The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month (though not this time), each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past two months.
Dear friends,
Happy September! It’s been a long ten months since the last Letter from the Muse Room. But it’s not because the Muse Room has been silent! I’m writing today because I have two new projects to share with you.
First, most of my year thus far has been taken up with writing a new piece for full orchestra. It was commissioned by Kirt Mosier, the music director of the Lee’s Summit Symphony. Kirt commissioned three other composers, as well as himself, to each write a piece for the Lee’s Summit Symphony titled The Haunted Pavilion. (The Symphony plays at the Pavilion at John Knox Village in Lee’s Summit, and the concert’s in October, so… you get the idea.)
[The Pavilion at John Knox Village.]
I had a blast writing my version of The Haunted Pavilion; it’s a spooky and fun piece that features ominous glissandi (slides) and a sinuous waltz melody that unwinds over a slow version of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice melody in the bass. Listen to a MIDI clip of the first two minutes of the piece here: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/thehauntedpavilionopening.mp3.
But MIDI can never do the real thing justice — so if you’re in the Kansas City area at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 12, come to the Pavilion and hear my piece (and three other pieces with the same title)! Just click this button for tickets:
I hope to see you there!
[The first page of The Haunted Pavilion score.]
The second project I’ve been working on (after finishing The Haunted Pavilion) is a reworking of an old project. Nine years ago, my brother, my sister-in-law at the time and I wrote a musical.
[Two brothers excitedly gesturing to a sign advertising the musical they wrote.]
If we were to take another picture today like this one, I would probably be wearing a hat and he probably would not be.
My brother wrote the script, my sister-in-law wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. It was an enormous project and I had a short time in which to write a whole lotta music — 28 songs, plus underscore and orchestration. I recorded rough vocal demos of all the songs, but because I was pressed for time, they were very rough vocal demos.
I recently was listening back through those vocal demos, and remembering how much I’d liked the music I’d written, and thinking that the one run of performances the show had nine years ago wasn’t enough for how good the material was (the script is REALLY good and the concept is brilliant — ask me about it sometime).
So, I have decided to go back and arrange some of the songs for piano, and lower them (because the role of Saul/Paul is for a tenor, and I am not a tenor), and record them, so I have good recordings and not just very rough vocal demos.
[The opening line of music for the song “The Law and the Prophets.”]
My goal is to finish the composing/arranging by the end of September, and finish the recording by the end of October (and then do a little mixing and mastering after that). So hopefully in two months or so I will have some good recordings of these songs to share with you!
—-
A book that has inspired me over the past several months was one I wasn’t necessarily expecting to agree with, due to its provocative title — Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music by Martha Bayles.
[The cover of Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music by Martha Bayles.]
But I was pleasantly surprised by the book’s incredibly astute evaluation of the popular music of the 20th century. Martha Bayles is extremely insightful and incisive in her observations and analyses, and also has some very funny wry commentary. It’s a long book, and some of the subject matter (dealing as it does with “perverse modernism” in art) is not for the faint of heart, but it’s well worth the read.
Thanks for reading through this newsletter! I hope to see some of you at the concert on October 12, and I hope to have some new music to share with all of you in November!
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month (though not this time), each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past two months.
Dear friends,
My news and inspiration for this month were one and the same: playing my first pop music show in a very long time at PorchFest on October 14!
[Me playing guitar and singing on a porch!] It was a chilly day, but more people showed up than I expected, and I had a blast performing. It was great to finally share the five new songs with the world. Here was the setlist:[My PorchFest setlist!]
A friend with high-quality cameras showed up and took some great pictures:
[Me singing at PorchFest.]
[Me singing at PorchFest, with the back of my daughter’s head in the foreground.]
[Me singing at PorchFest, with my Fender Acoustasonic amp in the foreground.]
My other piece of news is that I plan to record and release an EP, hopefully next year, featuring the five new songs. The EP will be called After The Flash, and this will be the tracklist:
Who I Am Part 2
Earthquake
Paradise Lost
Love After The Flash
Ocean Eyes
I look forward to sharing more about the EP in the months to come. In the meantime, though, my friend also recorded a few video clips, including clips of two of the new songs. Check them out at the YouTube links below!
“Too Far” clip (from Songs From My Shelf): https://youtu.be/VGksE3LeMhc
“Paradise Lost” clip: https://youtu.be/-Dq9zrqi2TU
“Ocean Eyes” clip: https://youtu.be/1jEpoGoeTkQ
(These links are unlisted for now, to give you all the first sneak peek, but if you’d like to share them with a friend please feel free!)
