Music and Dance

It was great to have lunch a few weeks ago with Jared Oaks, Music Director of Ballet West and BYU alum. Jared’s a multi-talented force—a conductor, pianist, composer, and all-around scholar of music and other things. I enjoyed catching up with him and picking his brain about possible collaborations after he had commented on a Facebook post I made. No surprise that he had some great ideas and suggestions, including that I reach out to Julia Gleich, a choreographer/dancer/teacher that Jared knows who’s currently based in NYC after many years of teaching and working in London.

I reached out to Julia and she was kind enough to reply, check out some of my work, and suggested that she was even currently working on a piece for an upcoming performance and still open to what music she might use. I sent her several options of shorter pieces/clips/etc. I thought might fit with her project, and she eventually settled on using my little track “Forgive Me Paul Lansky and Radiohead”—a strange little ditty that features the chord progression from Radiohead’s “Idioteque,” which they created by sampling a segment from Paul Lansky’s computer-music piece Mild und Leise, which was itself an exploration of various transformations of Wagner’s famous Tristan chord…blah blah blah :). Julia ultimately used my track for the opening of her piece, and then (perhaps serendipitously) chose a couple other works by Paul Lansky for the rest of the piece.

A link to the video recording of the premiere performance of Shape Shifter is HERE. I love collaborating and connecting with old and new friends!