Back To Banning

Ahhh.

China, done.

I could go on here for about 20 pages about the experience of playing at the International Society of Music Educators conference with my friend and long time collaborator Jason Wampler in our electronic music duo We Can and We Must, but that is for another blog!

Now, after a few days getting settled back in in Minnesota, I am back at Banning. Things have been a bit hectic so instead of doing multiple blog entries I will just summarize the last several days here in one entry so blog time and real time can re-connect.

After a few days organizing my gear, washing cloths, and catching up on emails and phone calls as well as getting over a mean case of Jetlag (I am still waking up in the middle of the night), I finally headed to banning on the 10th (yesterday). When I arrived, it almost immediately began to rain so I set up my tent really quickly, then saw my father off after a quick stop at Toby's for a caramel roll, and then hit the trails. What I realized almost right away was that the rain has even more effects than I thought. First off, I had heard word via a call from my wife on the cell phone that it was supposed to possibly hail and thunderstorm so I hung out by the bathrooms for a bit in case it was true. After it seemed unlikely we would get any hail, I set out on the quarry loop trail which was almost completely dominated this time by the various water features that are not nearly as present when the weather is more dry. I also noticed that the wildlife is much less present in the rain and in general, when it is cloudy out which I did not experience as much during my previous stay. I decided, despite further threatening storms, to hike the trail in its entirety and was rewarded by several additional waterfalls, thunder claps, and even a few freight trains in the distance which made a beautiful slow moving musical structure as I walked through the various terrains.

Today I hiked the trail again with sunny skies but the amount of rain the fell last night left the park a wash with new water features and a very high river which carried much farther than it previously had. I am looking forward to hearing how this new water level and these new features change over the course of a hopefully dry weekend though the forecast does show a chance of showers for the next few days.

Tomorrow the Song Path and though there are no reservations on the books I have had a few people approach my campsite asking about the hike so perhaps I will have a few takers. I guess the fliers in the park worked despite my new beard.

July 19th and last post until I get back

This and the next few posts are ones that I wrote on paper during my stay at Whitewater state park but didn't have web access/time before I left on a two week trip to Beijing where I discovered, not surprisingly, that my blog site was blocked by the government filters there. I have now been back in town a few days and have been catching up on some organization and getting ready for the first performance dates at Banning State Park which begin this Thursday the 12th.


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Now it is the 19th and tomorrow I leave for a 2 week trip to Beijing, China. A slight change of pace I know.

This first 3 weeks have been quite revealing and have taught me a lot about what this whole Song Path idea is. I intend to continue my listening practices in Beijing to keep my ears in shape and will hopefully have some good recordings when I return.

I won't be posting to the blog while in China but will resume after I return on August 4th.


PS: These are my friends in Beijing.

WORL LISTENING DAY

This and the next few posts are ones that I wrote on paper during my stay at Whitewater state park but didn't have web access/time before I left on a two week trip to Beijing where I discovered, not surprisingly, that my blog site was blocked by the government filters there. I have now been back in town a few days and have been catching up on some organization and getting ready for the first performance dates at Banning State Park which begin this Thursday the 12th.

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July 18th 2010: World Listening Day


Today is World Listening Day as declared by the International Society for Acoustic Ecology: an international organization devoted to listening and to preserving and documenting man-made and natural sound environments around the world.

So, since I recently became a member at the encouragement of members who I know and found out about Song Path, I decided I would use this opportunity to participate by bringing some friends of mine and fellow WLP members who lived in the area on a sound hike of Whitewater. We set out in the morning and were accompanied by a group of enthusiasts including Poet James Armstrong, MPR's Marc Sanchez who brought along some recording gear, Videographer and film maker Jason Schumacher, Hans and Nina, and my lovely wife Shannon who surprised the three of us in the middle of our rendition of Johny Cash's "Jasckson" last night at Nye's driving all the way from Chicago to do so! That's dedication.

Though there were some difficulties finding each other at Whitewater and we were running quite late, we finally all set out on a hike in the afternoon shot by Jason and Recorded by Marc. It was my first hike with a large group and though I was a bit nearvous, they were a captive audience and surprised me by at times stopping in places I did not intend to and sometimes lingering longer than I was inclined to. If every group is that into what they are hearing, I will be quite pleased.