[Me singing passionately at PorchFest.]
—-
If you’ve been following me on Instagram or Facebook over the past two months, you know that I’ve also been inspired by the Indigo Girls:
[The Indigo Girls album Retrospective.]
And this book by composer Dale Trumbore:
[The cover of Staying Composed by Dale Trumbore.]
And this quote by composer Ben Johnston:
[Quote from composer Ben Johnston.]
And this lovely view of Shirley Bush Helzberg Symphony House (where I work) at sunset!
[Shirley Bush Helzberg Symphony House, the headquarters of the Kansas City Symphony.]
Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful holiday season, and I will see you in the New Year!
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past two months.
Dear friends,
Welcome to fall! (I know it doesn’t officially start until September 23, but, kids are back in school, PSLs are back at Starbucks, leaves are starting to blow off the trees… c’mon, it’s basically fall.)
I have two announcements in this Letter, one about concert music and one about pop music.
In the concert-music realm, I’ve recently joined Scorefolio, an online service that creates score videos, and I’ve done two so far. The first was a short piano prelude called “To The Nines” (because it’s based around ninth chords). The second one is my flute duet A Long Weight of Silence, a reflection and meditation on the pandemic through the lens of the six stages of grief. If you’re interested, you can watch the score videos on Scorefolio here or on YouTube here.
[A screenshot of score videos on YouTube.]
In the pop-music realm, I wrote last time about how seeing Matchbox 20 in concert had inspired me to do some pop music songwriting again. I’m happy to report that I’ve done just that. I’m planning a five-song EP, and I have four of the five songs written (and have started on the fifth). One of the songs I performed once (MAYBE twice), in California, 10 or more years ago; the other four songs are brand new and never-before-heard. I’m excited to share more with you soon.
[A pencil with some lyrics for “Who I Am Part 2.”]The first song is called “Who I Am Part 2.”
But in the meantime, I’m very excited to announce something I haven’t been able to announce in years: If you’re in Kansas City in October, YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO COME AND HEAR ME PLAY MY POP MUSIC LIVE, FOR FREE. That’s right, I’ll be performing at PorchFestKC this year.
This is an awesome local festival that takes place in the Valentine/Roanoke midtown area; homeowners volunteer to host musicians on their porches, and people can come to see a particular artist or just stroll down the street and stop at whatever porch sounds like their kind of jam. I did this back in 2016 (wow, that was a long time ago) and it was super fun.
[AJ performing at PorchFestKC in 2016, with his three-year-old daughter next to him.]A cute blonde came and crashed the party. :)
The festival is Saturday, October 14, and I’ll be performing on a porch near 39th and Broadway at noon. I’ll be debuting the new songs as well as playing others from Songs From My Shelf and maybe a cover or two. I’ll send more information and reminders as we get closer. I would love to see you there!
[The official graphic for PorchFestKC 2023.]
—-
I’ve recently been inspired by a book with a provocative title: Real Artists Don’t Starve, by Jeff Goins.
[The cover of Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins.]
As often happens with me, I bought this book a while ago but never got around to reading it until now. And it’s had a lot of really good things to say. Its goal is to expose the “starving artist” archetype as a myth and show creatives how they can instead be “thriving artists” who make money from their art, connect with their audience and have a real impact.
If you’re an artist, a creative of any stripe or even an entrepreneur, I’d highly recommend it. Jeff Goins also has a Substack you can subscribe to where he writes about writing, life, creativity and the lessons he’s learned from them all.
Thanks for reading. If you’ve made it this far, I want to let you know that I really appreciate it, and I truly hope that these newsletters bring a little spark of joy and inspiration to you. Until next time, I hope you find some small (or some big) ways to thrive.
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past two months.
Dear friends,
I have one word that characterizes my Letter this month: gratitude.
It’s been a thrill and a privilege and I am fantastically grateful to have had two fantastic performances in the past two months.
[Program page from the Symphony’s Wild Adventure concert.] Look Ma, I’m in the program!Performance No. 1: The Kansas City Symphony performed Chameleons on their March 12 Family Series concert in partnership with the Kansas City Zoo.
Ever since deciding I wanted to be a composer, I’ve dreamed of having an orchestra perform a piece that I wrote, and thanks to the KC Symphony I realized that dream.
I got to introduce the piece at the concert and the orchestra of course performed wonderfully. Very grateful!
