Ready to Start: TEDx Youth Monterey 11/19/11

by Taylor Jones

Contact: taylorjones9393@gmail.com

What gets a bunch of sleepy teenagers up at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning? The answer is simple: TEDx Youth Monterey. For more than twenty-five years, the TED exhibition has been traversing the globe, hosting TED Talks in which presenters enlighten the audience about their “ideas worth sharing,” ranging from “the myths of ADHD” to “riding New York subways in your underpants.”  Today, hundreds of kids and a scattered handful of adults gather in the World Theatre at California State University of Monterey Bay to experience TEDx Youth Monterey, a special TED event held annually since 2009 in devotion to the young people inspiring the innovations of tomorrow. 

Floating upon billowy clouds projected from theatre lights, I feel a sense of curiosity, determination, and appreciation for higher learning among the audience members as they file into their seats. The first presenter, Johan Khalilian, appropriately fits in the “determination” category. Khalilian grew up in the rougher side of Chicago, which he comically relates to the polar opposite of Disneyland, where Mickey Mouse is a drug dealer and Minnie Mouse is a pregnant teen. He paints a picture of a harsh environment and goes on to talk about how his high school counselor discouraged him from pursuing the University of Chicago, the college of his dreams. However, Khalilian argues that you should always believe in yourself without letting others put you down, because we can choose to be either “a product of our dreams, or a product of our environment.”

As Andrea Blunt steps into the spotlight, she emits a presence like she’s been onstage many times before. In fact, the singer-songwriter has performed with countless artists, playing all kinds of music including classical, hip-hop, punk, and folk to name a few. Today, she plays her original song “Iron Spine,” which blends her variety of musical influences to create her own unique sound. What is also notably unique about Blunt’s solo performance is that she accompanies her vocals with an accordion, giving the song a broad, full sound as she pumps air in and out of the chamber. With the accordion, she shows her classical and folk training by composing an enchanting melody (that would continue playing in my head for days afterwards). Her enticing voice demonstrates her pop elements, belting lyrics such as “losing my head start” and “breaking my own heart” and carries a performance that duly receives a standing ovation.

A student from Robert Lewis Stevenson High School named Richie Senegor rolls his mobile science lab on stage next. In his presentation titled The Science of Science, Senegor speaks out for the importance of science in not only education, but in our everyday lives as well. Realizing the youths’ epidemic of losing interest in science, Senegor determines the main problem being there is simply not enough “discovery” anymore. Kids grow endlessly tired of homework and rote memorization and therefore do not find the subject very engaging. However, Senegor’s proposal promotes a method of teaching in which labs are constructed by giving the students an end result and letting them figure out how to get there themselves. Through this method that Senegor has tested on his classmates, student will experience the frustration of having no idea what to do, experimenting with variables that may help them or divert them, and inherently bring back the “discovery” in science.

Bring Music “Bach,” presented by violinist Iljin Cho, expresses the importance of keeping arts and music alive in schools. He argues that music opens up our minds to more vast fields of thinking, leading to better mental and physical health. As Cho questions, I also ask “why are we cutting music in schools? Why are the arts the first programs to go?” I don’t understand how the arts, the basis for any culture, can be selectively diminished from our school systems. On a bittersweet note, music, art, drama, photography, dance, and other kinds of creative classes are the only things keeping some kids in school. I, for one, know my school life would be much less enthralling without the opportunity to play music and express myself everyday.

After performing in TEDx with my own band, Mozzo Kush, I am so honored to have been a part of such an inspiring event. We played the single “Checked In to Check Out” off of our new album Mozzo Kush and had a blast doing it. I thank CSUMB and the organizers of TEDx for putting the show together, because without them none of this could have happened. Whether or not your dream is to sail across the Pacific Ocean, build your dream house for the homeless, or develop a tri-photo code to encrypt messages, you have a dream—it’s never too late or too early to follow it, so why not start now?

