Greetings, One & All~
As we approach the summer solstice and the longest day of the solar year, I’m reminded never to let an I love you or a thank you go unsaid. We always think there will be another chance to show affection and appreciation, but sometimes there isn’t. Enjoy every precious moment, and enjoy all the good news in this issue of your A 440 Newsletter!
Teaching Artist of the Month
I’m humbled and honored to share the news that I’ve been selected as the Lifetime Arts Teaching Artist of the Month for June, in recognition of my work with the Creative Aging initiative at the Chandler Downtown Library, where I conducted my Myths & Masks and Planet of Percussion workshops. You can read an interview with yours truly find out more about the award and this excellent national organization at:
Will & Mythic Friends
In a Word
I’ll return to Chandler Downtown Library to complete my workshop trilogy with In a Word on Saturday June 25th from 10-11:30 AM. You can pre-register for this all-genres, multi-age creative writing experience at:
http://tinyurl.com/gta3lyd
What Lies Beyond
The new RCNQ album What Lies Beyond on Canyon Records is being mixed and mastered as we speak, with the goal of a mid-summer release in time for our late summer tour. We’re loving what we’re hearing, and we know you will, too!
Men in Black 4: What Lies Beyond?!
photo courtesy Robert Doyle Photography/Canyon Records
Trialogue Takes to the Air and Lands on the Charts
Since it’s April release, Trialogue has been getting a slew of airplay throughout the US as well as in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada and Australia. At last count, we’ve been played on over thirty shows, with new playlists coming in almost every day from Heart Dance Records.
As reviewers have noted, it is indicative of the eclectic breadth and scope of the album that different songs are being played on New Age, contemporary instrumental, world, fusion, ambient and classical programs.
While we’re genuinely grateful to every single station that plays our music, we’re especially jazzed that three different songs have made seven different playlists on the world’s leading ambient music radio program Echoes, and the album as a whole is charting at #8 on the Echoes Top 25!
Trialogue is also the current Featured Album on Best New Age CDs:
. . . AND is at #23 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100:
http://zonemusicreporter.com/charts/top100.asp
. . . AND this just in (as in, literally just this minute!)
Thought Radio Afterglow Top 10:
http://soundscapes.us/afterglow/playlists/2016/top10-05may.html
You can hear what all the buzz is about and order your copy of Trialogue, download your favorite songs, write your own review, or just give it a listen at:
Forecast: Four More Hot Tunes for TQ
Temenos Quartet will return to the cool confines of Saint Cecilia Studios in early August to complete work on Forecast, the band’s debut album. A limited edition EP of the first six songs was pre-released this spring at a rockin’ Sea of Glass Center for the Arts concert, and we’re looking forward to tracking the final four this summer and getting the complete LP mixed, mastered, manufactured and marketed this fall.
Music as Spiritual Manifestation
Looking down the river and around the bend, the R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman duo will present an evening of “music as spiritual manifestation” at Tara Mandala in Pagosa Springs CO at 8 PM on Saturday July 9th. You can register for this transformational event and learn more about this enlightened community at:
http://taramandala.org/program/r-carlos-nakai-and-will-clipman-in-concert/
photo courtesy Robert Doyle Photography/Canyon Records
RIP Jack Miller
The life and career of legendary engineer Jack Miller were celebrated at the MIM Theater on Memorial Day. Among the many glowing tributes, heartfelt performances, vivid video projections and personal anecdotes that were shared, I was invited by Robert Doyle, President of Canyon Records and producer of this special event, to read the following eulogy I had spontaneously composed upon learning of Jack’s death:
photo courtesy Robert Doyle Photography/Canyon Records
Feeling
In the liner notes for my solo Canyon Records album Pathfinder I refer to Jack Miller as The Sonic Buddha: an unflappable font of wisdom, patience, musicality and technical skill who invariably brought out the best in me, and I suspect in every recording artist he ever worked with, from Duane Eddy to Henry Mancini to the Rolling Stones to R. Carlos Nakai. Jack was the engineer on all but three of the thirty-four albums I’ve recorded for Canyon, and his presence was keenly felt even on that thirty-fourth and most recent one, recorded near the end of his life when he was not able to be physically present in the control room. Jack forgot more than I’ll ever know about the art and science of recording, but he was always willing to listen to my suggestions and consider my requests during the creative process; he never forced his vast and comprehensive knowledge on the artists, rather allowing us to discover on our own that he’d been right all along.
Jack was all about feeling: he didn’t much care how that feeling was achieved, as long as the music felt right when it came back out of the speakers. Of the innumerable examples of this simple yet profound aesthetic I can recall over a quarter-century of recording with Jack, one stands out as the quintessential Miller Moment.
