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By Kathryn, September 22, 2011 3:09 pm

Talent can emerge from anywhere, without warning. It’s a glorious thing, really. Take, for instance, the recent contest hosted by UJAM to find the next singer for the theme of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, a video game to be released later this year. All of a sudden, within a matter of days, there were hundreds of entries from around the Western hemisphere that came from never-before-heard-of singers. Across the board, and especially at the top of the charts, we as listeners were exposed to beautiful voices of people we’d never seen before and probably will never meet. Because the prize of the contest was so inviting – a recording studio experience with Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Simon Landry plus $1,000 and credits in the video game – and because people genuinely wanted to share their voices, the musical stratosphere has just expanded by hundreds of talented vocal cords.

No matter the outcome of the contest – who won, who lost, who got the most votes, who got the least – the experience was moving. Not only has UJAM established itself as a go-to place for music creation, sharing, and engagement in social spheres; but we have also witnessed in yet another instance the far-reaching grasp of musical talent. I’d venture to say that more than a few people were given smiles on their faces (and in their ears) when they stumbled across the UJAM leaderboard or were forwarded links by their friends asking for votes.

When people are given a way to share their talent, wonderful things can happen. The ripple effect of all that positive energy from one microcosmic example of the power of music, and the human desire to gather pride for their creativity and energy, extends farther than we can know. What a nice thing to sit back and think once in a while that your talent, whatever it may be, is appreciated by people you’ll never see and in turn a credit is given to your bank of self-gratitude, if you’ll take it. So it’s worth sharing, isn’t it?

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By Kathryn, July 25, 2011 8:57 pm

It’s one of those things that has plagued me since Day One of this particular blog, and correspondingly since Day One of my conscious life, I suppose. Verbal communication comes not as a natural display of thoughts to me, but more often as a cumbersome hurdle. Musical communication, on the other hand, is much more natural – after all, no one can blame me if they don’t understand exactly what I’m trying to say in my improvisations, because I have the comfortable shield of musical abstract expressionism behind me. So, even with my own improvisations on the piano, I always have at least the appearance of control of thought. And often, I think it’s a more pure form of thought – scattered, yes, but that’s precisely how my brain is, anyway.

Back to the point. I’ve set myself up with a challenge: write this blog post from start to finish without major editing, and without stopping for hours to contemplate life in the middle and whether the post is even worth publishing in the end. Just go with it. After all, one of my favorite quotes, courtesy of Brian Andreas, goes something like that:

If you hold on to the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you.

I’ve begun to think that writer’s block is not only a symptom of my anxieties about my effectiveness at verbal expression, but also of my naive and egotistical assumption that millions of people may stumble across my words at their most imperfect moment and forever label me as a babbling idiot. Then I remember some of the wisest words I’ve been told: it’s really not all about me.

More than that, it’s not all about control. It’s not about controlling every word that escapes your mouth or hand. That’s exactly what cripples me: the very control I seek over the output of my thoughts prevents the output of my thoughts. It’s a perplexing situation that, as many of you would have noticed for the duration of this blog, has hindered my ability to communicate to you some of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had.

So I’m hereby banishing writer’s block – perhaps it’s silly to think I can go at it cold turkey, to abolish it without further adieu (yes, that was an intentional substitution). But if I don’t set high goals, I’ll never try to reach them at all.

~*~

Let me tell you a story about something that I learned in Mumbai, India. I was walking along the street when I arrived in Borivali, a town on the outskirts of the main city, and needed to make a copy of the key to the apartment I was staying in. I was guided by my wonderfully gracious host, Anuraag, who led me to a thin young man stationed on the side of the road. This man would have been rather unassuming, were it not for the large, antiqued cart jingling with thousands of keys behind which he sat. We proceeded to watch as he whittled a duplicate key from Anuraag’s original with nothing but his hands and a couple primitive-looking tools. From the technologically-advanced world in which I didn’t even realize I was fully accustomed came the shock of seeing how people make do without the crutches of machines that stabilize us – us Americans, Western Europeans, et cetera – in our daily lives.

I didn’t fully understand it then, but I do now. There is nothing hindering me but the thought of hindrance. No machine existed in Borivali to copy keys more efficiently than this thin man with his aged tools, and so he operated as effectively as he has for, presumably, many years.

