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When I was a councillor at USPA summer camps in 2008, I met a bunch of really awesome musically talented high school students, and we had fun recording covers. I was able to get to know bands I'd never heard of them, and we covered some familiar bands as well. (I love singing along to songs I don't know - it tests my ability to foresee chord progressions. We'd pop the lyrics up on my laptop and I'd make up the harmonies.) This was also the first summer I'd never really tried "jamming" on the piano before.
I'm only going to put a couple of the covers we did up here, because they aren't rehearsed more than one play-through. Some, not even that.
These Days - Nico:
I think my absolute favorite is done with Serena Berman on melody, Tommy Schulz on guitar, and me on vocal harmony.
Part I - Band of Horses
I'd never heard of Band of Horses before that summer. This is Tommy on guitar and singing, me on harmony, and Taylor Bostwick and Claire Usherson on back-up (I think...)
Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
Tommy on guitar and singing, me on harmony, and Evan Boswell Buhmschwack-Greenwald on guitar and singing bits,
House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
Tommy, Evan, and me.
Mad Mad World - The Red Paintings
Tommy, Evan, and me.
Walk into the Sea - Tommy & Sarah
A jam of no consequence. I think it's really pretty, though.
Musician, Composer and Artist
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A History
Ok, so I'm a musician.
I've been playing piano since I was five. I was trained classically, and got a BA in music. In 5th and 6th grade, I played clarinet. In college, I started teaching myself guitar and bass. I took voice lessons and sang in choir off and on. I took a year of carillon lessons with this amazing guy from the Netherlands. I started playing percussion in the orchestra in college. (My first time on percussion was the "West Side Story" - what a way to start!) In grad school, I picked up accordion, (which I have brought to Buenos Aires with me). In Bolivia, I got a charrango, and a in April 2011, I bought a bright purple violin. I have harmonicas, and I'm a grand master of the Kazoo and slide whistle.
I didn't start composing until college, when I composed one completely original song; it felt like a fluke accident.
So towards the very end of college, I felt my piano skills were limited to playing what other people had written, so I began teaching myself jazz piano and improvisation. My uncle then got me a keyboard as my graduation present. The year after college, I went to Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater in Blue Lake, CA, and around Christmas time (2009), I was volunteering at the community breakfast, and as they were overstaffed, I mustered up the courage to volunteer to improvise on the piano. They asked, "Do you play Christmas songs?" I certainly didn't. "I can give it a shot," I replied. That day, a local Presby church asked me if I'd like a job playing for their Sunday services. (I ended up being the only one in my class who had a job. $25 a week!)
At Dell'Arte, my confidence growing, I composed some music from a nifty Hamlet production we put together. Later, I did the music for my group's Melodrama production, with help from Walken Schwigert on the violin. One of the only times I ever got praise unadulterated from my professor, Ronlin Forman, was about the piece of music, which fit the production like a glove.
In Argentina, I joined a band (The Garden Abides), and started composing more seriously.
Then, when I came back home in Winter of 2010, I was in a production of ATFC's Alice in Wonderland, and offered to write the music for the show.
I also volunteered to write the music for my friend Elizabeth Swensen's Master's Thesis project, called "The Witch".
I just composed the underscoring for another ATFC production of "Rapunzel," and recently finished recording the piano score for Alan Menkin's "Christmas Carol" for a local theater group. I also did some of the voices... just for fun!
So that's what I can remember.
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