After a very interesting hike, Shannon, Hans-Georg, and Nina left and made some noises in the park itself while Marc, James, Jason, and I listened from Inspiration Point. It was an incredible experience to sit and listen to different parts of the valley come together as the sun went down. I also noticed that the wildlife in the park seemed to respond to the man made sounds and once they stopped, we had an sort of "coda" performed by the local wildlife. I hope they weren't noises of displeasure, but as the naturalists seems to think we are not disturbing things too much, I think they are most likely just natural responses to stimulus. I have also noticed that the sun, rain, wind, and mere presence of human beings does seem to influence the amount and type of sound the animals make. I really think the heightened awareness of the space the instruments will bring to audience member is worth the metaphorical disruption the sounds bring. I also found that fellow hikers started to join in at certain moments. It almost made us feel like we all belonged there.

Later, we did a brief interview to use to accent the video document and perhaps to become an audio segment on Minnesota Public Radio and got a great recording of some hawks either mating or fighting. Whatever it was, it was spectacular.

July 16th at Whitewater

This and the next few posts are ones that I wrote on paper during my stay at Whitewater state park but didn't have web access/time before I left on a two week trip to Beijing where I discovered, not surprisingly, that my blog site was blocked by the government filters there. I have now been back in town a few days and have been catching up on some organization and getting ready for the first performance dates at Banning State Park which begin this Thursday the 12th.

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July 16th-17th at Whitewater. We headed out to Whitewater State Park today with a full cooler of food that should be just enough for the three of us (we like to eat). I sit now at our campsite which was saved for us, an overflow site near the visitors center, even though the campsites were all full. Dave Palmquist, who is the park naturalist at Whitewater, has been incredibly helpful as have all the park staff. They have an amazingly calm way of taking care of an incredibly busy park that has recently undergone severe flood damage. They are also all pretty much comedians and a visit to the park office is usually as entertaining as it is informative.

On the way in, we stopped for some blackberries and strawberries which were growing at a local farm and were able to pick them straight off the vines. In Chicago, we would probably pay extra for that privilege, but in this case, at a discount. I love it when things make sense!

After a quick orientation with the park staff and working out some details about dates, times , and starting places, we set out on the Chimney Rock Loop towards Inspiration Point. (for reference, here is a PDF Map of the park). When visiting here last year, I recalled this trail being quite active with both bird and insect life and also recalled that there were some quite dramatic looking ravines just north of the trail and all these features contrasted the sound of the river that the trail follows most of the way to inspiration point. but, as I have found to be true at Banning, looks can be deceiving. Many of the features that appeared to be quite dramatic visually actually yielded very subtly results when sounds were made within them and the wildlife this time seeded to be a bit more subdued than last year. Of course, the difference in animal, namely insect noise, can be attributed to a slightly different season as I was last there in mid September but it was disappointing to find that my assumptions about what I thought would be my trail were in fact wrong. Inspiration point proved to be the exception to this as Nina and Hans-Georg descended the long stairs that lead to the valley below and created a cacophony of sounds that resonated throughout the valley. The valley that Inspiration point overlooks is really a central meeting point of three different river valleys where Trout Run Creek and the Whitewater River conjoin. It was interesting to note that certain higher pitched sounds or those with sharp attacks seemed to resonate not only locally in the depression in which they were created but also in the greater valley which joined all these geological depressions. It was also interesting to note that the sounds which resonated throughout the valley seemed to do so at a higher altitude than the lower sounds.

After leaving inspiration point, we decided to take a detour down Trout Run Creek instead of taking the route I had intended to be the end of the trail which leads back to the south picnic area. We quickly realized that This trail is everything I had hoped that Chimney Rock Trial would be with incredibly diverse wildlife and water features as well as several really interesting wooden bridges. It is far more isolated than Chimney Rock and further from the swimming area which provides a constant din as you approach inspiration point from that side which can be distracting. I nearly immediately decided that I had the trail all wrong and it should start from the south picnic area and first explore this more isolated and intimate path, then end after returning from the end of this trail to inspiration point up the long set of wooden stairs that lead there. I can then give the audience two different perspectives on the trail, one, an intimate exploration from within, and then, after turning the group around, the musicians in the park can start to make noises which will bring their perspective outward and get them to focus on the larger valley that they will eventually perceive in its entirety as they look out from inspiration point.

Or something like that.

But for now, there are burgers and zuchinni to eat, and wine to drink.

