McQueen & Blankenship: Partnership, Power & Vulnerability
Co-hosts of the Trilloquy podcast Garrett McQueen and Scott Blankenship share their experiences with depression, therapy, medication, cannabis, creativity, and addiction.
Susie Ibarra: Hybrid Culture
Susie Ibarra’s collaborative approach has informed her work with jazz, classical, indie rock, and traditional Philippine musicians.
Anxiety as an Editing Eye
The lingering anxiety that appears while I write can actually serve as a tool in the editing process, provided it remains in check and in direct dialogue with my work.
Christopher Trapani: Depression, Memory & Communication
Christopher Trapani evades and encodes the filter of depression into his music, as he tells Julia Adolphe in the latest episode of her LooseLeaf Notebook podcast. They also discuss myths about the tortured artist, medication, and therapy, and how mental health challenges can be better addressed in the workplace and in schools.
The Attraction of the Tortured Artist Myth
Julia Adolphe shares her thoughts on why the myth of the tortured artist has been attractive to society as well as to herself personally as she was struggling to come to terms with Anxiety Disorder.
Elena Urioste & Melissa White: Your Unique Body, Voice & Healing Process
Violinists and yoga instructors Melissa White & Elena Urioste discuss the impact of abusive or unsupportive teachers and methodologies in conservatory life that strip power from students instead of inspiring self-care and compassion.
Ricky Ian Gordon: My Way of Enveloping a Story
For the past 20 years, Ricky Ian Gordon has been creating works for the stage—operas, musicals, or one-of a-kind music/theater hybrids—and getting them produced one after another, seemingly without a pause. But 14 months ago, everything came to a screeching halt as the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic.
Untangling Anxious Signals and Creative Impulses
There are stark differences between imaginative impulses and anxious physiological signals.
Daniela Candillari: Creative Blessings in Disguise
Conductor and composer Daniela Candillari reflects on her personal experience with performance anxiety, how emotion shapes our perception of time, and why her memories of living through the wars in the former Yugoslavia have returned to her during the pandemic.
Pamela Z: Expanding Our Imaginations
The only thing that is almost as exciting as watching and listening to a multimedia performance by Pamela Z is to hear her talk about it.
Cindy Lam: Voicing Trauma and Connecting with Your Inner Child
Pianist and Music Educator Cindy Lam shares her experience of PTSD, the stigma surrounding mental health challenges within Asian-American circles, and reflects on the escalating hate crimes against the AAPI communities.
Sarah Kirkland Snider: Illuminating Anxiety, Creative Process & Nurturing Support
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider shares her experience with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder and how they impact her creative process.
Judith Lang Zaimont: The Music She Has to Write
Judith Lang Zaimont is defiantly unwilling to be typecast for creating music in a particular style, which makes her music always a welcome surprise.
Creating Safe Spaces and Asking for Help
Julia Adolphe shares why she started this project, and how her composition professor, Steven Stucky, created a safe space for her to talk during lessons.
Introducing LooseLeaf NoteBook – A Podcast on Creativity and Mental Health
In the midst of the pandemic, national protests against systemic racism, increasing threats of domestic terrorism, and going stir crazy in my living room, I started the podcast at first simply as a creative and emotional outlet. I yearned to connect with friends and colleagues about the collective toll this period has taken on our mental health and creativity, and to remain active and present within our community while so many of us are forced to wait, or worse, are struggling to survive or function.
Kris Bowers: In Love With Accompaniment
Kris Bowers creates music that is attuned to whatever project he is working on–whether it’s the score for the 2018 motion picture Green Book, the 2019 EA Sports videogame Madden NFL 20, the 2020 Phyllis Schlafly-inspired Hulu series Mrs. America, or the 2021 Netflix sensation Bridgerton.
Julie Giroux: A Wind Band is a Box of 168 Crayons
Julie Giroux, who creates music primarily for wind band, takes musicians and audiences on a journey that is a real sonic adventure and, at the same time, is always fun.
Valerie Coleman: Writing Music for People
Valerie Coleman is committed to storytelling through her music, no matter the idiom. “I recognize that there are stories that are yet untold that if they were told, they would transform all those who would hear them. So it’s my job to create music that allows that transformative power to happen.”
Nebal Maysaud: Rumored "Death" of Classical Music Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
A year after writing “It’s Time to Let Classical Music Die,” Nebal Maysaud says, “I still believe … that classical music as a field does still have a lot of conservative and neoliberal values. But what I’ve seen also indicates that, while our structures and power structures reinforce these racial hierarchies of white supremacy, there are a lot of individuals who are aware of that and want to make a change in that power structure; and are not content with how we abusing people of color in the field of classical music.”
NewMusicBox LIVE: New Music Gathering
The concept for New Music Gathering was born in an online forum and now, in our time of physical distancing, it has been reimagined for virtual space.
Third Coast Percussion: The Collaborative Process
David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors of Third Coast Percussion explain how they introduce audiences to percussion instruments, how they each came to devote their lives to making music, the dos and don’ts for writing and performing for percussion music, the staggering range of music they have nurtured from an extraordinarily wide range of creators as well as some of their own original compositions, and finally what they are all have been doing to cope during our present unprecedented and uncertain time.
