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Light rail from Tacoma to Seattle delayed again. Here’s why, according to Sound Transit Tacoma News Tribune
Imagine this: you walk into an office building on the day of a big client meeting. You’re feeling anxious, apprehensive. As you approach the receptionist and check in digitally for your appointment, you see a new option to receive a “personalized bio-soundscape” while you wait. You could use a distraction, so—why not?—you decide to give it a try. As you settle in, you slip on an electronic ring provided by the receptionist, and a soothing sound that seemingly only you can hear begins to envelop your space. You slowly begin to feel more relaxed. Through AI, body sensors in the lobby, biosensors in the ring, and directional speakers, the building has sensed your mood—and has generated an audio-led, hyper-personalized soundtrack to combat your anxiety.
Yet we routinely walk into offices that either sound like mausoleums or city circuses, with silence or a cacophony of sound accompanying us as we make our way about. As a creative myself, I know that’s because many designers think of our visual senses first. But these days, with devices and surroundings in constant competition for your visual attention, I’m interested in auditory experiences. Sound has the incredible power to impact mood, increase productivity and creativity, and decrease stress and anxiety. The future of design for workplaces lies in wielding the power of evocative sound—a sense arguably more powerful than visuals and scent.
Sounds enable us to tap into primordial feelings. According to developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, our limbic cortex (or “lizard brain,” as it’s often called) retains auditory fight or flight. This means that our subconscious automatically perceives certain sounds as scary or comforting because our brains evolved on the unforgiving plains of the Serengeti. Without even realizing it, we’re often at the mercy of how sounds affect our well-being. Especially with the significant, and often justified, resistance to returning to the office, workplaces can benefit from auditory design that evokes not only a feeling of home, but also elevates the office experience above what you might experience at home.
When designing a space, the singular most common directive for designers is to create an experience that evokes not just feelings, but nostalgia—one that helps users tap into a fond memory or place. This could be anything from a chord sequence to footsteps in the snow. A nostalgic-feeling soundscape is highly personal: It transports the listener into a moment in time while subconsciously connecting them to their physical environment. In an office setting, this feeling of comfort and belonging could entice employees to do their work at the office.
Beyond suggesting a feeling of comfort, sound can also impact productivity, creativity, focus, and well-being. Think, for example, about the inexplicably chilling sound of a black hole, or the effect that a crying child has on a nursing mother. Now think about the almost universally relaxing or inspiring sounds of birds singing or rain on your windowpane. How can we wield this inherent power to help us work better?
The key lies in creating agency for all parties audibly involved, from visitors in brief transit to employees who may be using a space for many hours at a time. When one enters a space, it could react to them, not with the usual static and impersonal background noise on a loop, but instead with a dynamic melody that responds to the human stimulus. Nobody would be forced to hear something. Rather, they’d opt into it because it’s part of their interaction with their surroundings: an auto-generated symphony tailored to them.
Companies brand everything, from mugs and pens to entire building designs. It’s easy to get lost, to feel like a cog in the wheel of a machine much bigger than yourself—and in other words, to feel insignificant. And after the height of covid, companies are increasingly rebranding to be more human-centric, less about a brand and more about striking an emotional connection with the staff walking through the front door. What better way to do that than allowing employees the agency to set the tone for their own day? When they walk into work and the space responds to them, they’re bringing in their own personal footprint. They’re making a mark.
Let’s revisit the day of your big presentation. You’re on your way to the conference room, mentally rehearsing your presentation. Through directional speakers and wearable tech, your soundscape begins to play binaural beats, which induce meditative mental brain wave patterns, helping you feel focused, calm, even zen-like.
Or you’re in a creative slump, and you can’t seem to hear yourself think above the sound of overheard conversations, ringing phones, and beeping tech. You want a change of scenery, so you decide to go for a walk around the office. As you walk about, your soundscape incorporates happy music with high emotions and a regular beat to increase creativity and ideation. Your coworker passes by and, for a brief moment of synchronicity, your soundscapes merge—a serendipitous bit of magic peppered into your day.
