have felt like my creative voice was being given expression only in instrumental music, with there being little to say of any value or interest in the current climate of wordiness. 
There IS power in nonverbal music, nonverbal communication, which I see daily in my Music Together classes with preschool (and pre-literate) human beings.
However, thanks to the safe (and challenging) container that Jan helped to create and a process which helped to facilitate focus and a timeframe to produce a song to share with the rest of the community at the end of the retreat...I found myself rejuvenated and refreshed!
 My "office" on the bridge and my explorations of the external geography (which paralleled and revealed my internal geography) led me to produce not one but two songs!  

This earned me the title of "overachiever"!  lovingly bestowed upon me by the rest of the group.

Demo recordings of Barefoot Ballet and The Center Calls have been shared with my patrons as rewards on my patreon page  and are in consideration for a new recording project as well.