Links:

http://www.facebook.com/trudeaupublishing

http://www.tedxyouthmonterey.org/

Birth of the Cool: The Alternative Café 11/5/11

By Taylor Jones

“So that was during the time I spent in Tennessee when I used to hitchhike across the country,” explains the elderly man next to me sporting a circular, brown-rimmed hat along with what appears to be a green, pinstriped shirt. Yes, it is definitely green. Tonight at the Alternative Café in Seaside, California, the “jazz & beyond” music of the Something Cool Trio evidently attracts an audience with a wealth of life experience, and suitably, since pianist/vocalist Bill Minor has traveled the world and will sing songs in English, Greek, Italian, and Russian. Along with Minor this evening are his band mates Jenn Schaaf on drums and Heath Proskin on upright bass.

Captivated by the current exhibit “Guardians,” featuring work by artists Cory Benhatzel and Matthew Linares, I admire the vivid textures Linares uses in order take the observer to another dimension. I’m looking through a portal into an almost video-game kind of world where objects are floating around with a sense of unsettling ambiguity, yet setting a serene mood through the smooth, shaded color scheme.

After pushing aside the black curtain from backstage, the trio picks up their instruments and starts off their set with a Thelonious Monk standard called “Ask Me Now.” This song demonstrates how the Alternative Café’s acoustics are perfect for a jazz combo, in that you can hear Schaaf playing brushes without needing to mic her snare. Being a drummer, I know one of the hardest parts of jazz drumming is brush technique, and Schaaf gracefully shows the audience just how it’s done by never letting a moment go untouched by the gentle glide of her fluid hands.

An interesting aspect of the Something Cool Trio is Minor’s experiments in combining his original poetry with backing music, which acts as a soundtrack to the story. As he begins to recite his poem “My Father’s Things,” the music appropriately follows. Minor shares a deep emotion from his personal life with the audience as he conveys a story of how his father lost his memory with age, and how he could no longer recognize his own son. Minor moves on with the story, elaborating on how his father never used to sing, but one day when his mother was playing piano, his father miraculously burst into song. Minor knew that his father’s true love for his mother had persisted despite his loss of memory.

While living in communist Russia, illegally listening to black-market jazz records, Minor became fluent in the native language, and brought it back to the Alternative Café for us tonight. Schaaf turns off her snare and hits the drums with mallets as the band kicks off a Russian waltz. This tune shows how Proskin on bass is the glue between the drums and piano. By locking in rhythmically with Schaaf and working out melodic progressions with Minor, Proskin proves that a tight jazz combo operates through individual feats of musicianship as well as a keen sense of communication.

Minor hypes up the next song as “the most beautiful love song ever written,” which is apparently “Creep” by Radiohead, a favorite cover I’ve heard artists such as Yann Brown and Angels In the Alps perform in their own interpretations. Something Cool Trio also took the song and made it their own, keeping the original melancholy energy of the verses, but changing up the chorus drastically. Rather than a rude, distorted guitar bleeding into a belting chorus like Radiohead, a piano pickup leads to an upbeat, swing chorus, in which Minor’s vocals resemble a mixture of Willie Nelson and Randy Newman. Thus, I think we can agree that they made it their own.

After taking the audience on an adventure around the world, reciting a poem in Greek and singing a love song in Italian, Minor takes us south to Brazil by performing the Stan Getz & João Gilberto classic “The Girl From Ipanema.” Schaaf tightens her brushes and once again demonstrates her precise control, turning off the snare to enhance the relaxed, Latin feel of the song. As Proskin drops out on the bass, Minor picks up a small conga drum and begins a percussion feature with Schaaf, coordinating dynamics together to give the duet movement in not only volume, but also intensity. When the torrent of percussive juices is finished and the audience reality checks back in to Seaside, California, the performance is met with a magnanimous applause.

So what is “cool” to you? Does being cool mean being the most popular kid at school? Does being cool mean doing what everybody else is doing? To me, being cool is doing what you want to do and expressing yourself the way you naturally feel. Tonight, the Something Cool Trio was just that, cool. Not only did they express themselves, they expressed themselves in four different languages, in song and poetry, and through an assortment of musical genres that will surely please your ears.

Links:

http://trudeaupublishing.blogspot.com

(All photos by Taylor Jones)

Art by Matthew Linares

Art by Matthew Linares

Something Cool Trio: (left to right) Jenn Schaaf, Heath Proskin, Bill Minor

From Backstage

The audience

Heath Proskin

Drums n' Bass