Say you’re feeling disgruntled about braving your way through wintry weather for an early-morning office meeting. You walk into the building, staring down at your phone as you try to get a jump on emails for the day. Suddenly, the soundscape in the building’s lobby surrounds you with ASMR-like sounds of nature, a decision backed by decades of evidence about the importance of nature sounds to well-being. However you choose to interact with your space, it’s deliberate, and no longer the random cacophony of sound or the lack of it altogether.
The technology already exists in piecemeal throughout different projects. To create a new sound experience at the Charter Communications headquarters in Connecticut, for example, my team at ESI Design crafted pleasant generative harmonies from the digital sounds made by Charter’s products and technology, always shifting and changing based on live data and brand content. These live soundscapes created a deeper sense of being part of the Charter work and ethos in a subtle, effective way. The generative soundscape sets a positive tone for work. It’s the first thing people hear when they enter their office, and the last when going home.
We spend more time at work than any other waking activity. In designing a workspace that engages the range of human experience and emotion, we should take advantage of sound. It can suggest a feeling of wellness, peace, happiness, and identity, or it can help people tap into that extra bit of creativity, focus, or patience. It can give a workplace, a hospital, or a train station an unplaceable extra sense of dimension, and the average person agency about how they interact with the world around them. Yesterday’s architecture should evolve past what we see to what we hear. Workplaces deserve soundtracks: yours.
Layne Braunstein is Creative, Leader at ESI Design, an NBBJ company, and was previously the co-founder of Fake Love at the New York Times.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/5VJL2EORYT3ZVB6APMX72G6NJA.com)
Calling it a "bloody mess," a Martin County man on Tuesday detailed his painful encounter after he was bitten by a shark while surfing.
Bert Krebs, who's been surfing for more than three decades, was riding waves off the north end of Jupiter Island in Hobe Sound earlier this month when he fell off his surfboard in about chest-deep water.
"I thought I kicked a rock or something. And all of the sudden, there was the bite," Krebs said during a news conference Tuesday at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach. "I knew right away what happened. I knew it was a bite. And I yelled, 'shark bite' to my friends."
WATCH: Interview with Hobe Sound shark bite victim
Hobe Sound shark bite victim shares story
Krebs' friend carried the injured surfer to a nearby road, where amazingly, an off-duty firefighter who had seen the incident was waiting with medical supplies to clean and cover the wound.
The shark had bitten Krebs on the foot and also tore off a chunk of his toe.
"For some reason, I was calm. I wasn't freaking out or anything. I kind of was accepting what was going on," Krebs said.
The Hobe Sound resident was taken to St. Mary's Medical Center, where he was treated by trauma surgeon Dr. Faris Azar and other medical professionals. He was released three days later.
While Krebs needs a couple months to fully recover, he said he's eager to get back in the water.
"I love it. It's a passion of mine. It enhances my life. There are benefits, physical, mental, spiritual," Krebs said.
The longtime surfer added he's grateful to be alive and has an immense amount of respect for the creatures he shares the ocean with.
"I'm just visiting their world and I accept the things that go along with it," Krebs said.
Scripps Only Content 2023
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Steelers Don't Sound Interested in Jordan Addison Sports IllustratedImagine this: you walk into an office building on the day of a big client meeting. You’re feeling anxious, apprehensive. As you approach the receptionist and check in digitally for your appointment, you see a new option to receive a “personalized bio-soundscape” while you wait. You could use a distraction, so—why not?—you decide to give it a try. As you settle in, you slip on an electronic ring provided by the receptionist, and a soothing sound that seemingly only you can hear begins to envelop your space. You slowly begin to feel more relaxed. Through AI, body sensors in the lobby, biosensors in the ring, and directional speakers, the building has sensed your mood—and has generated an audio-led, hyper-personalized soundtrack to combat your anxiety.
