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ABLE Voices Ep 80: Clare Johnston
11 Plays6 months ago
We are inviting disabled artists and arts educators to be guests and guest hosts on ABLE Voices. Today's guest host is Ben Lunn. Ben Lunn is a music composer, conductor, musicologist, teacher and associate artist for Drake Music and Drake Music Scotland. As a composer, Lunn’s music reflects the material world around him, connecting to his North-Eastern heritage or how disability impacts the world around him or his working-class upbringing. Alongside this, he has become renowned for his championship of others, which have seen him creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences and opportunities for others. Today, Ben will be speaking with Clare Johnston.
Clare Johnston is a disabled-identifying composer, performer and music technologist. She grew up in the Abled youth music sector playing viola and recorder, but faced access barriers accessing the next level of music education. After a few career changes along the way, in 2009 Clare returned to her first love of music and music education. It is during her work with Drake Music Scotland that she started to experiment with music technology and fall in love with the possibilities offered by iPad apps to create good quality performances with a distinctly Disabled voice. Clare feels it is important for digital instruments to have their own unique voice and compositions which have been designed for their characteristics, and compositions often explore the differences and similarities with acoustic instruments and play to the strengths of each instrument.
Follow Ben online:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blunnmusic/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/benlunnmusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benlunnmusic/
Follow Clare online:
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/rose-rodent
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clarejohnstonmusic/
Youtube: @clarejohnstonmusic
The ABLE Voices podcast is produced and edited by BIAAE Operations Coordinator, Daniel Martinez del Campo. The introduction music was written by Kai Levin and the ending song was written by Sebastian Batista. Kai and Sebastian are students in the Arts Education Programs at the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
For more information about our programs visit us at https://college.berklee.edu/BIAAE
Follow us for more weekly updates at:
Instagram: @BIAAE
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BIAAE
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Transcript
Introduction to Able Voices Podcast
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Speaker
Music
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Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to the Able Voices Podcast.
Introducing Guest Host Ben Lunn
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm Dr. Rhoda Bernard, Founding Native Team Director of the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the Assistant Chair of the Music Education Department at Berkeley College of Music.
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Speaker
And I'm proud to present this podcast featuring disabled artists and arts educators.
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Speaker
We are inviting artists with disabilities to be guest hosts for the Able Voices Podcast.
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Speaker
Today's guest host is Ben Lunn.
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Speaker
Ben Lunn is a music composer, conductor, musicologist, teacher, and associate artist for Drake Music and Drake Music Scotland.
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Speaker
As a composer, Lunn's music reflects the material world around him.
00:00:55
Speaker
connecting his Northeastern heritage or how disability impacts the world around him or his working class upbringing.
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Speaker
Alongside this, he has become renowned for his championship of others, which have seen him creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences and opportunities for others.
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Speaker
He has won accolades from the Scottish Music Awards in both 2023 and 2020 for his work with Hebrides Ensemble and Drake Music Scotland.
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Speaker
In 2022, Ben became the first Northeast composer to be selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society's Composer Scheme, which sees him paired with music in the round.
Ben Lunn's Contributions to Disability Arts
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Speaker
As a musicologist, Lund specializes in Baltic music, Horatiu, Radulisku, political ideology and composition, and composing and disability.
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Speaker
He has had the honor of lecturing at some of the world's leading academic institutions, and his articles have been published across Germany, UK, US, Russia, Lithuania, and collected by the Arvo Hotcentra.
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Speaker
In 2021, Ben also helped found the Disabled Artists Network, an organization which is bridging the gap between the professional world and disabled artists.
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Welcome,
Featuring Claire Johnson's 'Call of the Mountains'
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everyone.
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I am Ben Lund, composer and conductor, and I am a special guest host for the Able Voices podcast.
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And it is my absolute pleasure to welcome my dear friend and colleague, Claire Johnson.
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Before I start asking Claire questions, we will hear a short excerpt of a piece by hers, and then we'll get into chatting.
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So I hope you enjoy this lovely excerpt of the piece by Claire Johnson....
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So what we just heard there was a short excerpt of her award-winning piece, Call of the Mountains.
