Yesterday I had a photo shoot at the National Gallery of Art in DC for the upcoming interview/story with ReadysetDC. We went to two locations, first was the “La Negresse” enormous cut-out by Henri Matisse. The other was this courtyard, which had AMAZING acoustics. I had to do it, I had to play Unabi… Allyson Behnke from ReadysetDC happened to capture the moment:

(The interview with ReadysetDC will be published next Monday, stay tuned for more…)

~ Monday, June 28th ~ 9:00am – 6:00pm ~

~ International Trade Center Amphitheater in Washington D.C. ~

Last week I went to the Gulf of Mexico. As I stood on the beach and watched the ocean, I heard a song in my mind. On June 28th in Washington DC, I will debut this song at the anticipated TEDxOilSpill event.

The song could be seen as a journey in 3 acts. Tempered with sadness, tense mystery, the angered explosions of dread, the courageous calls of warrior tribes… weeping, waiting, hoping, fearing, looking up, leaning forward… I practice the song I heard every day, and with each day its complexities increase. The song swells, contracts and expands, and holds its breath at times. It’s a living creature. Now I just need to give it a name.

Registration for TEDxOilSpill is donation-based. The guest speakers are spectacular, and I am honored to be a part of such a moment. We hope you can join us, and contribute to the solutions, understanding and mitigation of the Gulf Crisis.

For more information, or to follow the official TEDxOilSpill Expedition (comprised of photographers, journalists and filmmakers who are ‘going to the source’ to document a first hand report), visit http://tedxoilspill.com.

Dennis Hopper passed today. Upon thinking about his work, and others who were true poets, I stumbled upon this video of Dennis on The Johnny Cash Show, reading incredible and eternal poem If– by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). These words, and this performance, will indeed stand the test of time.

If you would like to read the poem, or learn more about Rudyard Kipling’s work, visit The Kipling Society.

~ RIP Dennis. Thank you for your work. You are a true, life and blood artist. ~

I was seduced today, three times.

First, by this quote by Caroline Casey:

“May the entire world fall in love with a woman that changes their heart and may that woman be the Earth.”

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Then, by this gem by Julie Daley.

I recently read an except from the book A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody by David Liebman, and wanted to share this with you:

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“Like all forms of communication, music consists of the interplay of patterns and violations of the pattern. Without order, sound is noise. But perfect order conveys no message, either. The C major scale carries little musical information because everyone knows exactly where it leads. It is the unexpected that sings to us, the note out of the blue, F sharp as the fourth of the C. But the unexpected cannot exist independently of the expectations it frustrates. Freedom needs an underlying order for it to sing.

The clearest example of transcendence and the given is the tension between the diatonic harmonies that form the basis of all Western art music through the nineteenth century and the chromatic elements that slowly encroached. In the early days it was termed the conflict between harmonies and invention.

Harmony binds the notes that follow; chromatic invention is the liberating knife. But the knife cuts keeply. There is no stopping point in the logic of the blade as it drives towards the absolute, which is entropy’s mortal chill – the incommunicate, random whiteness of noise.

Looked at another way, harmony is reason, dissonance the spirit of passion. Diatonic structure sustains a person’s sanity against the awful, chromatic knowledge of mortality. But only the chromatic can touch the unconscious and set loose its shattering forces.”

~ From The Best of Jackson Payne by Jack Fuller (A. Knopf, used by permission)