Writer’s block is something I know because it’s a term I learned and therefore applied to myself. Hypochondriacs would have little to fear if they didn’t know what the medical dictionary contained.

Ignorance may really be bliss, after all. Not that I would trade my intelligence for it, though – my brain is far too delightfully complex for me to ever dream of abandoning.

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By Kathryn, July 13, 2011 8:27 pm

The question “What is music?” has interested me since, well, I began begging for piano lessons at age five. Twenty years later, I find myself without a consistent answer to this question.

The definition of music, to me, depends on its context. Sometimes, playing the piano is the clearest expression of my soul – in those moods, the music I improvise on the keys acts as a communicator to whomever I so choose to speak with … even if it’s just myself. Other times, when preparing for a jury or composing four-part chorales for counterpoint class, the piano has served as a tool for theoretical analysis, and the music therefore as an intellectual adventure.

Many people use music as a background track while they’re working, or relaxing. I’ve never been able to do this successfully. First of all, this is because most of the work I’ve done in my life directly involves music and therefore often requires a soundtrack requiring focus and attention, whether in my head or on paper. As a probable direct result of this first point, I find even in moments of non-musical endeavors, when most people can selectively tune out popular music as a pleasant drone accompanying various activities, I’m stuck analyzing the chord progressions or compositional style and critiquing the performer on his or her interpretation or stylistic decisions, rendering me incapable of ever hearing music as background, as secondary to the forefront of my focus.

I find this to be one of my life’s greatest blessings. Sure, I’m sometimes disheartened by what I wholly consider to be talent-lacking artistic creations (dare I say undeserving of the categorization of “artistic”?) blaring through radios across the world. But I also see the fallacy of my own elitism in purporting to have a superior perspective over such attempts at music. At least I can admit this, right? I do, after all, have twenty years of emotional, academic, practical experience studying what must be one of the most difficult-to-comprehend features of human life on this planet. Music, its origin and its concomitant intersections with realms ranging from quantum physics to religious sociology, has got to be one of the most complex and intricate creations we can claim. And I readily admit I’m nowhere close to understanding it in all its complexity. Musical history has produced brilliant scholars, and it’s a field that I hope will remain eternally. If anyone ever supposed they understood music in its greatest abyss of unknowns, there would be no joy in that. No, I far prefer the reality that music is one of those things we’ll never fully understand, only scratch the surface of, in whatever capacity brings us the most gratification during our brief tenure here.

Which brings me closer to the point of this blog post. If music in itself is so fuzzily explained, what happens when we compound it with further designations? Does the blossoming study of ethnomusicology shed clearer light on music? Does studying musicology ease the burden, at least in our minds, of trying to understand the whole world that is music?

You would think that with each additional prefix or suffix glued to the study of music, music itself becomes more difficult to explain. But I don’t think that’s true. These designations are, on one hand, attempts to create specialization and categorization of a field that otherwise would require the entire foundation of the planet’s academic knowledge. On the other hand, they are direct examples of how we as humans have learned to increase knowledge by multiplication. The more we know, the better, right? (That, my friends, will be a blog post in itself, someday…)

On ad admittedly nerdy side note, I’m also quite pleased seeing that the balance of “music” when flanked by its two most-oft-added terms makes for three consecutive five-word beauties:

Ethno: a combining form meaning “race” or “culture” or “people”

Music: art, joy, sound waves, emotional expression. Still working on this one…

Ology: a branch of science or knowledge

But, back to the point.

Music is a great role model for many things, one of them being that the more we learn about each of its intricacies and collisions with other fields, the better we will be equipped to understand the world we live in. Music is history, music is cultural anthropology, music is sociology, music is physics. I’m not advocating that everyone re-matriculate into college to get degrees in musicology, and yes, I know that I’m quite biased in favor of the study of music. Proud to be. More importantly, though, I am intimately aware of how much better I understand the people I’ve met in Mumbai, India; Lusaka, Zambia; and Beijing, China, because I am a musician. Because when verbal language barriers, cultural disparities, and physical appearances blockade others from having a meaningful conversation, I have been able to have one. Music is a link to human experience, the human condition, past, present, and future. If you understand the music of your own country, you’re ahead of the game. If you understand the music of someone else’s, you are a cultural ambassador. I’d like to be both.