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Claire, could you give us a bit of background into what that piece was, how it came to being and the ideas behind it?
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Yeah, so Call of the Mountains was a
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sort of the end point of a collaboration that we did initially starting online between myself and the Iguru Ensemble in Kazakhstan.
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So their setup is that they have a contemporary music ensemble that also includes traditional Kazakh folk instruments.
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And it was an interesting experiment to add another layer onto that to have the very ancient instruments, the very mainstream instruments, and then to add in the modern digital accessible instruments into that mix.
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Wonderful.
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And what was that process like of sort of writing a piece for all of those combined and sort of quite curious forces?
Challenges in Composing with Digital Instruments
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It was interesting.
00:05:01
Speaker
It was very interesting.
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Speaker
It's very much the sort of thing that I do, trying to look at not just how to make music accessible for people who are using music,
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somewhat different instruments, but also to try to have each set of the musicians enter each other's worlds.
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So there are parts of the piece which are tremendously difficult to play on a traditional instrument.
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There are parts of the piece which are tremendously difficult to play on the digital instruments.
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And we're using the
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strength and characteristics of each instrument to sort of run back and forth between the different worlds of the digital instrument where the MIDI creation is very free and very easy to do, but it's much more difficult to hit a specific given note and then flipping that back the other way and getting the other instrumentalists to play something that is completely fine for it.
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Wonderful.
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And it's a really just fascinating sort of ability to sort of bring all of them together.
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And it's a piece I've known as well for quite a long period of time.
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And what I've admired is the way that not only have you approached all the instruments as equals, but you've been able to really highlight the specific voices and natures of the different instruments as well within the piece.
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So it doesn't feel like you say, awkwardly trying to force every instrument to sound slightly Kazakh or
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sound western or anything it's actually really leaning into these qualities which sort of adds to the overall sort of fascinating quality of the piece and it's always lovely coming back and listening to it so it's a pleasure to be able to share it to everyone here today and so one question I think to sort of give a bit more background to yourself as an artist and as musician and so on is could you sort of talk about your journey into music and into the sort of the stuff that you do because there are many facets to what you do and
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I'm sure everyone will be very eager to hear all the things that you do as an artist.
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Yeah, so I don't know if I've had one journey or several, or certainly, my journey, I think, is a little bit like one of those mazes where you go down a few blind alleys and you do a couple of U-turns and say, okay, right, not that.
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So initially, I probably followed the very normal mainstream course of things, sort of the youth orchestras,
00:07:38
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audition for the music college on the viola and then I started to really get an acceleration in my medical condition and I just wasn't able to keep up with the hours that would be expected of a course like that so although I could still play I can play
00:08:00
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for a performance degree at the end of the year.
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So I took a bit of a sidestep with that and I tried going to university for more of a general music degree but not as a
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performance student and that didn't work for me and so I went back to another university years later after a student of not doing music at all and that was in primary education so that included music as part of that but not as a sort of core part of the degree and that didn't work out for me either
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So I went to Nauphia University and I brought all of my little bits of degrees from all kinds of different places, including the Open University, and sort of dumped them at their door and said, what can you give me?
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And they said, yeah, you can finish your own music degree with us.
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So I did my final two years of my music performance degree.
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I think something like spring...
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two, three years after I started it.
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So, possibly the world's longest degree.
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And then I was introduced to Drake Music Scotland, who have a fine tradition of their digital musical instruments and specifically accessible musical instruments, building things that work for individual performers.
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And
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I had a good fidget with all of the stuff that they had available to see what instrument would speak to me.
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And the one that really did it for me was the iPad instrument thumb drum.
00:09:48
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So since 2009, that's been my instrument and that's been what I've been, and I never was a composer, never, until I met this instrument that
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has a lot to
Claire Johnson's Digital Music Journey
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say.
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Speaker
So it's yeah, as you say, I love the metaphor of the sort of going down an alley, turning back, trying to find another way out of this maze and so on.
