Sonoma Sounds. Episode 6--Bonus. Kelly Gray

mhm. Mm. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Nancy Hayashi Bara. Welcome to Snowmass Sounds. Thank you, Dan. Hello. Although what did we just hear? This was Deputies, Leo's lawyers. It

was based on a painting by Antoine Watteau, embarkation to Cythera, which is the birthplace of Venus. Okay. And not being a piano player myself that did look kind of technically demanding, with a lot of crossed hands going on. Is that a fair assessment? It is a

fair assessment. And the thing is, you know, I performed this back in college so over 20 years ago, and, you know, I still revisit it because there's still things that I could make better. And you know. So what is your musical origin story? Well, because my

sister played piano. I wanted to play piano because I wanted to be just like her. But it was actually my brother who showed me how to read music. He was the first one who taught me how to read. But as a kid, I loved watching liberation.

I'm on TV and I used to put on all my costume jewelry and I'd sit in front of the TV and I'd go and watch liberality and my mom would say, Nancy, you'd like to watch Judy Barazi? I said yes. She says, Do you want to

be a famous pianist? No. I want to be gay. Just kidding. No, but, um, I just loved watching him. I just love you. Just looked so happy playing piano. And, um, I never knew that it was going to be something that would be with me for

the rest of my life. So two siblings also played it. Sounds like did your parents play? My mom used to play. She played back in Japan and then, you know, more happened. So he didn't play anymore. And then she married my dad, who was also Japanese.

But he was He was born in Washington state. So, um, she used to play, and then my sister still plays my brother, just He just learned how to read on his own. So it was just something he liked. Mhm. He doesn't play now. Okay. Two brothers,

one sister, but And was all the instruction in the home? Was it like a strictly a family affair? Did you get like a teacher from outside? No. I was lucky enough to have a teacher. Yeah, both my sister and I was studied with a woman named

Helen C. Ana, and this was in Gardena, California, Southern California, and we studied for years, and there was always a lot of fighting back and forth with Mom between me, not practicing enough. So she says I should quit and then me wanting to quit and then

not wanting to quit. And there was all this back and forth. But I just stuck with it all through high school and what brought you to a north to cinema? Well, originally had gone to college at Cal State Long Beach, and it was a very big

campus, and I was I was actually an interior design major, Which is pretty funny because I'm terrible at putting two colors together. Yeah, but I was also an art major. So anyway, backing up, I was at a Long Beach state for about a semester, and I

told my dad I said, uh, it's kind of big. I'd like to go to a smaller school and Dad said, Oh, why don't you check out some of the state? And I was like, I don't want to go to some hick town Podunk School, and he's

like, Let's just go drive up and see it and we go over the Qatari grade and just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And, you know, we got to the campus and it was just beautiful. And in my mind, I'm thinking I want to live

here forever. I want to live here forever. But of course I'm a teenager. So when dad asks me, he goes, What do you think? And I was like, It's okay just because I was a stupid teenager. But, you know, I just loved it and, you know,

comparing the two like, would you rather live in LA or Sonoma County? Yeah. So you did you continue to study art as well, Then when you came up to Snow Mistake. Yeah. Actually, I was only going to study art. I wasn't even going to study music,

so I was an art major. I think maybe for semester before I became a music major, I'm not sure, but I remember they were having auditions for the music program, and I was on the phone with my friend Steve. And he goes, Do it, Do it,

Do it. I said No, I can't do this. This is serious. This is like college music. I can't audition for this. And let's just do it. Just do it. And so I did. And they took me. Yeah, it was pretty lucky. Yeah, I majored in art

and music at cinemas and the kind of art you do. If I recall, it's printmaking. Animation is a variety of stuff, right? Yeah. And when I was an art major at Sonoma State, I always wanted to work on both at the same time or have them

work together. But the departments are physically across campus, and they never really, you know, had this interdisciplinary field to them. And so I just had to wait until I could do it on my own for them to meet. But I was always so busy as a

pianist. Well, things just I would come home just exhausted from, you know, eight hours of playing or no accompanying people and things like that. And I was just too tired to do anything creative. And how would you have liked to combine the two? Like if you

could go back in time and change their curriculum? Like what What would that look like? I was always a big fan of Laurie Anderson and, um, does somebody who did performance art and, you know, worked a lot with her, her graphics and then her her music

as well, emerging them and, you know, doing things like projections and working with a different kind of sound space and, you know, with different bills and and things like that. But just also getting students to kind of cross pollination is like with the artists during JVC's

time where the poets, painters and the musicians would hang out and and they'd influence each other and with works that were like, You know, So if you think about Leah, Joy was, It's kind of like the first incidents of, like, here's fan fiction, but it's based

on a painting rather than a series. And, you know, I just really would would have liked that whole thing where we could just talk to each other and figure out what we think about art and think of. Yeah, so that's what I would have envisioned. But

