Inspiring Excerpts with Veronica Thomas: Violinist, Educator, General Director

Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman

05/07/22

•

About

Comments

Featured In

This is a short bonus episode in my Inspiring Excerpts series, featuring the violinist Veronica Thomas. She speaks about some of the incredible outreach the unique Préville Fine Arts Centre is doing, of which she is General Director. There’s also a clip about her experience of being on the jury of the Canadian Music Competition. In the full episode, she speaks about her unique and fascinating childhood, and reflects on her life in music.

The link to the full transcript of the whole interview is here along with all the links to the video and podcast versions of the full episode, and bonus episodes as well: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/e6-s1-veronica-thomas

Préville Fine Arts Centre: https://centrepreville.org/

Support this podcast and get access to unique perks: https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman

Previous Episode

Jesse Stewart: Percussionist, Composer, Community Activist, Artist, Writer, Instrument-builder

April 30, 2022

•

84m

Jesse Stewart is an award-winning percussionist, scholar, composer, artist, writer, instrument-maker and community activist. In 2012 he founded “We Are All Musicians” founded on his belief that music is a fundamental human right, through which he helps create opportunites for people to make music regardless of age, musical training, socio-economic circumstance and ability. During the conversation he demonstrates how any object can be used to create interesting music, and we also get to hear him improvise on a waterphone, as well as with me on my violin, with a unique instrument which he explains. I do hope you’ll find Jesse to be as inspiring and interesting as I do! Below are timestamps for all the topics we covered.

The video is close-captioned and the transcript will be published soon, at the same link on my podcast website: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/jesse-stewart-e13-s2-percussionist-composer-community-activist-artist-writer-instrument-builder

Jesse Stewart website: https://www.jessestewart.ca/home.html

Please help me with a tip? https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman

photo credit: Michele McMillan

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:50) percussion

(03:48) waterphone

(07:06) discussion of Pulse water dripping on drum head

(09:18) intersection of visual art and music, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Gayle Young, Suzy Lake

(12:09) building a vibraphone

(14:31) Glacialis ice music

(16:43) exploring boxes and balloons, and different instruments in teaching orchestration

(26:28) studies in composition and ethnomusicology James Tenney, David Mott, Rob Bowman

(32:07) recovering from brain surgery, making videos of many different instruments and found objects like canoe paddles

(37:35) demonstration of different found objects

(42:20) snare drum compositions with demonstration of sonic exploration with wrenches

(46:06) Community activism: We Are All Musicians

(49:16) Adaptive Use Musical Instrument, Pauline Oliveros

(56:38) improv with violin, waterphone and the gongs with the AUMI

(01:100:32) Ajay Heble and upcoming book about the pedagogy of musical improvisation

(01:07:38) improv with dancers, cellist Peggy Lee, Propeller Dance, Natasha Bakht

(01:11:56) notating the drum studies, discussion of jazz drumming, Elvin Jones

(01:20:43) fond memories of playing with Kevin Breit, Matt Brubeck, David Mott, William Partker, playing for the Dalai Lama

Next Episode

Shahriyar Jamshidi: Kamanche

May 14, 2022

•

95m

Shahriyar Jamshidi is a Kurdish-Canadian kamanche player, composer and improvisor who grew up in Iran, and lived through some very difficult times. He has collaborated with many musicians including heavy-metal cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne (also a guest of this series) in their duo Kamancello, and has released numerous albums which feature his unique improvisational style. I find his playing to be extremely expressive and his personal story compelling. In this conversation he introduces us to this spiked-fiddle, which is the ancestor of the violin, and is used across many cultures, and also speaks about the need for humanity to stay in touch with our traditional music. Timestamps are below.

Like all my episodes, this is also a video, and the transcript is linked here as well: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/shahriyar-jamshidi-kamancheh

https://shahriyarjamshidi.com/

Help me keep going with this series! https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman

Timestamps:

(00:00) intro

(01:20) description and history of the kamancheh

(10:00) first improvisation

(13:57) discussion of musical education

(19:01) discussion of microtones and modes

(24:03) demonstration of different techniques

(28:42) discussion of the use of the kamanche and it’s relation to song

(33:38) discussion about album “A Yellow Flower”