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I think for many people like ourselves, that is part of the journey and part of the way we sort of accommodate sort of disability, either as it changes or just because we sort of find out where the various different limits or just
00:10:27
Speaker
actual just sort of reasonableness of certain things because obviously in theory there are some things we could potentially do but is it reasonable for us to go through those things and try and forcibly make it happen whereas you've managed to find this really lovely one just very unique sort of approach to it but also just something that is just perfect for you and also I love how you as composer came out because of the iPad and I think that's just really quite nice because many people sort of talk about a composer and their instrument using their instruments and how that sort of is reflected in the various things they do but when you sort of
00:10:58
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a new instrument has then opened you up to new possibilities.
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It's just a really magical little thing.
00:11:02
Speaker
And so I think before we go on to other nooks and crannies with all of this, could you tell us a little bit about what it's like being a performer with the iPad as your main instrument?
00:11:13
Speaker
Well, the first one is all of those conversations that you have with people, which is the same conversation every time.
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What do you do?
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I'm in the session.
00:11:21
Speaker
Oh, really, what do you play?
00:11:23
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:11:25
Speaker
Now I have to explain this again.
00:11:28
Speaker
So being able to get people to take a digital instrument seriously at all, is
00:11:37
Speaker
probably the first battle and getting people to understand what it is that you're doing because they're unfamiliar with it.
00:11:45
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So when they come to a concert and they see you perform, they don't really understand what it is that you're doing in the way that they've understood the violin since they were really tiny.
00:11:55
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They know what they're looking at.
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So that's probably sort of one of those hurdles.
00:12:03
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And the other side of it is
00:12:07
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The thing that is rather different about performing on an iPad in particular is that the notes can be moved anywhere you want them, which is fantastic for accessibility, but then it's also an extra challenge for being able to do something repeatable because every time you put down to the iPad,
00:12:32
Speaker
if you've programmed it in a different way specific to a piece of music, then middle C might be in the middle, but it might be at the left-hand side, it might be at the right-hand side, it might not be there at all.
00:12:45
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And so your reference points are changing all the time.
00:12:52
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Yeah, and it has to give sort of examples to a more traditional instrument is it's very similar to an organ in the sense of if the stops are set at, say, like,
00:13:01
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four feet it means that middle c is an octave lower than you'd expect it to be whereas obviously if the stops are at 16 foot the middle c is then an octave higher than you'd expect it to be and it's that wonderful malleability which i imagine for yourself as a creative person is fantastic but it does mean standardizing it gets really frustrating because there isn't a standard approach to it and sometimes it's a middle g shot exactly
00:13:29
Speaker
So I think this sort of leads really nicely into the, another question that sort of everyone will be very interested to hear about is how has your experiences as a disabled artist and your art interacted?
00:13:40
Speaker
How have you sort of found navigating it either through, say, education, through education?
00:13:45
Speaker
being an artist and just in musical settings?
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's still a lot of barriers.
00:13:52
Speaker
It's getting better, or perhaps I'm getting better at navigating it and staying away from the ones where there's problems.
00:14:00
Speaker
But yeah, because the first time that I found that I couldn't
00:14:09
Speaker
conform to the boxes that people like to put musicians into.
00:14:14
Speaker
I think I was about 12 and somebody said, oh, you can't be in our orchestra if you can't hear us.
00:14:21
Speaker
That's the basic, basic thing about being a musician.
00:14:24
Speaker
And you think, actually, I seem to be doing all right, but thanks.
00:14:29
Speaker
So that was the first one.
00:14:31
Speaker
And then constantly going through all of those
00:14:37
Speaker
rejections of the idea of you as potentially being a professional musician, that you can't put in the number of practice hours per day that somebody somewhere has decided that this makes a professional musician and this doesn't.
00:15:00
Speaker
or that this is, but for years, I, even though I was making my living for music, I felt like I could not refer to myself as a professional musician.
00:15:12
Speaker
And I went through years of saying music professional, just because I had this idea in my head of what a professional musician looked like, and I wasn't that, so I couldn't be in the gang.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting to see how things have,
00:15:29
Speaker
changed because it does feel like the past five years there seems to be a point of we're maybe accepting that the traditional model isn't the only model partly because of the way the pandemic forced a lot of learning to change so it then meant that disability had been a bit more adaptable became much more important and also because on just on other fronts as well so making sure that say more women are actually visible within the arts not just
00:15:58
Speaker
in the few pretty places and all this other kind of stuff.