I mean back then, doing things like projections was, it was cumbersome. It was hard to figure out these kinds of things. I mean, nowadays, it's just so easy to make things mix. And, um, with these different art forms that you practice. Do you find the creative

process to be different? Or is it all flowing from the same place for you? Definitely from a similar place, I mean, but, like with things like piano, there's that time you have to spend on the keys, you know, just hours alone in the practice room, just

crafting every single phrase and hoping that when you're performing it in front of people and you get supremely nervous, But it still comes out like that, it's still like what you're wanting to, you know, have them here. It's an important thing. It's it's very but well,

for instance, like playing piano. I always imagined that the audience is actually they're making that music with you. They're part of this music, making you do this certain amount of work. But then, once it's out there with people, it's like they're the musician as well. So

when you're trying to tell this story or trying to create these images, if you are successful, then everybody's making these images. Whether they're the same image or a bunch of different ones together. And that's the That's a really, really fun, fun thing. And then when I

But when I write, you know, when I'm writing a story to animate or something like that. Similar point is that there's just always this connection to you know what I really want to say or what I really feel about something. I guess that would be the

similar place that it comes from. And did you want to show us one of your animations? Okay, I'll show an animation process. Okay, so this is the latest one that I'm working on. It's called the Walk, and it usually starts with storyboard a basic story board.

So these are all little cut up index cards with a little time stamp on there, showing, like when about this is going to happen or when something else is going to happen, things like then I go into a little bit more of a rougher animated Mm.

Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. So something like that, and then it becomes more of a realized thing. Okay. And so do you. Do you Handra, Or do you use a right? An illustrative software with with the pen. I know, I know some artists will do both or transfer

one to the other. Yeah, definitely. It's a mix of both, whichever one gets me from point A to point B. Um, I use a lot of programs like I use Flip a clip, which is a pretty cheap animation app. Um, and then I put things together

in Adobe Premiere Pro. But I also use Adobe fresco, and then sometimes I'll use this construction paper and an exact tonight. Uh huh. Or pen and ink. Yeah, it's just whatever I'm going for. So part of this it belongs to the series of stories about animals

that just have that kind of woodcut feels so returning to my art roots as a printmaker, just really liking that feeling of shadow puppetry just a little bit more simple in shape that would cut look, And can you tell us about those stories? Um, when I

did actually for the Noma County Library when they had the open call, it was about a crow and um is about the birds just catching all the rain before it fell to Earth. It's during a time of drought, but I wrote it actually, before we were

faced with this, you know, predicament that we're in now. Um, so that's online. I'll share a link with that. It's good to look at, but this walk, the one in the walk, is about a dog who's just in love with a walk. We usually think about

certain kinds of of love, but we never think about a walk. I mean, a love. That's an activity just like being out, being in nature, just loving existing. And I noticed that I was on a walk the other day and I wasn't even seeing what was

around me. Everything was just I was just thinking constantly about what I was going to write, what I was going, what I had to do. Everything. And so my eyes were just just looking internally. I didn't even see this beautiful path that I was on. I

didn't see them or I didn't see the trees. You didn't walk into one. Did you know I didn't. But, you know, I just noticed that I wasn't really looking. I wasn't really there. You know, everybody talks about being present, that sort of thing. And I think

it was one of those realizations where, yeah, you just get so bombarded with input constantly. And that's how you end up living mhm. Sometimes I think about things like Is classical music worth it anymore? Because it takes so much work to do. But it also makes

you focus for a longer time than so many other things. You know, like so many other songs. Maybe last, like, three minutes, five minutes or even less, right? But when you have to let when you listen to classical music, it takes you on these threads that

just last a little bit longer and and keep your focus from wandering so much I think we need that kind of is like stretching. Stretching our attention span is like yoga for your brain. And, you know, it's like, Well, what do we need a longer attention

span for? It's like, Well, I think life requires the longest, you know, attention span requires you don't have to. You don't have to pay attention and you can just kind of go through. But it would be nice if people participated. So, um, do you so like,

if you're in that headspace, you're going for a walk? You're thinking about a story that you're going to draw and animate. Do you have a soundtrack in your head at the same time? Well, the music that was in that little clip it was something that I

had written back in in college but reworked and rearranged for different instruments. And, you know, it has that pace of tempo, walk and of a dog walking. And what's important to what's important to a dog is not necessarily important to us. Or, you know, I don't

know what they think, really, but barely. They're always like their attention is always focused on What do I smell? What do I want to go to, um, but just taking things in, as I normally don't you know, normally, walking is just functional, like I'm getting there.

