Charlie Bird: November 2013

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.