Labrador Creative Arts Festival Wrap-up

I arrived home yesterday after participating as one of the visiting artists at the 39th Annual Labrador Creative Arts Festival in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and environs. I posted one blog entry during the festival. Re-reading it just now, I can "hear" how breathless I was!

My secret source of power for the festival: trail mix with
added pralined nuts and Reese's Pieces

The festival continued at an intense pace: workshops, plays, soirées! It is a phenomenally rich week, but one that requires a great deal of flexibility and stamina. Before I left, I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to make it through gracefully. Fortunately, I feel like I did. I maintained my equanimity in the face of withdrawn high school kids and rambunctious middle school kids. Every class that was willing wrote a song or two. And the less willing did some breathing and stretching and thinking about their own rib cage and diaphragm and how our voices are produced. And most of the students sang along on a chorus or two. Voice can be a very vulnerable place and I hope I presented in a way that held that vulnerability with care and consideration.

I talked with various classes about story songs, metaphors, high sounds and low, quiet and loud and how melody is a way to communicate more meaning in a song that with words alone. (Communication was the theme of the Festival this year).

Some of the students at Sheshatshiu Innu School shared some great beats with me.

We did a benefit concert for Libra House (a women's shelter) on Sunday afternoon at the Birch Brook Chalet. That was lots of fun - my favourite kind of concert: intimate, relaxed. And the setting was so beautiful:

The view from Birch Brook Chalet, home of our Sunday concert

I felt sad to leave on Wednesday morning, but I am also glad to come back to the quiet and solitude of my home life. It was a very stimulating week for me, full of new people and ideas. I did lots of thinking on the fly to try to make my workshops more accessible and engaging. I expended a lot of energy!

Boarding our flight home

It was a bit of an endurance test, but a happy and successful one. I slept for eleven hours last night - so glad to be in my own bed with my sweet cat.

My rest and relaxation guru, Salinger

I will definitely be absorbing this trip and the things I learned for a long time to come. I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Labrador Creative Arts Festival for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Labrador Creative Arts Festival update

I'm almost halfway through my time here at the Labrador Creative Arts Festival. It's been super-interesting so far. 

Of course, everything at the festival is weather dependent! We arrived without difficulty on Tuesday night, but most of the day Wednesday I spent (with about seven other visiting artists), waiting at the Goose Bay airport hoping that the weather hold would lift and that we'd be able to fly up the coast to the north. 

I was scheduled to be in Nain overnight, but alas, the weather remained windy and we were unable to fly. That meant having the morning off yesterday and I used the time to write a song called "Weather Hold". (Stay tuned for that, I'll try to get it up on YouTube one day soon).

Yesterday afternoon I had a workshop with an adult basic education class. Today was full-on: six half hour workshops with kids from K-3 in the morning and this afternoon, an hour-long workshop with some of the students visiting from the coastal schools.

Here is a picture of one of the flip chart pages from my morning sessions:

We wrote TWO songs together in just a  half hour! Amazing!

I've been trying to get a little rest this afternoon. This evening, we'll go out to see two more plays - we've seen four so far and all of them have been funny and/or moving! The student actors/playwrights really put their hearts and courage into their work.

So far, so wonderful! Our billeting families, our drivers and the festival organizers are taking really good care of us! 

I'm looking forward to the rest of the Fest! (Hey, that rhymes! Maybe I should write a song about it...)

Labrador Creative Arts Festival 2014

I haven't been writing much here because I've been on a performance sabbatical this year for wellness reasons. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling quite a lot better than I have been – and just in time!

In four days, I'll board a plane to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL to be one of the artists at the 2014 Labrador Creative Arts Festival.

The LCAF is a drama festival for students in Labrador. I'm going to be facilitating some voice workshops and singing some songs.

It is an amazing opportunity. I didn't ever expect that in my lifetime I might get an opportunity to go so far into Canada's north.

I've got some new merino wool long underwear and new warm socks.
Thirty-eight cm of snow fell in Happy Valley-Goose Bay last Saturday
and it's been below freezing since then. For me, it's going to be
a sudden infusion of wintery-ness!

I am very excited. I'll be posting about my experiences here and on Twitter – whenever I get a chance.

And when I get back, I have some other exciting projects planned for 2015 that I'm looking forward to sharing with you!

Interview: Chris Kay Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing on the Importance of Taking Creative Breaks

Welcome to this interview with one of my favourite creative friends and colleagues, Chris Kay Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing.

Originally broadcast at 7pm EST on February 12, 2014. We hope you'll tune in – LIVE or LATER!

Lunenburg Folk Harbour's First Songwriting Camp

It's been an intense few days. Wow.

Co-facilitating the first ever Folk Harbour Songwriting Camp with Kev Corbett was a full-on three days of heart and craft. In trying to teach some young folks how to find out what they had to say and how to say it well in a song, I learned a ton. I learned a ton from our participants. I also learned a ton from Kev, who's a stellar musician.

We went over structure and lyric-writing technique. We listened to songs by masters of the craft. We worked on figuring out guitars and PAs and our voices. We were lucky enough to have visits from David Myles and Rose Cousins, who shared some of their songwriting secrets and gave feedback on some of our participants' tunes.

And we wrote. It was a jam-packed few days.

I think the most poignant moment for me was toward the end of the third day, when I shared this quote with the camp:

“Singers and Musicians are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every note, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life – the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because musicians and singers are willing to give their entire lives to a moment – to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Singers and Musicians are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.”
– David Ackert, LA Times

That's why we do what we do. It was an honour to help our young participants more fully join the ranks of the world's brave songwriters.