And then sometimes when I'm walking with people, they feel like they need to always talk, need to always fill the space. It's like you don't always have to do this. We can just be. But violence is always a little bit awkward and uncomfortable. We could try

that out right now. Actually, if you want just like 10 minutes um, now we're going to have unintentional did it. Um, So these stories are original. They're not inspired from an earlier source Or are they? Well, they're just original. And with music, Do you do original

music this? Well, yes. Yeah, they just It's like that thing that I'd always wanted in the art department. I feel like they've always gone together. Now I have the chance to put them together. And I think that's one of the upsides of this whole situation of

remote learning. Because I work at the junior college and we've been doing everything remotely, except for this semester, That really shifted my focus. Well, it got me to be able to learn different kinds of things because I had to Yeah, in order to keep doing the

job. But on the you know, like I said, on the plus side, it allowed me to finally do these things to bring the art and the music together. And so you're a staff member rather than faculty, right? Right. Yeah. And you work as in a company?

Yes. Is that correct? Accompanist and a vocal coach. So, in order to be faculty, you actually have to have a master's or higher. Okay? Since I only have a bachelor's staff. And what is being in a company is to like our accompanist. Keep on. All right,

everybody does. I think it's better than pianist. So an accompanist. Well, it's basically like I'm a trench musician on the front lines with the students performing with them, whether they're soloists or whether they're in an ensemble like the choir. So if they have to do if

they have to perform recitals, I'm there with them. And then, um, as a vocal coach, I will work with singers and then we work on their pieces just to get it, you know, like, Oh, I want to take more time here, okay? All my teacher says

to do this here, it's like, Okay, so that we figure it out. And then when we go and perform it, we have a little bit more ensemble that we're able to do the timing together and create this piece. So, yeah, it's a lot of hours of

being out of here. Yeah, and it seems like you probably have to get a good feel for the individual students to in order to and do a company. Well, I imagine I mean, the biggest thing you have to do is listen. And whether that's musically or

emotionally is you listen and, um, you focus on this creation of music together. Mm hmm. That's one of the you know Joy's about it is that just seeing people improve or working on them and seeing them get things or seeing them excited about things. And but

it is a difficult thing. I think singing is one of the most unfair musical sports there can be because you're born with your instrument and it's not there because some people are born with really fantastic instruments, and maybe they don't even want to do anything with

it. And then some people aren't and really, really, really want to do something. And it takes so much more work for them to get to a certain level rather than somebody who just doesn't. Naturally. So it's a very difficult thing, you know, like with instrumentalists. It

seems like a little bit more even as far as the playing field. Good. But then again, you come into things. You come across things like accessibility. Like who has Who can get their hands on a bassoon, right? Yeah, yeah, but the J. C. Is really good

about that. They actually find things like loner instruments for students and so that they can actually learn something, you know, something they might not even have access to. And how has it been? So you said until this semester it's been remote. Um, what was that like

being a remote accompanist? Well, as I said before, it was this great opportunity to learn a lot of things. So partly what I did was I helped make the choir videos. So and a lot of people have seen these virtual choir videos, and they are a

beast to put together. So you get submissions, video submissions from all the students, and it can be any kind of quality you don't know. Not everybody's working with different microphone setups. Everyone's working with different cameras, and some people are closely to them, like some people are

further from them, like some people have good, like some people have heavy distortion. And, um, so in the interest of equity, you want to make sure that when you put it together, nobody likes stands out over everybody else, that it has a good sound. But I

also wanted to focus on the fact that people have been in front of their screens and they're constantly seeing things on YouTube and these different qualities of videos. And so it's telling people I said, I'm not going to do just squares that's gonna drive people facing

like If you want people to listen, you actually have to do something. You have to make TV sort of. But you also have to have good sound. And I actually have some a little bit of the process with that as well. Uh huh. So we did

this one piece, the French piece called Want your T and now this is an audio clip. How's it going? Yeah, okay, so we'll stop that there. So the students were working with a piano backing track. That's not me playing. And then So they submitted

files and you can hear how some people are. Just are a little bit more present than others. And, um so let me go ahead and share. So then this is the audio file that I mixed? Well, don't say I don't do the locator data the whole