So, what is music? My cop-out answer would be to say “it’s everything.” But it’s even more than that. It’s a way to uncover secrets of the world that can’t be discovered through the other branches of study, it’s a way to make more intricate our understanding of ourselves and the world. It’s something some of us just want to listen to, others want to perform, and still more just want to study and write about… and any combination of those three. In all cases, there’s a commonality: music is something we use, something humans before us created to be used and enjoyed and humans ahead of us will never cease to use and enjoy.

But music has more uses than we sometimes realize. More than a background track for the working woman, a workout mix for the soccer team, a study in sixteenth-century counterpoint for the budding music scholar. Finding the uses we overlook, and highlighting the value of what must seem to some like ludicrously lofty dreams… there are less rocky paths, but they’re not for me. Music is not static. Music is a tool for progress. That is the quest that began for me twenty years ago, and will hopefully last many sets of twenty years more, if I am so lucky.

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By Kathryn, May 6, 2011 11:32 am

I used to be quite bothered when I came to my own site and realized how long it had been since I’d written anything. But, instead of dwelling on the preposterous notion that I can summarize what’s happened in the past year in any degree of eloquence, I’ll start with an update on what I’ve been doing for the past six months since settling in to San Francisco. Other details will fall into place as I revisit this site to update those who can remember the lengthy web address here, or happen to stumble upon it while searching for music, the arts, collaboration, international travels, et cetera.

I found out about a company whose mission is essentially to democratize the creation of music worldwide. No, I’m not the one who founded the company – funny, though, that the mission is so similar to my own ideas of integrating music into the lives of creative people around the world and finding a channel through which to express it all, right? The company is called UJAM. I convinced the leadership of the company, which is based in Bremen, Germany, that it would be necessary to have someone in the US taking care of business. Thus, the San Francisco office was founded and is run by yours truly. I work with an incredible team of engineers – albeit, across the ocean from me – and I can’t imagine having found a more ideal professional position coming out of a year of travels and research on the diplomatic potential for music and the arts.

Not only is the high level goal of the company something I align very closely with, the actual product – a cloud-based platform for music creation that algorithmically syncs your input with logical chords and incredible-quality background styles – is something I’ve become completely hooked on. I sing for hours into the computer and watch as it produces chords and styles that I get to manipulate and share with friends. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that my job is not only to play with UJAM all day, but to monitor its reception by our growing user base and brainstorm new business development initiatives while performing analytics and creating user surveys.

Yes, I love my job. And I know that’s rare at my age, in my position. Just look at how the odds were stacked: recent graduate, knock #1 (after all, it is widely recognized that new graduates, in their first jobs, will find themselves unsatisfied and thus begin the conventional path of job-hopping until they find something enjoyable and sustainable). Recent graduate with a music degree? Knocks #2, 3, and 4. Everybody talks about how tough it is to find a job as a musician. Well, I wouldn’t trade that degree for the world. Not only has music been my passion since I was four years old; I’ve also never been the type to listen to the people who say that it’s tough to find a job as a musician. I just think many musicians, when they begin the search for a job, suddenly lose sight of their own greatest talent: that they have to be more creative than other people in finding one. Especially if the orchestra seats are filled, the conducting positions taken, the professorships unavailable. Musicians may stop there and think – so, what else is there? Quite simply, a lot. There are about a million things musicians can do that we don’t give ourselves credit for, and thus never try. As I’ve realized the plethora of opportunities in front of me because of my training as a musician, I’ve embarked upon a quest to enlighten other musicians that the tunnel isn’t so small, and the opportunities not so few. I’m not sure how many of them believe me, yet. But that won’t stop me.

So, here I am in San Francisco, loving what I do, and often reminiscing on the path that brought me here. I never could have predicted it, and yet it’s worked out just right. I have this feeling about things in life: that the right thing works out. “Luck,” as my mom has always told me, “is just preparation meeting opportunity.” Of course, there’s beauty in chaos, and chaos itself is undeniable. But somehow, I just feel like if you’re prepared in life, true to something innate about yourself, you’re not going to go wrong. No matter how much chaos comes your way.

