#70—Shelby Blezinger-McCay

Shelby and I sit in the So studio and chat about her life growing up in Texas, 4-H, raising animals, and her percussion trio, Troika.  Shelby is So Percussion’s Operations Director.

Todd and I put aside our differences for an hour long chat about practice methods and solutions.  If you are curious how other folks get music in their head and hands, check it out.  Hope you enjoy!  This is a co-release with www.liquidrum.com

Victor and I catch up in DC in my hotel room and chat a bit of steel drums, a bit of growing up in the Virgin Islands (St. John), and a bit of performance anxiety.  Victor is a one of the best steel drummers in the world.  Please check out out his work and enjoy this podcast.  I really enjoyed the conversation.  www.victorprovost.com

Bill and I talk about his life as a percussionist and his work with Nexus, the percussion group.  Bill’s approach to music making, improvisation, and instrument curation and collecting has always interested me.  Bill is a great guy and a driving force behind what So Percussion does today.  

Dorian and I talk about hot button political topics facing us all today, like online culture, the alt-right, Trump, how we talk to each other, and free speech.  Dorian is a really interesting composer who’s online advocacy has piqued my interest now for years.  His brother Elliot, was a student at So’s summer institute we hold each summer.

Zach and I sit in my living room and chat life, the blues as music, and the blues as a mental state.  Zach is my brother and is a blues musician in Charleston, SC in a band he formed called Sufferin’ Moses.  He’s very good and very authentic.

Richard and I have an open discussion at the So Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton about his work and process as an author and talk about his new book “Crisis in the Red Zone”.  Richard is the author of the groundbreaking book about Ebola, “The Hot Zone.”

Mike and I are old friends from the OSUMB (Ohio State University Marching Band) and we talk about our days during a time pre-youtube/cell-phone videos.  It was a complicated time.  Mike is a brilliant comedian and magician and a bad ass drummer.  We’ll do this again. www.michaelkentlive.com

We sit in John’s staff office and chew the fat about God and Jesus for a good long while.  He’s a smart guy and a great friend to me and my wife.  He’s got a fascinating take on what God is to him and why we do we what we do and we are, fundamentally, as people.  

Take a listen.  We’ll do it again, and next time with whiskey, my friend.

Dan and I sit in his living room and chat about Russia, my mom, and growing up gay in a small town in Ohio.  He’s a linquistics professor at USC with a specialty in Russian, and is a fascinating guy.  I really enjoyed this conversation.

Chris is a jazz fusion guitarist.  We sit in the So studio and talk about his process in approaching the guitar and improvising.  He’s a great player and a good friend of our mutual friend Nelson Dorado, So Percussion’s live sound engineer.  Any friend of Nelson is a friend of mine.  Chris is a great guy and a great player.  Check him out.

https://www.chrisbedward.com

I started off by saying his last name wrong.  I’m the worst.  Chris is a great composer and his percussion writing for Third Coast and Sandbox, Goldbeater’s Skin, is incredible.  Check it out.  We sit in the So studio and chat about practicality and making decisions as a composer and the importance of workshopping your works.  We also both hate what social media makes us think about each other.  So yes, we talked about Trump (a little bit).  It’s worth your time.  Chris is great.

www.christophercerrone.com

 Hoyt-Schermerhorn by Chris Cerrone, performed by Sonya Belaya

Double Happiness by Chris Cerrone, performed by Evan Chapman/Sean McFarland

David and I sit in the So Percussion studio and talk life as a percussionist, growing up as a singer in really good high school church choir, and finding the dulcimer at a renaissance fair as a child.  I had no idea of the history of that instrument, and it blew my mind.  I would have never known.  David is a good friend, colleague, and former student, and is the husband of better half of his marriage, Abby Rix Degge.  He’s a brilliant dude and a really great percussionist.  Check out his work with Meredith Lustig, called The Drivers.

Margarette is a student of theology in Berkeley, CA.  We sit in my hotel room while on tour with So Percussion and talk about advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community and the challenges of how to bring change to institutions, including the church.  I met Margarette and her wife Abby at Grace Lutheran Church in Scarsdale, NY through my wife, Stephanie, the pastor there.  Margarette and Abby are saints and are doing the Lord’s work.  She’s brilliant, so enjoy.  I certainly did.  

Dan is the owner of LA Percussion rentals in Los Angeles, CA.  He’s been supplying So Percussion and California in general with high quality instruments and service for a good while now.  He’s a great pan player as well and he and his wife Abby are two of the West Coast’s biggest percussion advocates and ambassadors.

Adam and I do a book review of sorts on the book called “Einstein walked with Godel”.  We discuss the relativity of time in music and space, though we know (clearly) less about space than we do about music. 

We sit in Larry’s office at the University of Akron and talk about his life in percussion and exposing students to the music of Trinidad and Tobago for the last 40 years. 

Mike and I sit in his teaching studio at Kansas University and talk life, studying percussion, teaching percussion, and I learn the Kansas was a former British colony (not true)

Richard Preston is the Author of The Hot Zone, Panic in Level 4, The Wild Trees, and The Demon in the Freezer.  His work about contagions and emergent viruses is fascinating.  We sit in his studio and discuss his current work about the Ebola virus.

We sit in Joan’s kitchen and chat about her life as a music educator and she shares some great early stories about HER experience teaching the 5th grade Josh Quillen.  She’s one of my heroes.