day. Do they not do the day? All day? I do all day to day. Yeah. And, uh, So how many students are in that clip? I think there might be 20 5 - 28. Um, maybe So. Here's actually a little bit of that video clip. Here's

what it ended up being so with some slight animations and we're moving around videos and not making it to boxing. Is that going here? Mhm. Someday I do rotate that you don't do today. I don't know the whole thing. How to to today. Today. To To

today? Yeah. Mm. Okay. Did that one go through? Yeah, that that went through Good. And I like the Rube Goldberg animation going on. Well, you know, a lot of times I had to get these done in such

a short amount of time. Like one semester. I actually had to do 10 choir videos and each one like one video. If it's very comfortable, It could take up to, like, 80 hours. So I just had no life was making these videos all the time, but

also making accompaniment tracks for singers. They would say, how Ham singing this song. Can you make a backing track for me? Do that as well? Yeah. So I wanted to have a more complicated Rube Goldberg traction, but I did not have the time. That was sufficiently

complicated, though. Effectively complicated. I like So what's your background with music? I mean, why? Why this series? My own background. Um, I started with guitar, but I started late. I started at 19. Um, and I kind of branched out to a bunch of different stuff. Mostly

folk and traditional music from various places. But my grandfather's from Ireland. And so he grew up playing traditional Irish music, as did his dad. And so that was something around the house. Sometimes I play some Irish fiddle, but really, what got me in with blues guitar,

like old twenties thirties stuff. So I'm kind of eclectic, my music, but very much an amateur. Still. And so have you gotten to jam with Morrigan? I work against my teacher. Yeah, really cool. Working coke? Yeah, because we went to we were at Sonoma State at

the same time at the same time. Okay, Yeah, we were there at the same time. And we were I don't know if he feels this way, but I feel like we were lucky enough to have a teacher like Will Johnson when he he was, he was

our theory teacher. And the neat thing about Will is he could talk with. You can talk to anybody about music without it being one of these incidences where you just name a bunch of things and people just kind of tune out. And I feel like that's

one of the the sad things about music education is it almost makes us unable to talk to people about music because all of a sudden we get all these names and terms for things. And then that's how we describe music then, which I feel is pretty

sad. Why can't we develop an even better vocabulary or even better ways to describe things? I mean, yeah, well, when I started learning and I was pretty soft, hot, um, I had this weird opinion that might actually be common, that I was hesitant to learn any

sort of theory because I thought I would not enjoy the music on, like, a pure level, whatever that meant. But like, I kind of found it off putting almost. But now I actually find music very, really interesting, Um, and like the nitty gritty of it is

actually kind of fascinating sometimes, Um, but I don't know if you came into it the same way, since your background is more classical. Oh, absolutely. I mean, part of, uh, when I was studying with my teacher in Southern California, she belonged to the M T a

C Music Teachers Association. And every year, as a requirement, we had to do theory tests, and I studied as much as I could to pass them and promptly forgot. I forgot most of it. Um And then, you know, when I got to college, of course I

had to take theory again. And, um, I think by then I felt like I'd earned the right to be angry about having to do it because, yeah, I felt like it did. Um, it was It is a way, a way to describe music and and does

it fit to everything? And it's like, Well, I don't think so. I think there is a There's a definite, um, colonialist component to it. As far as saying, Oh, this is This is how you look at music or this is how you describe it. And I

think it was really, really tough for me, and I came up against that also in the art department, because you have art being made around the world. It's not just happening in these specific locations, but when you take art history, they take you through this trajectory.

That's, you know this certain way, and it's like, Well, what was going on in these other countries, like art? But what wasn't as good or or influential and why, uh so yeah, yeah, there's a lot of at minimum implied value judgments going on when you start

to say this is in the curriculum and this isn't Yeah, But with music theory went, one thing that I found difficult was trying to apply it to some traditional music doesn't work very well. It's like What is this chord? And like you try and analyze it

and it becomes super long. But it's just really easy to play on the guitar, and it makes it seem way much more complicated than it actually is. Um, and they're just kind of, um, some chord voicings that an old blues music are things that sit well

on Qatar, not necessarily on other instruments and there, created by people who didn't have formal training. They sound good. They're good sounding chord voicings, uh, and that the music theory doesn't necessarily describe it very well. And my experience? Yeah, but mhm. Yeah. So what are you

working on these days? Oh, um, well, the walk. I mean, that's going to be a very complicated. It's a lot more complicated than I thought it would be when I first started it. It just kind of grows, and it's like, Oh, wait, I have to draw

this, too. And I have to draw that. And how do things look from this angle? And there's a dog's body move, you know, and loving having dogs for so long. I don't have one currently, but, you know, just always watching them. And then it's like, Well,

there's a joy in trying to animate that. Yeah, When they stretch, you know, they do this kind of thing when they yell on their tongues kind of curl and all these little observations. So I'm working on that. I'm also working on, you know, the WC piece

that I started out with. I'm still, you know, that's just for just to keep my chops up just to keep my brain going. And like I said, it's just always there's. There's always more I could do to a piece. There's always more that I can work.