Nina, Hans-Georg

This and the next few posts are ones that I wrote on paper during my stay at Whitewater state park but didn't have web access/time before I left on a two week trip to Beijing where I discovered, not surprisingly, that my blog site was blocked by the government filters there. I have now been back in town a few days and have been catching up on some organization and getting ready for the first performance dates at Banning State Park which begin this Thursday the 12th.

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July 15th 2010, Twin Cities


I should spend a little time talking about my friends who visited from Germany today, Hans-Georg and Nina. They are both involved in theater, Hans-Gyorg being the Dramaturg of the Bremen Opera and Nina being a site-specific theater director who does projects around the globe. I have known them for quite some time and met Nina during my time in Krakow, Poland in 1997. Since then we have kept in touch and often times bounced idea off each other as we embarked on various projects so it seemed fitting that they should visit during my prep work. They had in fact, been planning to visit me in Chicago and even though it took them out of their way on their trip from Chicago to New Orleans, they decided to fly up to Minnesota for a few days to see what it was all about.

As you can imagine, I will be putting them to work. But first, I had to show them a bit of the city and even though they were still getting over jetlag, they somehow had the will power to deal with the Mall of America and its many indoor amusement delights including a green roller coaster called the orange streak and shops with names such as "Justice: Just for Girls" and "Cinnamonster" which you can imagine they had a field day with. Then, a trip to lake Nokomis for a swim and dinner with my family which ended with a fantastic Pear Schnapps that they brought from France as a gift to my parents for their hospitality. Good times.

I am so glad that they could make it and look forward very much to getting their perspective on the Song Path. Nina has never been shy about making me and others around her question and dissect their own artistic motivations and I I look forward to seeing their response to what I am doing here now.

Back in the cities.

I returned to the twin cities last night and am now just trying to catch up on some rest and generally reflecting on my experience at Banning. I did not really realize it until I got back here, but the day to day activities in the state park over the course of 5 days has me thoroughly exhausted. Strangely, I did not really feel it while I was in the process. I guess it is kind of like 5 days of keeping up a similar level of concentration as playing a piece of symphonic music for extended periods of time as well as intense hiking that does it. You never feel it while you are in the midst of it, but once it is over and then euphoria wears off, you crash. None the less, it is day now and despite an attempt to take a nap, I am awake so thought I would just share a few things about the experience so far.

I am really pleased with how the week went. I think I came in with a different expectation and memory of what the park looked and sounded like and it took me a couple of days to try to erase my pre-conceptions from my psyche as well as wind down from my usual level of conscious activity in order to really hear what was in front of me. I now realize that the park has even more of a musical shape than I first encountered and that very little has to be added or should I say brought out of the park with human interaction. I actually expected to want to impose more on the park or insert more sound into the natural sound environment but then realized that the park was so active as it was that such an imposition was hardly necessary. I think the balance I have struck should create a profound experience. At least it does seem to for me. I really think the hike takes me into a sort of dream like state that takes me a few hours to come out of and after 5 days of hiking the trail a few times a day I feel it will take me a few days to get out of it completely. I did however feel that the week had a sort of musical arc of its own. day 1-2 just getting settled in and in tune with listening, day 2-3 really working out details and digging in. Day 3-4 fine tuning my listening and getting various perspectives as well as getting out into the community a bit more, and day 5 wrapping up and making final conclusions (as well as getting back to civilization a bit earlier than expected due to rain).

I have to quickly switch gears for Whitewater and am now joined by my friends Nina and Hans Gyorg from Germany who are visiting the states for a month and have graciously agreed to accompany me for a couple of days. It will be nice to have some assistance as whitewater is a much more expansive park and the sound world I need to stimulate is much larger and involves greater distances. I am going to pick up a walkie talkie or two (I guess you need at least two, right?) and do a lot of long distance improvising with them hitting drums for me. Fun!



Now I must shift gears.

The last full day at Banning.

RAIN!

After four days of amazingly good weather and a few near misses, mother nature finally had had enough and dumped a mass amount of rain and unleashed a good deal of thunder and lightning as well. I awoke to the sound of thunder and though I had had a fairly wrestles evening as it was, I decided to get up and pack my things as I was planning to leave at the end of they day anyway. After grabbing a quick breakfast in town, I returned to the park to meet Randy Gordon, the park ranger and naturalist, in order to do a quick tour of the songpath for his final approval but by the time I arrived, the full fury of the storm had broken loose. This pretty much put the kaibosh on our little trip as well as on a preview tour I had planned with a group of school kids at East Central Community Ed. It did give me a chance to go across the street to East Central Community Ed (which is right across HWY 23 from Banning, and meet some of the folks I had been corresponding with leading up to my visit.