00:16:01
Speaker
So we are getting there, but we're still miles off in many different ways.
00:16:05
Speaker
So yeah, so it's always an interesting sort of dynamic.
00:16:07
Speaker
And I'm curious sort of how you've sort of seen things sort of develop and improving, because obviously different disabilities have sort of seen different advances at different ways.
00:16:16
Speaker
So in comparison to when you were younger, how do you sort of feel that sort of relationship is between your disability and music?
00:16:25
Speaker
I do think it's improving.
00:16:28
Speaker
I think there is still a distance to go in terms of... there have been this very... Disabled people are there to be inspiring and not necessarily to be good.
00:16:44
Speaker
And we're definitely seeing that people are coming to concerts expecting music rather than lovely, shiny disabled people, which is fantastic.
00:16:56
Speaker
we're seeing improvements in accessibility and venues and or more so the ability of venues to engage with us about accessibility.
00:17:08
Speaker
I think there's still a lot of very inaccessible venues
00:17:12
Speaker
but they're getting better at wanting to be better and being able to get up
Accommodating Disabilities in Music Industry
00:17:19
Speaker
onto stages or venues where they are eliminating stages because they realise that that's such a huge accessibility barrier and just having a flat area at the front and setting up the audience seating appropriately.
00:17:34
Speaker
All of that kind of thing is really
00:17:38
Speaker
developing.
00:17:40
Speaker
I think there's still a gap between people's ability to adapt for something that they can see and for something that they can't see, and particularly for something that they think they might have some idea about.
00:17:59
Speaker
So being able to get wheelchair access is much easier than being able to explain to somebody
00:18:08
Speaker
I can only work for a couple of hours a day and then I'm done.
00:18:11
Speaker
And then I need to go away and have a really good quality rest somewhere and we'll start again tomorrow.
00:18:19
Speaker
And people sort of thinking, well, we all get tired.
00:18:24
Speaker
Can you just push through this one time?
00:18:26
Speaker
That angle of things is not improving the same gradient as physical access, I think.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, that puts it
00:18:37
Speaker
really well because that's the other thing I've sort of noticed as well just speaking personally because in the time that you've known me my sort of circumstances have changed so when I first came to Scotland I was sort of bounding around with just my two legs but now as I have a stick it's been very interesting to sort of see the way people approach me as a disabled person because they can see I am much more obviously disabled so I'm actually much more trusted in that instance which is always just a very curious little thing even though I've sort of known I'm autistic since the age of four
00:19:08
Speaker
it's only been in the sort of the past five years that people have actually believed me to a certain degree on that instance, which is just a very strange situation to be in.
Mentorship and Music Education for the Disabled
00:19:17
Speaker
So one thing I sort of want to draw out, one, because you do such a wonderful job at it is as you do a lot of teaching and mentoring, I'm sort of very curious to see sort of how you sort of navigate one, giving music to sort of wonderful young musicians across the place.
00:19:36
Speaker
So,
00:19:37
Speaker
Those who don't know me and Claire have worked together on a really lovely project with Digital Youth Orchestra in Edinburgh with a local school to where Drake Music Scotland are based and they were just great to work with.
00:19:50
Speaker
And this is led by Claire and other musicians, which Claire will tell me because I've completely forgotten their names.
00:19:56
Speaker
But yes, but could you sort of talk about one, your sort of approaches to sort of education, but also how you sort of see maybe the differences between say like the education that we got when we were younger
00:20:07
Speaker
and what you're able to give students now?
00:20:11
Speaker
So that project was with Katie Davis and with the support of Alice, whose surname may come back to me, may not.
00:20:23
Speaker
So I think one of the biggest ways that these things have to differ is you can have a structure in mind when you go in, but everything has to come much more so from the students.
00:20:38
Speaker
and that than it does with I suppose mainstream music education and part of that is is having the freedom to do that in terms of being able to have a a certain kind of funding of project you're not constrained by the past exams model of the music teaching that
00:21:07
Speaker
unfortunately the schools generally tend to have to operate in.