I can make it better There, there, passages. It's like Oh, you know, I never really got that cleanly back Then let's fix that or it's like Oh, look at this. And this is the timing that my teacher was telling me about my piano teacher, Marilyn Thompson.

He's great about, like kicking my butt as far as like asking me to do these things that feel impossible because she plays organ as well as piano. So her feet have a dexterity that mind just do not have. I mean my feet. Sometimes they're like, Well,

it's as basic as an on and off switch, But we'll talk about things like quarter pedal, half pedal and you know, just a little bit here and make sure you catch this note here, and then you take the pedal up, and sometimes I feel like I'm

working with tree stumps, you know, as far as like, high pedaling. And then there are some rhythmic things that she pointed out back in the day, and I don't know. For some reason, my brain would just not take it in. And now, working with students and

working on things of my own, you like making stuff, actually making stuff on GarageBand making digital music. It was very eye opening because it was this detached way to analyze your playing. It shows you which notes you're playing louder than others. It shows you the timing

of your notes as well in this kind of uncharged way, which I think was a great learning tool, you know, because so many times we get into a teaching learning situation and we bring so much of our baggage, you know, with us as far as like

how we take things, how we take criticism or how we give it. And so when you have something that's just just shows it to you graphically without any emotion to it, it's kind of helpful and helps just kind of turn off that thing. That's just always

waiting to be offended or or, you know, just a little bit raw or, you know, something like that. Oh, and do you have any big projects you're looking forward to? After the walk? I was hoping that it would be a suite of pieces, that it would

just be maybe like 55 stories. And, you know, one of the things that I learned from the remote, remote learning remote teaching experience was that there's no time to wait to get going on a project, you know, like waiting for some sign or something like that.

It's like, No, you just have to make these projects that mean things to you your second job before I used to just work and work and work and because as an accompanist, I'm always I've never had to print out business cards. I've always had work, and

that's been a good thing. But now I I am just kind of turning down a lot of work, and I can do these things that actually are things that I want to do, things that don't pay any money but feed my soul, which is an important

thing to do. And, you know, I just really want to do more art because art has always taken a back seat to the to the music for so long and missed it well before you take us out on another piece, where can people. Uhh. Find you

and your work. I have a website. I'll share that link with you. You can put it in the description. Um, there's also instagram and where I put up a lot of the work that I'm doing one of the series that I'm working on for Instagram is

100 demons And it's based on a Lynda Barry Cartoon, which is also based on a painting by Buddhists and Monks, a whole cartoon book called 100 demons and the Buddhist monks that we're looking at demons. They were exploring things like, um, if you dispose of a

household object in a does in a disrespectful way, the ghost of that object will haunt you, so you have to even have care for your things. So there's this scroll by these Buddhist monks of all these demons that have, like, come back to haunt people because

they've been mistreated. You know, the things that they've come from it. And so I've been exploring things, these personal demons, things like Japanese nous or my latest one, Um being numb, like finding ways to just kind of numb out. And admittedly, you know, for me, it's

just green time looking at videos or looking at or playing games and things like that is just your own way of just kind of numbing. Because, like when you do pay attention, things hurt or things are intense or or you have a responsibility, you know? And

so sometimes you just want to hide, but also, you know, things. Like, um, anyway, I could really just go on. Well, thank you so much. Um, what What will you be, uh, playing us out with? So this is Astor Piazzolla's oblivion. Very interesting story, Piazzolla. You

know, just Italian Argentinia, but studied with Nadia Boulanger and France, who taught many, many students from around the world. Incredible story. Yeah, he wrote this in 1982. I think, um and there's also a poem that he wrote for it. So, just like with the deputy, if

people would like to read the poem as the music goes, that's one thing. Or if they just want to imagine that their their own scene or what it But this piece speaks to creates for them. That was all right. So let me go switch over the

camera. Mhm. Oh, Uh huh. Oh, Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.