Perfoming at IAM this year!
Mon Feb 18, 2008 Filed in: Recycled
thoughts
My band, the Varnish Cooks, won the Juried
Music Competition for the International Arts Movement
Conference this year. We play Saturday, March
1st at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in
New York City. It is an amazing honor and I am
very excited.
When I first went to the festival in 2005, I remember telling myself that I wanted to perform at the festival in the next couple years. But I imagined that I would perform original music at the festival, not old-time American traditional music. In the application to the competition, I quoted the minimalist composer John Adams: "Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy." The International Arts Movement Jury accepted the Varnish Cooks not only for the quality of our collective voices, but because we play music that lives outside of money-driven industry and grounds us to the aesthetic wisdom of our cultural ancestors. It is truly independent music that by nature transcends our individuality as artists.
When I first went to the festival in 2005, I remember telling myself that I wanted to perform at the festival in the next couple years. But I imagined that I would perform original music at the festival, not old-time American traditional music. In the application to the competition, I quoted the minimalist composer John Adams: "Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy." The International Arts Movement Jury accepted the Varnish Cooks not only for the quality of our collective voices, but because we play music that lives outside of money-driven industry and grounds us to the aesthetic wisdom of our cultural ancestors. It is truly independent music that by nature transcends our individuality as artists.
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