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By Kathryn, August 16, 2010 5:47 pm

Poem I

Kathryn Tierney Moreadith

—–

Push comes to shove, this story of

How she has been astounded

Forced to the brink of how she thinks

And how her dreams abounded.

–

Take notice now the rule of how

Rhythms must keep changing

She learned this from music’s own drum

Heard its own arranging.

–

She’d seen a lot in worlds that fought

The very thought of sight

She’d heard a few sounds that were new

As she prepared for flight.

–

And so aware she was of ‘there’

An idea, a fear.

Each place she’ll go, hope that she’ll know

How to value the ‘here.’

–

Doubtful is it if she’d the wit

Ever to play this game.

And life, for sure, has done to her

What school could never tame.

–

Beginning small, a whisper’s call

Pain spoke to her at night

Which soon had grown more than she’d known

How to attempt to fight.

–

When down she fell under the spell

Of loneliness inset

To mother’s keen advice, she’s seen

She will remain in debt.

–

She’d stand again and think of when

Mom said to her in need

“You’re doing it, don’t you forget.”

Little engine, indeed.

–

With each small struggle won, she’d shrug

“I’m tougher than I thought.”

But frailties too, no fewer few

Made she the thing she sought.

–

“How’s that?” they’d ask, “a simple task:

Not hard to just be you.”

Misled you are, though not so far

From where she started, too.

–

For how’d she know just where to go

When she lost track of she?

But soon she’d see that was only

The momentarily.

–

When for a while her sunshine smile

Feigned that all was okay

As sadly she kept asking why

The end was not that day,

–

It is all right, she’d say with might

The best we can, we do.

And when you live with much to give

Things will be taken, too.

–

So long pain stayed as a parade

Tried to tear down her wits.

But though “You’re weak!” others did speak

She’d never call it quits.

–

She’d have to laugh at her own gaffe

Of trying to previse

Just when she would know when she should…

Such notions can be lies.

–

Answers were left the prize of theft

Questioned to no avail.

Or was that act the very tact

Allowing for this tale?

–

Now, looking back, though there’s a lack

Of clear and manifest,

She did not miss the point of this

In ways, she’s found her best.

–

When what she earned from what she learned

Was oddly unforeseen

She really saw that life would draw

Hands that could sweep her clean.

–

But only in the event when

You let its grasp conceal

What you have built, favoring guilt,

Will life venture to steal.

–

When what was taught and what she thought

She felt as different things

She realized what she’s most prized

Are all these ponderings.

–

What brings her to that which is true

Without far lands to roam?

When in her ears new songs she hears

That’s how she’ll know she’s home.

—–

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By Kathryn, June 7, 2010 7:23 am

The ‘end’ of my fellowship came and went more quickly than I can comprehend. Just three weeks ago, I was arriving in Zambia, where I stayed with an incredible family in Lusaka. My lack of extensive travel in Africa had led to a notion of quite exaggerated exoticism pertaining to most African countries. When I arrived in Lusaka, I noticed the superficial non-differences first. I found that I didn’t stick out much, as there are many ‘muzungus’ (white people) living in the area. In communicating, I found that everyone spoke English and I had no trouble conversing with anyone. Then, I found myself surprised at the ease in forming relationships: I met people who made me feel as if we’d only lived around the corner from each other for years. The trip surprised me in musical ways, too. I sat down with musicians I barely knew and jammed, in what I affectionately refer to as the “ZamJam” session. The Sakala Brothers, well-known throughout Zambia and from their performances in Europe, wrote a song for me, which we worked on over the course of three days while in Lusaka. Evelyn, a guitarist, vocalist, masseuse, jewelry-maker, and my host in Lusaka, shepherded me around the city and introduced me to The Sakala Brothers. My six days in Lusaka were groundbreaking, in that preconceptions were shattered, music was made, and friendships cemented. Then, I was on a plane to London, to bookend my fellowship by concluding it from where I started. Only there for three days, I felt a strong sense of reflection and contentment, being so much farther removed from the experiences of the beginning of the fellowship than mere months would seem to allow.