00:21:13
Speaker
And also you are unlikely to enjoy success if you come in with an idea of how you think that somebody is going to be able to operate and then that's just not how they want to receive an education from you.
00:21:35
Speaker
and we have been able to work in some qualifications as part of what we've been doing but it's been led by what are we trying to achieve, what are the students interested in and can those things support a qualification rather than these are the requirements of the qualification let's just do those things and hope it brings up something interesting.
00:22:02
Speaker
everything I tend to find is a strange sort of back to front with working in music with disability rather than I'm going somewhere weird I mean very happy to go somewhere weird because it's always just very interesting partly as well as just because
00:22:32
Speaker
One thing I find really interesting now is we're in a really lucky position where there are a lot more disabled people who are able to teach as well.
00:22:40
Speaker
Because like when I grew up, I was autistic before people like Temple Grandin were known about.
00:22:45
Speaker
So the idea of say like even being an adult was quite a crazy sort of thing to propose.
00:22:52
Speaker
So being able to sort of see people like myself and be able to learn off them was never really something that was considered.
00:22:59
Speaker
Whereas now we're in a really lovely position where
00:23:02
Speaker
people like me and you are able to sort of give back in a certain way so it's just I find it just a really positive and promising thing that we're able to help out as much as we can and I'm sort of curious as well sort of beyond sort of the lovely digital orchestra youth are there other sort of other areas of education you do because I know there's like the or not necessarily education but sort of music leadership is probably a better word for iPad lab I think that's probably a nice thing to sort of talk a little bit more about is that
00:23:30
Speaker
you sort of work together with the other lovely musicians in that as you are sort of the the matriarch is probably the nicest way to describe it.
Innovative Approaches in Music Creation
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah the iPad lab is it's very experimental as a little group we we do usually end up at the end of a a period of time with something that is a performance but the performance pieces are
00:23:58
Speaker
really born out of a lot of time spent experimenting with something tremendously niche and I don't want to give too much away for the future but at the moment we have been working on the experiences of
00:24:19
Speaker
music as a sound for individual people and what that is like and how that differs for people with different relationships with them, whether they have particular sounds that they can't bear or particular sounds that are unusually attractive to them.
00:24:42
Speaker
So for myself, I have quite strange hearing
00:24:48
Speaker
even among people that wear hearing aids, mine's one of the niche-er varieties.
00:24:54
Speaker
And we are looking into this aspect of what I need from sound, that's different from what somebody else needs from sound.
00:25:03
Speaker
And what does, going beyond this, that I think has been
00:25:11
Speaker
well-trodden now of music for deaf people being vibrations, that it needs to be more than that.
00:25:20
Speaker
It needs to be a variety of good vibrations, but also supported with visuals, perhaps.
00:25:27
Speaker
Or if somebody does have residual hearing, how can we tap into that residual hearing?
00:25:32
Speaker
And how can we also make something that works for everybody else who's in the room all at the same time?
00:25:38
Speaker
So that's easy.
00:25:41
Speaker
A nice light task, certainly.
00:25:43
Speaker
But what I find interesting as well is that, as you sort of say, a lot of the previous approaches to deafness has just been nice, positive vibrations and not assuming that we may not like an interesting journey.
00:25:56
Speaker
So like this idea of, say, going through a dark patch to eventually get to somewhere brighter again so we feel even better because we got there.
00:26:03
Speaker
Because it's a bit like when I was initially sort of doing some of the concerts like we did with Drake Music Scotland and Hebrides.
00:26:09
Speaker
The...
00:26:11
Speaker
I had to sort of remind people that yes, autistic people will have very sensitive hearing, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy loud.
00:26:19
Speaker
It's just a very particular kind of loud.
00:26:21
Speaker
And it's how you sort of navigate that is always the tricky one.
00:26:24
Speaker
And it's always just quite nice to sort of show that we're not just the stereotypes as well, which I think is just, is one less nice that things are improving across the board generally, but it is always interesting that through music, we're able to challenge this really quite actively in a way that surprises lots of other people and sort of
00:26:40
Speaker
thinking with that in mind, with some of the creations you've done in the past, particularly with, say, iPad Lab, are there any ones that you think have surprised the listeners more than anything else, or just the audience members more than you sort of expected they would be surprised?