Yet we routinely walk into offices that either sound like mausoleums or city circuses, with silence or a cacophony of sound accompanying us as we make our way about. As a creative myself, I know that’s because many designers think of our visual senses first. But these days, with devices and surroundings in constant competition for your visual attention, I’m interested in auditory experiences. Sound has the incredible power to impact mood, increase productivity and creativity, and decrease stress and anxiety. The future of design for workplaces lies in wielding the power of evocative sound—a sense arguably more powerful than visuals and scent.
Sounds enable us to tap into primordial feelings. According to developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, our limbic cortex (or “lizard brain,” as it’s often called) retains auditory fight or flight. This means that our subconscious automatically perceives certain sounds as scary or comforting because our brains evolved on the unforgiving plains of the Serengeti. Without even realizing it, we’re often at the mercy of how sounds affect our well-being. Especially with the significant, and often justified, resistance to returning to the office, workplaces can benefit from auditory design that evokes not only a feeling of home, but also elevates the office experience above what you might experience at home.
When designing a space, the singular most common directive for designers is to create an experience that evokes not just feelings, but nostalgia—one that helps users tap into a fond memory or place. This could be anything from a chord sequence to footsteps in the snow. A nostalgic-feeling soundscape is highly personal: It transports the listener into a moment in time while subconsciously connecting them to their physical environment. In an office setting, this feeling of comfort and belonging could entice employees to do their work at the office.
Beyond suggesting a feeling of comfort, sound can also impact productivity, creativity, focus, and well-being. Think, for example, about the inexplicably chilling sound of a black hole, or the effect that a crying child has on a nursing mother. Now think about the almost universally relaxing or inspiring sounds of birds singing or rain on your windowpane. How can we wield this inherent power to help us work better?
The key lies in creating agency for all parties audibly involved, from visitors in brief transit to employees who may be using a space for many hours at a time. When one enters a space, it could react to them, not with the usual static and impersonal background noise on a loop, but instead with a dynamic melody that responds to the human stimulus. Nobody would be forced to hear something. Rather, they’d opt into it because it’s part of their interaction with their surroundings: an auto-generated symphony tailored to them.
Companies brand everything, from mugs and pens to entire building designs. It’s easy to get lost, to feel like a cog in the wheel of a machine much bigger than yourself—and in other words, to feel insignificant. And after the height of covid, companies are increasingly rebranding to be more human-centric, less about a brand and more about striking an emotional connection with the staff walking through the front door. What better way to do that than allowing employees the agency to set the tone for their own day? When they walk into work and the space responds to them, they’re bringing in their own personal footprint. They’re making a mark.
Let’s revisit the day of your big presentation. You’re on your way to the conference room, mentally rehearsing your presentation. Through directional speakers and wearable tech, your soundscape begins to play binaural beats, which induce meditative mental brain wave patterns, helping you feel focused, calm, even zen-like.
Or you’re in a creative slump, and you can’t seem to hear yourself think above the sound of overheard conversations, ringing phones, and beeping tech. You want a change of scenery, so you decide to go for a walk around the office. As you walk about, your soundscape incorporates happy music with high emotions and a regular beat to increase creativity and ideation. Your coworker passes by and, for a brief moment of synchronicity, your soundscapes merge—a serendipitous bit of magic peppered into your day.
Say you’re feeling disgruntled about braving your way through wintry weather for an early-morning office meeting. You walk into the building, staring down at your phone as you try to get a jump on emails for the day. Suddenly, the soundscape in the building’s lobby surrounds you with ASMR-like sounds of nature, a decision backed by decades of evidence about the importance of nature sounds to well-being. However you choose to interact with your space, it’s deliberate, and no longer the random cacophony of sound or the lack of it altogether.
The technology already exists in piecemeal throughout different projects. To create a new sound experience at the Charter Communications headquarters in Connecticut, for example, my team at ESI Design crafted pleasant generative harmonies from the digital sounds made by Charter’s products and technology, always shifting and changing based on live data and brand content. These live soundscapes created a deeper sense of being part of the Charter work and ethos in a subtle, effective way. The generative soundscape sets a positive tone for work. It’s the first thing people hear when they enter their office, and the last when going home.