After the rain died down a bit, I did what will be the final hike I will take until I return to Banning in August. The rain persisted now and again and added a whole different dimension to the tour. The sound of the rain itself changed in unexpected ways along the path and as it became stronger and weaker, covered and then revealed subtle sounds the were present in the background. This also made the moments where the river was near much more dramatic. It also added to the existing water features and provided a few that had not been present on earlier hikes.

In a conversation I had with Randy earlier in the day while waiting for the rain to die out, we discussed a few issues that they thought of in reflecting on previous descriptions of what I planned to do. First, there are a few places on the trail they were concerned older hikers might have a problem with. I agreed that that could be an issue and we worked out a couple alternate routes that seem to work well. We also discussed the issue of rocks. There are parts of the trail covered in a multitude of loose sandstone and I had originally thought it might be a nice touch to use some of it to make noise but the more they thought about it they thought it might give hikers the impression that it was OK to remove and even throw rocks. We compromised on liming the use of these rocks to one specific location and using them in a way that merely moved them a bit farther down the quarry (not to give too much away) into the shallows of the river. I am lucky to be working with folks that know their parks so well and are enthusiastic about the idea. It would be easy enough for them to just say not to some of my ideas just to err on the safe side but they have been very generous with their time in helping me find solutions that work for artistic purposes while maintaining the integrity of the park itself.

We also discussed the idea of doing a "Serenade to the Quarry" one of they days when I have multiple musicians helping. I should explain. During the Song Path dates. I have a number of musicians who are available at varying lengths of time and there are certain overlaps (tbd still) so at certain times I might have 3 or more musicians joining me. Of course, they don't all need to be on the song path at once as I am striving to keep the path itself quite minimal in its utilization of man made sound (although the park itself was really made by man so in a way, it is all man made sound~~~). Last night at around 6, one of the musicians whom I have mentioned before, Chris Chelgren, came with me on the path and was, as I was at first, really obsessed with seeing how every nook and cranny, pit and valley sounded. What we found was that close up, these features sometimes made disappointing sounds in relation to their visual grandeur. I realized that this was mostly due to the sandstone itself being somewhat porous an therefor, it absorbs sound. We did realize however, that from certain vantage points sound could probably be heard throughout the park, just not when obstructed by the sandstone formations and piles in the park. So we thought it would be great to do an impromptu serenade in the park in which we all just played our respective instruments (flute, violin, viola, and percussion) but at great distances. I have a sort of call and response piece that should work for just such an occasion and once I figure out when we are going to do them I will post it here and other places. This is kind of a fun idea that I think will work easily after a day of song path tours at around 6 or so. Then dinner and drinks around the campfire.

But now, I have to talk a little about last night when I decided I was a little sick of my campfire fare and I went into Sandstone for dinner and drinks at The Gaslight Bar and Cocktail Lounge. I have found that just going in to the most popular looking drinking establishment in any small town is usually immensely fun and fruitful in terms of meeting people. I went in to the bar and thought perhaps that this would be the exception as there was nobody there but me and the bartender and a couple playing pull tabs. But there were some good beers so I sat down and had a Schells Schmaltz Alt, a kind of creamy dark porter from New Ulm Minnesota. Started up a conversation with the bar tender and then a woman of about 55 years walked in and ordered a red wine. As I explained to the bartender what I was doing in the park, she became more curious and eventually asked me if I had visited South East Minnesota. I told her I was doing the project in Whitewater as well to which she responded "I used to work there!". So I asked if she knew Dave Palmquist (the naturalist who I have been working with) and she responded "He was my boss!". Turns out that had she been working there still she would have been the one handling reservations and promotion for the project. She now worked in Indian Mound as a prison psychologist and had some very interesting stories. This conversation eventually involved the whole bar which by this time had grown to around 6 people at its height. They all seemed interested and vowed to spread the word about it. Hopefully I converted a few folks and I know I enjoyed good conversation and good beer. The feeling I had in my head when the thunder woke me up this morning confirmed that perhaps I had one too many (two).

Tonight I return to the twin cities and get some rest until the 16th when I head down to Whitewater State Park early morning to check in with Dave Palmquist and his crew and start this whole process over in a new space. I have to finish my notes and then clear my head. And sleep lots!