I’m not the only Keegan Traveling Fellow, as you know. Not only this past year’s second fellow, but every fellow prior to the two of us, has learned something in ways no one could have convinced us before leaving. I second the realization that I did not accomplish everything I set out to accomplish this year. Instead, I accomplished something much greater: life. It wasn’t the beginning of my life or the end of my life, though at times I felt both of those emotions. I’ve learned that, even upon returning to the US, where I am now comfortably secure knowing that I will not be turning around tomorrow to travel to Africa, Asia, or Europe, I am beginning to feel the next phase of this fellowship: this is far from over. The traveling may be finished, at least for a while, but the learning, in many ways, has just begun.

Shortly, I will begin a series of blog entries which I hope will give you an idea of the kind of learning that will affect me from here forward. More than that, the entries to come will shed light onto the action I plan to take moving forward, which will illuminate one of the most impactful lessons I have learned this year, and one that I am better learning how to put into practice: You can talk until the end of the day, but what’s left is action.

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By Kathryn, May 17, 2010 2:27 pm

See the new tab titled “Inspiration” for the beginning of a collection of meaningful writings and works I’ve received from others. I’ll venture to say that the first entry is sure to satisfy-it is incredible.

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By Kathryn,

I told you this was coming, when on my last day in Sydney I mentioned coolly that I had attended one of the most innovative concert programs I can remember. Now, I’ll explain myself.

While in Sydney, I went to a performance at the Sydney Opera House by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, directed by Richard Tognetti. The program, “Bach and Beyond,” intrigued me with its very title. Richard Tognetti’s introduction informed the audience that the program would not stick to the rigid chronological order of the composers, nor even of the printed program itself. Tognetti set the stage by stating that J.S. Bach rarely traveled physically, but through musical forms he has remained an unsurpassed traveler. So, how far beyond Bach will you go, ACO? I wondered. I assumed it would be like any other reputable orchestra’s concert: a suitable interpretation of old masterworks in tasteful, if a bit blase at times, style.

But the concert blew me away. It began with Stravinsky’s “Elegy and Polka” — except the chamber orchestra reversed the order, playing the Polka first, followed by the Elegy. An innovative move, and a nice way to start the program. Then came Bach’s Missa Brevis in G minor (BWV 235). Within the Missa Brevis, after the Kyrie, we heard Arvo Part’s “Summa.” Then, between the alto’s and tenor’s arias later in the Missa Brevis, we heard Schoenberg’s “Litany” from String Quartet No. 2. By intertwining Part, whose musical language draws heavily on that of Bach’s, and early Schoenberg, which is far more tranquil and accessible than the music of his later period, with Bach, the audience was effectively eased into a concert of contemporary music without the typical angst surrounding such a concert. The blend of classical and contemporary, and the innovation in programming this concert, was astonishing and refreshing. The second half represented both the Motet (“Lobet den Herrn”) BWV 230 and the Cantata (“Wo gehest du hin?”) BWV 166 by Bach, with a piece by living British composer Diana Burrel (“Das Meer; das so gross und weit ist, da wimmelt’s ohne Zahl, grosse und kleine Tiere”) sandwiched in between. Again, the audience was cushioned in comfort with the music of Bach while being presented with the more challenging music of Burrell, but this time without any fancier tricks.

Perhaps the receptiveness to this concert was due in part to the culture of artistic innovation in Sydney. Perhaps many in the audience didn’t fully recognize what happened. Not everyone reads the program, anyway, right? Regardless, however, the imagination to create such a program and the audacity to confront the rigid structures that have bolstered classical music’s elitist status is something to be recognized and appreciated. Maybe this will set a new tone for classical music programming in the twenty-first century, as orchestras and audiences realize that music doesn’t have to be confined and dated, because music can transcend time.  Hopefully more often from now moving forward, more of us–musicians and music lovers alike–will be bold enough to let that happen.

