Birds do it, whales do it, most people do it. We sing out. It’s a magical thing. Song has extraordinary power to move us—to make us feel sad or happy or in the mood to mate. But what exactly makes the magic work? How does music effect our brains? What makes it come out of our mouths in so many different forms and what separates the shower singers from Maria Callas or Ice Cube? Why do people who sing well fill us with such admiration and affection?
We’ll have a pass at all of these on September 19, when Categorically Not! starts singing.
We’ll start with a classically trained vocalist from USC’s Thorton School of Music who turned to, yes, neuroscience to figure out exactly how honing such skills changes our brains. Now in her fourth year of graduate study at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, PhD candidate Meghen Miles will tell us about her research into the effects of conservatory education on the anatomy of the brains of undergraduate music majors compared to undergraduate architecture majors. Her work illuminates the surprising plasticity of the brain: Practice appears to make lasting anatomical changes.
Song involves more than mindware, of course. Crooning and belting alike require carefully choreographed air flows, tissue vibration and shaping of air cavities. Making this corporal choreography visible is the specialty of Krishna Nayak, an Associate Professor of Engineering from the USC’s Viterbi School. Using real time MRI “movies” of professional singers, Krishna will compare sopranos, rappers and more, and tell us how he gets his remarkable pictures. These state of the art imaging techniques have many applications, including medical diagnoses and speech therapy.
And now for the appreciation and applause part of the program. We’ll have two songs from Pat Whiteman, who recently performed to standing-room-only audiences in Hollywood with her new show “The Mood I’m In.” She teaches at UCLA performing arts, and is a graduate of the Cabaret Conference at Yale. Following Pat, we have professional actor/singers, Kristin Iazzetta, Rachel Avery, Matthew Elkins, Tracie Lockwood, and Michael Redfield on keyboard. All are members of the Pacific Resident Theater and The Rogue Machine. They’ve performed together in plays and theatre cabarets. (Please click their names for links to credits, current performances and CDs.)
This program will take place at our usual home, Santa Monica Art Studios. Come at 6 for refreshments and wander the studios. Program begins at 6:30. We ask for a $5 donation to cover expenses.
Please RSVP to 310-397-7449 info@santamonicaartstudios.com
Mathematicians distill the universe into equations; poets do much the same, only using rythm and sometimes rhyme. Map-makers distill the spherical Earth into two-dimensional sheets; journalists distill lives into 500 word stories; boxers distill power into punches. A single raised eyebrow distills a universe of emotion. The “spirits” we drink are distillations of fermented grain, fruit and vegetables into alcohol. Certainly, it’s easy to argue that all art and science depend on distillation in one way or another, and our November Categorically Not! showcases some prima examples.
Larry Gonick, a self-described “over-educated cartoonist” (he has degrees in math from Harvard) pioneered non-fiction comics. His award-winning 5-book Cartoon History of Universe distills all of world history into 1450 pages, none containing more than twelve sentences, and his Cartoon Guides to Physics, Genetics, Statistics, Chemistry, Sex, and the Environment are used in schools and colleges across the country and around the world. His latest book is Cartoon History of the Modern World, Part 2: From the Bastille to Baghdad. He promises to talk about a subject so big it can't be distilled into this blurb.
After graduating from Stanford in Human Biology in 2008, Tom McFadden spent two years teaching the Human Biology core to sophomores. To supplement his classroom antics he created rap music videos distilling everything from oxidative phosphorylation to the importance of Hox genes. His videos have been featured in the NY Times, The Guardian (UK), and The Scientist magazine. Recently, he toured New Zealand elementary schools as part of the International Science Festival, spitting rhymes and helping young kiwis create their own science raps. A taste: Putting ‘homie’ into hydrocarbons.
Linda Ekstrom’s work is anchored in ‘the book’ as a container of narrative, history and memory. In extrapolating and altering texts she deconstructs and reconstructs, traces and scrambles, obscures and reveals as her hands become the primary source for reading words. What is left is a new form containing all of the primary material, only now it has been cut, twisted, tangled, rolled-- compressed and condensed into a new read. Bits of words and isolated letters remain as both memory and revelation, drawn out through the distillation. Linda’s work has been exhibited through-out the US and will be on view at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery. She teaches at UC Santa Barbara.
This program will take place at our usual home, Santa Monica Art Studios. Come at 6 for refreshments and wander the studios. Program begins at 6:30. We ask for a $5 donation to cover expenses.
Please RSVP to 310-397-7449 info@santamonicaartstudios.com