We’d been trying all day without success to find just the right drum sound for a particular song, and even though the studio was beginning to look like the Ethnomusicology Wing of the Smithsonian Institute after a tornado, none of the dozen or so exotic instruments I’d brought in gave us the right feel. Jack got up from the console, walked through the studio and disappeared into a storage room behind the main recording room. After several minutes of rummaging around, he re-emerged with a cardboard carton designed to ship 120 CDs. He handed it to me and said “Here. Play the Sacred Canyon Drum.” I thought he was joking and laughed; but he walked back into the control room, slated the take and said “We’re rolling!” And of course, the Sacred Canyon Drum—Jack’s secret weapon when all else failed—sounded great and gave the song the perfect feel we’d been searching for.
For all his expertise, Jack was one of the most genuinely humble people I’ve ever known. This brilliantly gifted engineer who’d had a stellar seventy-year career that encompassed every known genre of music and garnered Grammys, Gold and Platinum Records, and millions of sales worldwide, kept a CD of a mono mix he’d inadvertently sent to the manufacturer instead of a stereo master tacked to the wall above his mixing console. I suppose it was his way of reminding himself that even genius is fallible.
I visited Jack a couple of months before he died. His mind and body were failing him, but he recognized me and we spent a lovely afternoon weaving fact and fiction into a new chapter of music history. What I remember most vividly is how clear and blue his eyes were: I could tell the old Jack was in there, listening for the feeling. I loved him. I will miss him, as will the music.
Will playing Jack’s Sacred Canyon Drum
Poem of the Month
I thought I’d follow my own advice and close with this Poem of the Month as an example of never letting a thank-you or an I love you go unsaid. It may seem long at first glance, but the lines are very short, so it’s really a pretty quick read. Enjoy!
13
1.
I meant to write
a thirteen-line
anniversary poem
one
for each year
but of course
once I set pen
to paper
the words exploded
from the bare tree
of my mind
a shotgun-startled
murder of crows
too fast
too many
in all directions
to apprehend
so few
2.
Before you
was winter
with you
came spring
and now
in the blue
summer silence
I can think clearly
about the fall
3.
The only poem
worth writing
is the one
one writes
as if it were
one’s last
the one in which
no syllable
is not essential
no thing
not what it is
4.
How then
do I say
without cliché
that love
is a form
of divine madness
in which
the well-being
of the beloved
is more important
than one’s own
how might I write
without melodrama
that I’d have been
dead long ago
if not for you
and so
quite literally
that you are
my life
5.
Less
is more
unless more
is necessary
then less
is nothing more
than laziness
6.
Thus
the question is not
have we done
all we could have
but rather
have we done
what was needed
not
have we named
the ten thousand things
but
have we found our way
back to the three
and to the two
and to the nameless
one
7.
You waded into
this charming wreck
and built
what needed to be built
planted
whatever had a chance
to grow
tore down
that which was
in the way
disturbed nothing
that wasn’t
you raised a gated wall
around our sacred grove
created space
for work
and guests
where there had been
thorns and stones
filled empty cupboards
brought down
cool breeze
into the stifling heat
blew up
the bastion I’d built
painstakingly
around my heart
8.
My way
has always been
to make the best
of what I have
yours
to make
of what you have
the best
the way
lies somewhere
in between
we stroll
that razor’s edge
insouciantly
holding hands
each
balancing
the other
above the abyss
9.
As much as
you’ve re-made it
we both know
this is my paradise
not yours
I’m the lucky rat
who found its way home
to the desert
while you
long to return
to the mists
of Avalon
a verdant sphere
with water
everywhere
a civilized world
with all four seasons
and yet
you’ve stayed
not grudgingly
but with
relentless joy
10.
How does one
express sufficient gratitude
for such a gift
without resorting
to hyperbole
is it enough
to love as best one can
to hold up one’s end
of the bargain
keep fresh roses
in a purple vase
never let a thank-you
go unsaid
make
all that is mine
yours
‘til death
etcetera
11.
This is the part
where two ones
walk off together
into forever
separate and equal
but never alone
parallel lines
converging at infinity
two halves
of a split arrow
rejoining
in the quiver
of the heart
12.
I don’t know
that I believe in
the whole
soul mate thing
but if one has one
you are mine
13.
So
there you have it
the one
who almost got away
returns
with three words
to make of nothingness
a something
nothing can unmake
no need
to repeat them
they are all
there is
© Will Clipman 2016
Wishing one and all a scintillating summer!
If art is creation then teachers are artists who create the future.
~Guillaume Henri
[
Will Clipman
musician • poet • performing & recording artist • maskmaker • storyteller • educator
office: 520.743.1347
mobile: 520.591.0776
fax: 520.743.0650
email: williamclipman@aol.com
website: www.willclipman.com
facebook: www.facebook.com/willclipman