00:26:56
Speaker
I think...
00:26:58
Speaker
There was a piece, Con Fugue, that I did a number of years ago, and it was a metaphor for my own journey through music, that it started with a very typical ancient musical form of the fugue and very traditional
00:27:21
Speaker
instrument set and just gradually morphed its way over into a much more electronic iPad performance space.
00:27:34
Speaker
But it was so gradual through the piece of music that I think the listeners sort of sitting there thinking, something's changed, but they don't quite know what it is yet.
00:27:47
Speaker
And to be able to get from from A to B,
00:27:51
Speaker
but not really be able to articulate where that transition took place is a fabulous metaphor for that trip that I've been on through my musical journey of playing the rock viola to playing electronic iPad music.
00:28:13
Speaker
It didn't just have a moment overnight where everything that I knew went away and something else came in.
00:28:21
Speaker
everything that I've learned and know and appreciate is part of the bundle of what I do now.
00:28:32
Speaker
But I think maybe come back a little bit more to run back to what we did at the very very beginning with our talk about Call of the Mountains because we'd mentioned very briefly this it came about through sort of working online as well as
00:28:49
Speaker
then the eventual concert and so
Collaborations and Unique Achievements
00:28:51
Speaker
on.
00:28:51
Speaker
So I think everyone would sort of love to hear a bit more about the nitty gritty of what was involved in that because what had happened is working together myself and Claire we've managed to get funding from the British Council for a digital partnership and so Claire was able to sort of mentor eGuru in a certain way and then they were able to sort of help Claire and then from there there was lots of other bits going on so
00:29:15
Speaker
do you want to sort of fill in the gaps a bit more and give a bit more information about not only sort of how you found the journey from that initial introductory cross mentoring bit but also just exploring music say from Kazakhstan and then eventually um composing um Call of the Mountains as well yeah I certainly had a lot to learn about uh traditional Kazakh folk instruments because but it's certainly it it's not the country that gets enough exposure
00:29:43
Speaker
the international stage.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, as I'm saying, of what Kazakh traditional music might even be.
00:29:57
Speaker
So I was led fantastically by Iguru into a listening journey.
00:30:06
Speaker
And also, I get a lot of inspiration from
00:30:12
Speaker
places and landscapes and all of this kind of thing.
00:30:15
Speaker
So unfortunately, plans to actually go to Kazakhstan fell through with all the things that have been happening in the world.
00:30:24
Speaker
But I managed to get a good look at a load of very exciting photographs that were sent over and all of this sort of thing.
00:30:36
Speaker
and try to understand the relationships of the landscape and how the traditional instruments and their youth fit into that landscape and sort of getting together and inspiration
00:30:55
Speaker
for how I might fit our Scottish traditions and our Scottish musicians and also the relatively new history as it were of our electronic instruments and drop those into this physical and musical landscape as well.
00:31:20
Speaker
Wonderful and
00:31:22
Speaker
What I think was also just really lovely with this project as well as just as an outsider who sort of helps facilitate it is one seeing the ensemble fall in love with Claire and her approach to things but I imagine sort of you falling in love with all the wonderful members of EGuru and their music and we were just surprised is probably a very modest way of describing how it felt when we suddenly got told that they're coming to Scotland they managed to just sort of magic money out of nowhere and
00:31:50
Speaker
When we did call it the whole concert, we named after Claire's wonderful piece.
00:31:54
Speaker
And what was really wonderful in that concert as well is not only did it become a wonderful opportunity to showcase the wonderful instruments like the iPad and other accessible musical instruments, we were able to showcase works by composers from Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations, which I'm almost certain that all of them were sort of UK premieres because it is just an area, like Claire says, just isn't shared in Britain or in Western Europe or the Western world and so on.