We spend more time at work than any other waking activity. In designing a workspace that engages the range of human experience and emotion, we should take advantage of sound. It can suggest a feeling of wellness, peace, happiness, and identity, or it can help people tap into that extra bit of creativity, focus, or patience. It can give a workplace, a hospital, or a train station an unplaceable extra sense of dimension, and the average person agency about how they interact with the world around them. Yesterday’s architecture should evolve past what we see to what we hear. Workplaces deserve soundtracks: yours.
Layne Braunstein is Creative, Leader at ESI Design, an NBBJ company, and was previously the co-founder of Fake Love at the New York Times.
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New 3D printing technology uses ultrasound to print instantly Fast Company
Motion Picture Sound Editors spread the wealth at the 70th Golden Reel Awards, its first in-person ceremony since the start of the pandemic, held in a new venue, L.A.’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre.
In the feature competition, winners included the teams from Top Gun: Maverick, for effects and Foley; Elvis, for music editing; All Quiet on the Western Front, for a foreign language film; and in a surprise, The Banshees of Inisherin, for dialogue and ADR.
A day after winning the PGA and top Annie Awards, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio collected the prize for sound editing in an animated feature. In nonfiction filmmaking, Good Night Oppy won the category for sound editing in feature documentary; and Moonage Daydream, for music editing in a feature doc.
All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis and Maverick, along with Avatar: The Way of Water and The Batman are Oscar nominated for sound, which combines sound editing and mixing. The Cinema Audio Society Awards for sound mixing will be handed out March 4; its live-action feature competition mirrors the Oscar nominated slate. Last weekend, All Quiet on the Western Front won the BAFTA in sound.
During the Golden Reel Awards ceremony, Maverick director Joe Kosinski and (prerecorded) Tom Cruise presented the MPSE Filmmaker Award to producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Kosinski remembered the thrill of seeing the producer’s films in the ‘80s. “When you saw a Bruckheimer movie, you knew it was designed to do what movies do: entertain,” he said. Cruise congratulated Bruckheimer, saying “he’s always striving for excellence” and getting a laugh when he added, “and he knows what the hell he is doing.”
Bruckheimer told the sound community, “You have been adding magic to your films for so many years and I’ll remain a lifelong fan.” Recalling the first note of Top Gun’s opening theme, he added, “movies are identified by the music and their sound effects. … and the importance of dialogue — I want to make sure [audiences] hear every line and every note.”
Supervising sound editor Gwendolyn Yates Whittle — who this year received her third Oscar nom, for Avatar: The Way of Water — became the third woman to receive the MPSE Career Achievement Award, which was presented by her Skywalker Sound friends and colleagues, supervising sound editors Al Nelson and Lora Hirschberg.
Whittle recognized friends and colleagues, among them fellow Skywalker Sound colleagues Hirschberg; Nelson; Chris Boyes, who invited her to co-supervise sound on 2009’s Avatar, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination; and Randy Thom, who launched her into animation with Ice Age 2. She urged the sound community to mentor, saying, “You are the best at what you do. .. Don’t hesitate to pass the passion along. We can share advice and set the future career achievement recipients up for success by nurturing them now.”
A complete list of winners follows (in bold).