[Me introducing Chameleons in Helzberg Hall!]Performance No. 2: This was a different performance than I was expecting. newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble was slated to perform the live, in-person, two-flute premiere of A Long Weight of Silence in their concerts last weekend, but their flutist got sick at the last minute.
[Sascha Groschang performing Shapeshifter!]Graciously, Sascha, newEar’s cellist, stepped in to play the world premiere of Shapeshifter, the piece I wrote for her that we were hoping to premiere sometime later this year.
I’m very grateful to newEar for programming my music in the first place, and very grateful to Sascha for learning a hard piece a month or two ago and performing it at these concerts with just a few days’ notice. She did a terrific job and it was wonderful to hear the piece come to life. And the rest of the music was great too!
[Sascha and me after the Sunday afternoon concert.] [Composers and performers at the newEar concert.] All the composers and performers from the newEar concert!—-
These two performances were certainly inspiring to me this month, and I hope if you were able to attend one that the music was inspiring to you too.
I do have one other piece of inspiration for you as well. I recently discovered the music of Tommy Emmanuel, an Australian guitar virtuoso. I’ve really enjoyed his music because it’s virtuosic without being showy, and most of his songs are genuinely, sincerely, infectiously happy.
My favorite song of his is “Halfway Home.” The opening lick never fails to get stuck in my mind, in the best way, and I end up whistling it for the rest of the day. The album version of the song is on YouTube too but here’s a live performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkKcd51QCiE&ab_channel=TommyEmmanuel.
[Tommy Emmanuel performing his song “Halfway Home.”]I hope you find joy and inspiration in music this month. Till next time!
Peace,
AJ Harbison
View full newsletter (with pictures and links)
The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past two months.
Dear friends,
I have a short and sweet Letter for you this month. My big news is I have two exciting performances of my music coming up!
Performance No. 1: The Kansas City Symphony is helping me realize a dream I’ve had since I was a kid: having a piece I composed performed by a full orchestra!!
I wrote about this piece a year ago, and now it is finally being launched out into the world. It’s called Chameleons and it’s being performed on the Symphony’s Family concert on Sunday, March 12 at 2:00 p.m. in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. I’ll be talking about the piece a bit at the concert and it’ll be a lot of fun (the whole show is about animals and is being presented in partnership with the Kansas City Zoo). Here’s the ticket link: https://tickets.kcsymphony.org/wildadventure. I would love to see you there!
Performance No. 2: newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble is going to be presenting the world premiere live performance of my flute duet A Long Weight of Silence!
I composed it for Kansas City Symphony Principal Flute Michael Gordon, and he created an amazing video that was the world premiere of the “one flute in isolation” version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSgIUjob6sE&ab_channel=MichaelGordon
newEar will be performing the world premiere of the “two flutes together” version in their concerts at the end of April. Two performances to choose from! Saturday, April 29 at 8:00 p.m. or Sunday, April 30 at 4:00 p.m. at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church. I’ll be at both performances and I would love to see you there too! Here is the ticket link (you can choose your preferred date and time on this page): https://newear.ticketbud.com.
—-
Two musical videos were inspiring to me over the past two months. I wrote last time about the cello piece I’m working on, and in the research process for that piece I came across two really unique string performers.
The first video featured a double bassist, Florentin Ginot, demonstrating how to play harmonics* pizzicato** on the bass. And using nonstandard tunings for his bass strings he gets some really cool sounds. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2RHu3buSh4&ab_channel=EnsembleMusikfabrik.
* ethereal-sounding notes you can create using physics and math on a string
** plucking the strings instead of using a bow
(Unfortunately I found this doesn’t really work on the cello — it doesn’t have the same resonance as the bass and this technique sounds too clunky — so I won’t be using it in my piece. But if I ever write a solo double bass piece this is definitely going to be a feature.)
I discovered the second video while researching double- and triple-stops — playing two or three strings at a time instead of just one. And I found that there’s an incredible cellist named Frances-Marie Uitti who plays with not one bow but two — one above the strings (as usual) and one below the strings — so that she can actually bow all four strings at the same time. And if you thought the double bass harmonics were cool, just wait till you hear what this sounds like: https://vimeo.com/38649952%C2%A0 (she picks up the second bow around the 7:00 mark).
I have to say one more time that I would love to see you at one or both of the performances coming up if you’re in the Kansas City area. I’m really stoked about both of them. I hope to see you there!
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.