00:32:21
Speaker
lots of magical things happened and it's all thanks to a zoom meeting in many ways which is just always a lovely surprise to see what comes out of these various different kinds of things and so yeah so I think sort of as a sort of a good it's quite a big open sort of question is what sort of advice would you give to young artists who are disabled sort of try either trying to work the way through it or wanting sort of just get into it in the first place how would you sort of
00:32:50
Speaker
encourage them to sort of explore music either as artists or in the various different ways of working that you do?
00:32:57
Speaker
I think you have a fantastic opportunity to be unique in this space and of course if what you want to do
00:33:11
Speaker
is to be very like somebody who inspires you and to be very much part of the mainstream, then absolutely pursue that.
00:33:22
Speaker
But you've also got the opportunity to carve something out that not only
00:33:30
Speaker
and I'll come back round to that, not only to support you with your access needs, but has something of value to communicate to the world.
00:33:45
Speaker
And in the process of having a story to tell, I think it makes it much easier to
00:33:56
Speaker
to find inspiration that I don't know that I could write something for a piano because people have been doing that for a very long time and they've written everything.
00:34:09
Speaker
In my mind, as a non-fianist, I feel like it's been well spoken for over the years, whereas the iPad has a very small repertoire and plenty still to be made for it.
00:34:23
Speaker
But yeah, I think
00:34:26
Speaker
It's a common mistake for people to start from the access need and concentrate on a thing that's going to be perfect for this person because of their access need and not remember to think about how important it is that it's an inspiring journey for that person.
00:34:50
Speaker
So I so often say to people, does anybody remember being started out on the wrong instrument and just not being able to progress with it, not being able to gel with it, because you always wanted to play the flute and someone said, well, I haven't got a flute, but you can have a violin and you're just stuck in this town scape and type of music that you don't want to make.
00:35:16
Speaker
So
00:35:17
Speaker
if people, it is even worse in the disability and accessible music area that people will stop from the person's physical access needs and go, this instrument will meet your access needs.
00:35:36
Speaker
If you don't enjoy playing it, it's not going to work.
00:35:40
Speaker
Exactly.
00:35:41
Speaker
And it sort of gives me two sort of, one, two very contrasting but very
00:35:46
Speaker
well, one's very funny, the other one's just a bit more serious.
00:35:49
Speaker
But the, whenever I've sort of done sort of awareness training for people, it's the, I've always reiterated that access isn't about changing a thing so much that it's no longer the core of what that thing is.
00:36:01
Speaker
And so like, if say a disabled person wants to play a tuba because it's low, makes loud noises, and looks silly, if you then destroyed that character to make it accessible, you've no longer done it accessibly.
00:36:13
Speaker
You have to keep
00:36:14
Speaker
there is something that attracted that person to that instrument or to that thing.
00:36:18
Speaker
The question is, how on earth do we get that to fit them is always the challenge.
00:36:24
Speaker
But the other one that always comes to my mind when I'm talking about, say, like expectations of what instruments people want to play as disabled people, the French horn player, Felix Kleisser, is a French horn player who was born without arms and he plays the French horn.
00:36:38
Speaker
And there's just a wonderful interview where he was asked by a German interviewer just going,
00:36:45
Speaker
oh, playing the French horn must be very difficult to play with your feet.
00:36:48
Speaker
To which he replied, well, it's easier than with my hands.
00:36:51
Speaker
And it's just, it's a wonderful encapsulation of what it's like.
00:36:53
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, he wanted to play that instrument because he loves it and he found a way.
00:36:58
Speaker
And it's just, it's a really wonderful sort of flipping around and sort of the expectations of it.
00:37:03
Speaker
And it always makes me smile just because it's just, and it's also just delivered in such a German manner, which makes it all the funnier when you hear it.
00:37:09
Speaker
So yeah, so it's,
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, just to join, I think, yeah, you've captured it really beautifully and it's that passion is the thing that should be leading and then try and get everything in behind it.
00:37:23
Speaker
Definitely.
00:37:24
Speaker
And it's one of those things that can take a lot of extra time in an educational project, but you do have to find the instrument that somebody wants to play and the sound that they want that instrument to make, which in digital instruments,
00:37:43
Speaker
is of course a larger capability when you first play a flute it's going to make flute sense so we have to make the decision of okay we've got the outline of the instrument that is going to be playable and excite our musicians what do they want it to play
00:38:04
Speaker
Do they want it to play one sound predominantly?