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By Kathryn, May 14, 2010 8:47 pm

Today marked the Commencement Activities for the Vanderbilt University Class of 2010. Which means it has been exactly one year since I graduated from college. It’s hard to believe how quickly a year passes, and at the same time, how much can happen in so short a time. The past year has, to use a phrase that is both cliched and self-evident, changed my life. I wrote a piece several years ago for an incoming class of first-year students at Vanderbilt, called “Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore…The First Day of Class.” The piece was meant to evoke the anxieties of the first day of class, the excitement and the simultaneous angst. I was reminded while writing the piece of how I felt entering college, leaving my home in North Carolina, and embarking on a journey whose outcome I could not yet see, but had been vividly aware of for the duration of my conscious existence. I knew myself as a communicator, whose most comfortable medium was music.  What I did not know was what I would be driven to do with that knowledge during my four years at Vanderbilt. I didn’t know how far I would be pushed, challenged, and encouraged to make something out of what I had within me. To question and clarify the core of my being, to make my individuality an active declaration instead of just a statement, a value instead of just a trait. And I wasn’t fully able to see all of what Vanderbilt gave me a chance to do, until I left.

I saw the Keegan Fellowship as a chance to explore the world and pursue my dreams, an investment from people who supported me to make something happen on my own. But it has always been much more than that, and I’m beginning to understand the deeper purpose of this opportunity. It has been a challenge to discover what dreams are made of and how to fortify their innate fragility with nothing but your mind. What the purpose of making an identity for yourself is, and whether it’s a path more rarely followed than most of us realize. What the purpose of life is, when you’ve seen its very basic elements confronted, whether wasted or cherished, celebrated or taken for granted, by the world right in front of you.

I was thrown out of Kansas, out of comfort, out of certainty, when I left Vanderbilt. Willingly, excitedly, with passion and fervor and a comfortable security in my abilities. And I found very quickly that life outside the structure of a community of automatic support would require tools that I wasn’t immediately sure I possessed. And I’d like to think that the people who have made possible what I’ve experienced over the past year knew that would happen. That they saw in me an openness to be affected by the world that some may call naivete, but which they saw as the very avenue through which I would come to learn some of the most valuable lessons this life can offer.

So, on the one year mark of my graduation from a place that I came to love as intimately as a second home, I want to thank the people who made what I am doing possible. Because I’m not stuck in a job I resent, nor am I entrenched in a graduate program that isn’t perfect for me. Thank you to the people who have seen me through one of the greatest challenges of my life, and will stand by me to see the adventures that abound because of it. Thank you to the institution that has supported me in countless ways, and to the role models who have shown me the heights I will seek to reach. I have been given, and I have thankfully taken, the chance to do what the deepest passions of my heart dictate. A chance to see if I can turn the communication I so often practice through music into more than just practice. Into life, and being. To find, create, or discover a language that will pave a new path of diplomacy between worlds riddled by confusion and misunderstanding. But most importantly, to see if, when everything around me challenges who I think I am, I can still find me. That’s the task Vanderbilt has bestowed upon me, and has, along with many others, given me the tools to conquer.

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By Kathryn, May 5, 2010 5:05 am

It’s my last day in Sydney. In fact, I’m at the airport as I write this. After what I thought would be a mere two weeks in the land down under–or what I’ve come to know as the land whose motto is “No worries” and where people say “How are you going?” instead of “How are you doing?” which I find quite fun and charming–I’ve now spent a month exploring Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, and Katoomba. Admittedly, the vast majority of my time has been spent in the cosmopolitan, forward-looking, artistically rich, architecturally splendid, simultaneously relaxed and bustling city that is Sydney. I learned recently that Sydney has been added to the list of major fashion hot spots, now being one of the stops for some of the world’s premier fashion designers and their shows. Beyond that, I’ve witnessed first-hand some of the most masterful programming in a symphonic concert I may ever experience. And I’m going to leave you with that bait until I have time to sit down and write out that entry. It’s coming soon.

In Cairns, I tested my wits and traveled to the Great Barrier Reef. Not for snorkeling, either. As a certified SCUBA diver, I simply could not pass up the chance to dive on one of the world’s wonders. And wonderful it was. I remember looking to my side and seeing the reef skyrocket to the surface of the ocean, passing under the dive boat amidst a school of fish, and thinking “Is this really happening?” It was marvelous. I got a taste for the artsy, quirky culture in Melbourne, and as I’ve already written, experienced an all-too-relaxing retreat in Katoomba, the heart of the Blue Mountains.

There is so much more to write, and write I will. But I wanted to be sure that, before I take off, I concluded my stay in Australia with a respectful tip of the hat, and proper wave goodbye. More coming soon, my friends. No worries!