Dear friends,
I have a lot to share with you in this newsletter, so let’s jump right in!
[A dog jumping right in… to a pool.]
I have four (four!) pieces of news, as well as three pieces of inspiration.
News #1 (kinda boring so we’ll get it out of the way first). You may have noticed that things look a little (or a lot) different this time around. I’ve switched my email app from Mailchimp to MailerLite, so that’s why. I’m enjoying it so far and I hope it helps my emails be easier and more enjoyable to read.
[MailerLite logo.]
News #2. I have a live performance of one of my recent compositions coming up! If you live in the Kansas City area, and you’re free the evening of Monday, March 14, please come on out for a performance of TheSpaceBetween! A new new-music ensemble called Chimera Contemporary will be performing a version I arranged especially for them. Here’s the Facebook event for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/933895573984074. I hope to see you there!
[Chimera Contemporary logo.]
News #3. Just real quick, I wanted to let you know that Rainlight, my orchestra piece from 2020, received an Honorable Mention from the 2022 Missouri Composers Project competition. Yay!
News #4. I also wanted to share an update on the new orchestra piece I’m working on. I still can’t share all the information on it just yet (though I wish I could because I’m very excited!). But I can say that the idea of the piece is showing how an orchestra can make a melody a chameleon — changing its color based on its surroundings. Each melody in the piece is introduced and then has two different settings.
How does it work, you ask? I’m so glad you asked, let me show you. :) Here’s one of the melodies.
Here’s the intro (just violins and pizzicato cellos): https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/melodyAintro.mp3
Here’s the melody in light orchestration: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/melodyAlight.mp3
And then here’s the melody in heavy orchestration: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/melodyAheavy.mp3
Enjoy!
––––
There are three things that inspired me this past month, one nonmusical and two musical.
Inspiration #1. I LOVE the Olympics. I mean, I know lots of people do but I REALLY LOVE the Olympics. Like, watch-every-day-and-don’t-get-any-work-done-for-three-weeks really love.
[A Facebook post from four years ago.]
I got to watch this world-record-setting snowboarding run live and it was incredible. (24 feet 4 inches out of the halfpipe; 44 feet 4 inches off the ground. I mean, just look at this!!)
[World record for height in a snowboard halfpipe event. Truly amazing.]
I’ve written before about how I love watching football because it tells great, exciting and unexpected stories. The Olympics are the same way, and in a sense they’re more special because I only get to watch them once every two years. It’s not even necessarily the stories of the athletes, which I confess I don’t always find very interesting. But the stories of the events — a dominant win, or a come-from-behind victory, or a comeback four years in the making, or a record-breaking feat — are just as compelling to me as a great book or movie.
[Chloe Kim celebrating after a great run.]
Inspiration #2. Both my musical inspirations consisted of reconnecting with an old friend. The first old friend was Olivier Messiaen, a French composer who lived from 1908 to 1992. I enjoy a lot of his music, but over the past couple of weeks I re-listened to his piano cycle Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus (Twenty Visions of the Infant Jesus). It’s a massive work with 20 movements that takes about 2 hours to perform in its entirety.
[The first system of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards.]
It’s a magical piece that runs the gamut from quiet and intimate to loud and thundering and everything in between. The passage above, from the very beginning of the piece, comes back throughout the piece in many forms and serves as one of several unifying themes.
I’ve never heard it performed live but if I ever have the chance I won’t hesitate to take it. If you’d like a challenging but very rewarding listen, give it a try.
Inspiration #3. The second old friend was not quite as old as Messiaen. Last week I was reading something I’d written in college, and college-me quoted a song lyric that current-me couldn’t quite place. I googled it, and was reminded about this album:
[Album cover for Janis Ian’s Between The Lines.]
Janis Ian is an American singer/songwriter. This album was released in 1975, and was one of my mom’s favorite albums when she was a teenager. I re-listened to this as well and was reminded how good it is.
Ian’s lyrics are meticulously crafted, and passionately and crisply delivered. The mostly understated music is led by melancholy guitars and piano, and in addition to the usual accoutrements of bass and drums there is an unusually large complement of orchestral instruments, including flute, clarinet, some brass instruments and lots of strings. “Water Colors” even features an extended unaccompanied cello solo at the end.