00:38:08
Speaker
Do they want it to be able to play that wide variety of sounds or to be able to play a set of split sounds so that they can make the harmonies within their own instruments and all of this kind of thing?
00:38:24
Speaker
And until you get that right, there's not a great deal of point in
00:38:31
Speaker
pushing on with with the project you've got to wait until the person's eyes light up and go yeah that's that's the sound i've been wanting to make all this done couldn't have put it better myself it's really wonderful way of doing it just yeah wait till the eyes light up and then you found the thing so yeah so i think we're sort of coming towards the end of our time so i just wanted to give you a very open-ended question of is are there any other sort of thoughts or just things you'd like to share about sort of
00:38:59
Speaker
your entry into the world of music and the part you play within it or just anything that you thought would be of interest to any of the listeners.
Challenging Perceptions of Disability in Arts
00:39:09
Speaker
Well, it's just a real sign of just how modest you are because there was a very wonderful qualification you've gotten very recently, which I admit isn't music related, but I just think it's very much part of your journey.
00:39:19
Speaker
Do you want to talk about gliders just very quickly about the wonderful qualification you know about?
00:39:25
Speaker
But it's absolutely another area of the world in which I'm surprising people of the kinds of things that disabled people can do.
00:39:33
Speaker
But yeah, I've recently become a qualified glider pilot.
00:39:38
Speaker
I've been flying upside down a lot recently.
00:39:40
Speaker
I started to learn how to do aerobatics.
00:39:44
Speaker
And it's a moment of processing in people's heads when you come into a room and you say, okay, this is me, I'm a musician, this is what I do, and let's go around the room and everybody say who they are and then there's a conversation starter of something that you hope people will come and talk to you about in the break.
00:40:03
Speaker
Minus that I'm a glider pilot and the processing in people's heads.
00:40:08
Speaker
Disabled, have you noticed?
00:40:16
Speaker
But what I particularly love about it, with you being a glider pilot, is we now have a 21st century equivalent to Karl Heinz Stockhausen's helicopters.
00:40:27
Speaker
So we had one composer who was obsessed with helicopters and had the lovely helicopter quartet.
00:40:31
Speaker
We now have yourself with a glider, so we now just need to work out how we can tie that into a piece of music.
00:40:36
Speaker
But it's a tradition that's well worth people's life.
00:40:39
Speaker
I would imagine the air brakes give different frequencies.
00:40:42
Speaker
I've done it not again.
00:40:45
Speaker
See, we've got an idea brewing already, so we'll talk to Creative Scotland.
00:40:52
Speaker
Wonderful.
00:40:53
Speaker
It's been, as always, it's very, very good just to chat to you at the best of times, but it's also been very nice and been a wonderful pleasure to be able to chat to you as part of the Able Voices podcast.
00:41:03
Speaker
I hope everyone who has been listening has enjoyed the tidbits and hopefully their sort of expectations of what disabled people could do either, say,
00:41:11
Speaker
in regards to sort of flying in the air, music making, or sort of leading music education, as well as also just sort of the international relations that we can get up to as well.
00:41:19
Speaker
There's some really fascinating things.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I think Claire is just a wonderful example of just, if you just gan for it, who knows what on earth you can do.
00:41:27
Speaker
And so on behalf of myself and Claire, thank you very much for listening and look forward to hearing you next time.
00:41:34
Speaker
Thank you.
00:41:43
Speaker
Able Voices is a production of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education, led by me, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the founding managing director.
00:41:52
Speaker
It is produced by Daniel Martinez del Campo.
00:41:55
Speaker
The intro music is by Kai Levin, and our closing song is by Sebastian Batista.
00:42:01
Speaker
Kai and Sebastian are students in the arts education programs at the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
00:42:08
Speaker
If you would like to learn more about our work, find us online at berklee.edu.org.
00:42:13
Speaker
slash B-I-A-A-E, or email us at B-I-A-A-E at Berkeley, that's L-E-E dot E-D-U.