You should really listen to the whole album, but here are some highlights for me:
“From Me To You” (the lyric I quoted was from this song), probably my favorite track on the album with its sparkling fingerpicking guitars
The jazzy inflections and clarinet solo in “Bright Lights and Promises”
“In the Winter,” which switches between a minor key for the verses and the parallel major for the choruses, and ends on a deliciously unresolved chord (a I 6/4, for theory nerds [like me] keeping score at home)
The title track, “Between the Lines,” which features an exquisitely executed accelerando (gradually speeding up) that simultaneously engages in some sophisticated rhythmic trickery — the pattern drops a half beat in every second measure, and adds an extra half beat in every fourth measure, while getting faster and faster
“Tea and Sympathy,” which is both gorgeous and devastating
It’s an extremely well created and executed work of art and I encourage you to give it a listen as well. (Though it’s very different from the Messiaen!)
[Back cover for Janis Ian’s Between The Lines with a tracklist.]
Thanks for reading this far (I know this was a long one!). I really appreciate it. If you do get a chance to listen to one or both of these musical friends of mine, write me back and let me know what you think!
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.
Dear friends,
I hope you are all safe and well, as we enter the autumn season. (Or not; my wife insists that September is the hottest month, and only tricks you into thinking that fall is beginning.)
On the news front: As you may remember, there are two performances of my music coming up!
First, Mike Gordon, Principal Flute of the Kansas City Symphony, is in the process of recording the duet I wrote for him, A Long Weight of Silence, for “one flute in isolation or two flutes together.” I will keep you posted on when that recording will premiere.
[The cover of A Long Weight of Silence.]
And second, coming up in exactly 29 days, Ensemble Mother Russia Industries will be performing my new, hot-off-the-digital-presses piece TheSpaceBetween at the new headquarters of the Charlotte Street Foundation.
[Charlotte Street Foundation building.]
I hope you’ll come and see the concert on October 2; it should be a lot of fun. In addition to my piece about social distancing, there will be avant-garde theatre, a piece focused on breath, an improvisatory piece in which the performers check the weather in Montenegro, and more. I’ll remind you as it gets closer — but mark your calendar!
To give you a taste of TheSpaceBetween, here’s a MIDI clip from the middle of the piece, as the instruments start to connect more and more and reach a high point all playing together: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/TheSpaceBetweenMIDIexcerpt.mp3.
––––
A few weeks ago, my parents came to town for a visit, and while they were here, my wife and I seized the chance to take a quick vacation for just the two of us. We drove a few hours south of Kansas City to Bentonville, Arkansas, to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its satellite campus The Momentary.
[The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Pretty, ain’t it?]
Crystal Bridges is a museum in a forest, on a river. It’s all right, y’know?
It was a lot of fun (despite being insanely hot and humid) and definitely a time of “filling the well.”
[Not visible: 90 degree heat with 80% humidity.]
[The Crystal Bridges gift shop.]
Even the gift shop is awesome — it’s designed to look like the underside of a mushroom.
[Dale Chihuly glass marbles floating in the water.]
I got to see a painting by one of my favorite abstract expressionists, Morris Louis:
[Airborn, by Morris Louis.]
And we got to see an “infinity room” by Yayoi Kusama:
[Yes, it was trippy. And awesome.]
Whether or not you can take a trip to a museum in a forest on a river any time soon, I hope you can participate in some activities that nourish your soul and fill your well, as this did ours.
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published (new for 2021) the first Friday of every other month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room includes news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.
Dear friends,
Happy summer and Fourth of July weekend to you! I hope you are enjoying warmer weather and brighter days. As we start to emerge from the pandemic, I am back working in my office and starting to spend more time with, y’know, real live human beings. It’s pretty awesome.
And, speaking of awesome, I have some exciting news! In fact, two exciting news…es!
Exciting News #1: I’ve recently finished composing a piece for my friend Mike Gordon, Principal Flute of the Kansas City Symphony. It’s a flute duet titled A Long Weight of Silence, and as I wrote about a few months ago it’s a reflection on the pandemic through the lens of the six stages of grief. It’s written for “one flute in isolation or two flutes together,” so while eventually it will be performed as a duet, for its premiere it will be performed by Mike in video form.
[Mike G performing a duet… BY HIMSELF] Mike was the creator of the hashtag #KCSisStillMakingMusic, and he recorded a huge number of videos at the beginning of the pandemic — including this one, which was another “duet” that he played by himself.I am super excited about this and I will be sure to let you know, via an email in between Letters, when it will premiere — hopefully later this summer!
In the meantime, here’s an audio clip of a MIDI performance — the first three minutes of the piece: https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/A Long Weight of Silence beginning.mp3.
Exciting News #2: A proposal of mine was recently selected in a composition competition held by the Charlotte Street Foundation and Ensemble Mother Russia Industries, and I’ll be writing a piece for the ensemble that will be performed on October 2! I just had my first meeting with the ensemble and the other selected composers last week, and it will be a wild and extremely diverse concert with some really fascinating music.
[Ensemble Mother Russia Industries.]This piece will be based on the idea of social distancing. The performers will be spread throughout the venue (a black box theater), and will pass melodies to each other around the room. The musical lines will start to intersect at more and more points until a web of sound fills the whole space. It will then go in reverse, with fewer and fewer connections, until only one instrument is left. But instead of fading out to silence, that instrument will be joined by another instrument in harmony for the last few moments, providing another connection and ending in hope instead of silence.
It’s another pandemic-related piece, but I’m excited for the chance to work with this ensemble and I can’t wait for the performance. Someone at the meeting suggested that the piece could be played with all the lights turned out in the theater; it’s a very intriguing idea.
[Something like this.] It might look something like this.The performance will be at the Charlotte Street Foundation’s new headquarters at 3333 Wyoming Street in Kansas City. If you’re in town on October 2 I hope you’ll check it out!
—-
Three inspirations this month: one in music, one in a book, and one in life.
Music: I’ve written before about Dessa; I love her album Chime. Over the last six months, she’s been releasing a single on the 15th of each month, calling the series Ides.
[The first single in the Ides series, “Rome”.]The first single was (appropriately enough) “Rome,” which I loved; I really enjoyed “Terry Gross” and “I Already Like You” too. (Also a special shout-out for “Talking Business,” a noir story told without using any verbs.)
[“I Already Like You” cover image.]Her lyrics are smart, biting, witty and funny (the interludes in “Terry Gross” made me laugh out loud when I first listened to it). The songs include some profanity and mature themes. But if you’re a fan of good words and music, you should check it out.
Book: If you’re a fan of books, and/or children’s books, and/or books about children’s books, this one’s for you.
[Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult]I recently started reading Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely so far. I am a fan of books and children’s books and books about children’s books, and I’m a fan of this book. He has excellent insights and anecdotes, and it’s very engaging and very funny. Reading the book is like having a conversation with a friend who is brilliant and also makes you laugh out loud. Very highly recommended.
Life: As I mentioned, I have spent more time out in the real world with real live people lately, and that has been inspiring. At the Symphony we had our first in-person committee meeting since March 2020. A few nights ago I went out with a friend for drinks. Things are looking brighter. I hope they are for you, too.
Be well.
Peace,
AJ Harbison
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I’m excited to announce that I will be performing again at Paper Birch Landing on Sunday, April 23! The event is called “We Are Family” and will showcase artists and performers from shows in 2016.
What: We Are Family Members Art Showcase
When: Sunday, April 23, 11 am to 5 pm (I’ll be performing between 2 pm and 5 pm)
Where: Paper Birch Landing, 3740 Broadway Suite 300, Kansas City, Missouri 64111
Check out the Facebook event and RSVP!
I had such a blast performing at Paper Birch Landing‘s opening reception for their show Merely Posing last week, and they’ve now announced that I’ll be the featured musical guest again at the reception for their new art show, Get Fierce, on June 10! If you didn’t get the chance to check out the last show, I’d highly recommend coming to this one—the art at all their shows has been high-quality and thought-provoking, and it’s a fun atmosphere with free food, drinks, art and music!
What: Get Fierce Opening Reception Gala
When: Friday, June 10, 6 pm to 10 pm
Where: Paper Birch Landing, 3740 Broadway Suite 300, Kansas City, Missouri 64111
Check out the Facebook event and RSVP!
I will be the featured musical guest at Paper Birch Landing‘s opening reception gala for their juried art show, Merely Posing, on May 13! This will be my first singer/songwriter performance in Kansas City and I’m very excited.
What: Merely Posing Opening Reception Gala
When: Friday, May 13, 6 pm to 10 pm
Where: Paper Birch Landing, 3740 Broadway Suite 300, Kansas City, Missouri 64111
Check out the Facebook event and RSVP!
Paul: The Road To Damascus, the musical with script by my brother Mark Harbison, lyrics by my sister-in-law Bethany Harbison, and music by yours truly, has opened at LifeHouse Theater! It runs through September 27, 2015, with performances on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays every weekend. You can order tickets here!