2023 Golden Reel Award Sound Editorial Winners
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Animation
Love, Death & Robots: “In Vaulted Halls Entombed”
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editor: Brad North MPSE
Sound Designer: Craig Henighan MPSE
Foley Editor: Antony Zeller MPSE
Foley Artists: Zane Bruce, Lindsay Pepper
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Long Form Dialogue / ADR
The Crown: “Gunpowder”
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editor: Lee Walpole MPSE
Supervising Dialogue Editor: Iain Eyre
Supervising ADR Editor: Matt Mewett
ADR Editor: Sophie Mapplebeck
Crowd ADR Editor: Abbie Shaw
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Long Form Effects / Foley
Stranger Things: “Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editors: William Files MPSE, Craig Henighan MPSE
Sound Editors: Angelo Palazzo MPSE, Ken McGill, Katie Halliday, Lee Gilmore MPSE, David Grimaldi, Chris Bonis
Foley Artist: Steve Baine
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Short Form
The Bear: “Review”
FX
Supervising Sound Editor: Steve “Major” Giammaria
Sound Effects Editor: Jonathan Fuhrer
Dialogue Editor: Evan Benjamin
Foley Editors: Annie Taylor, Chris White
Foley Artists: Leslie Bloome, Shaun Brennan
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Animation
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editor: Scott Martin Gershin MPSE
Sound Designer: Scott Martin Gershin MPSE
Sound Effects Editors: Masanobu “Tomi” Tomita, Andrew Vernon MPSE, Chris Richardson
Dialogue Editor: Dan Gamache MPSE, Chris Richardson
Foley Artists: Dan O’Connell, John Cucci MPSE
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Documentary
Good Night Oppy
Amazon
Supervising Sound Editor: Mark Mangini MPSE
Supervising Dialogue Editor: Dave Bach
Sound Designers: Tim Walston MPSE, Dave Whitehead MPSE, Mark Mangini MPSE
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Foreign Language Feature
All Quiet on the Western Front
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editor: Frank Kruse
Sound Designer: Markus Stemler
Supervising Dialogue Editor: Alexander Buck
Supervising ADR Editors: Benjamin Hörbe, Alexander Buck
ADR Editors: Thomas Kalbér, Moritz Hoffmeister
Foley Editor: Kuen Il Song
Foley Artists: Carsten Richter, Daniel Weis
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Dialogue / ADR
The Banshees of Inisherin
Searchlight Pictures
Supervising Sound Editor: Joakim Sundström
Supervising ADR Editing: Simon Chase
Supervising Foley Editor: Patrick Ghislain, Rebecca Glover
Foley Artist: Julien Naudin
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Effects / Foley
Top Gun: Maverick
Paramount
Supervising Sound Editors: Al Nelson, James Mather, Bjørn Ole Schroeder
Sound Designers: Christopher Boyes, Jed Loughran
Sound Effects Editors: Benjamin A. Burtt, Scott Guitteau, Rowan Watson, Qianbaihui Yang MPSE
Supervising Foley Editor: Luke Dunn Gielmuda
Foley Editors: Dmitri Makarov, David Mackie
Foley Artists: Jana Vance, Ronni Brown, John Roesch MPSE, Shelley Roden MPSE
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-theatrical Animation
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
Nickelodeon
Supervising Sound Editor: Jeff Shiffman MPSE
Sound Effects Editors: Jessey Drake MPSE, Brad Meyer MPSE
Dialogue Editor: Xinyue Yu MPSE
Foley Editor: Carol Ma
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-theatrical Documentary
Formula 1: Drive to Survive: “Gloves Are Off”
Netflix
Supervising Sound Editors: Steve Speed, Nick Fry
Sound Designer: James Evans
Sound Editor: Hugh Dwan
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Non-theatrical Feature
PREY
Hulu
Supervising Sound Editors: Chris Terhune, Will Files MPSE
Sound Designer: James Miller
Sound Effects Editors: Christopher Bonis, Diego Perez MPSE, Lee Gilmore MPSE
Supervising Dialogue Editor: Jessie Anne Spence MPSE
Dialogue Editors: David Bach, Korey Pereira MPSE
Supervising Foley Editor: Annie Taylor
Foley Editors: Nick Seaman, Roni Pillischer
Foley Artists: Leslie Bloome, Shaun Brennan
2023 Golden Reel Award Music Editorial Winners
Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Broadcast Long Form
Stranger Things: “Chapter Nine: The Piggyback”
Netflix
Music Editors: Lena Glikson, David Klotz
Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Broadcast Short Form
Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin: “Torschlusspanik”
NBC Universal
Music Editor: Andres Locsey
Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Documentary
Moonage Daydream
NEON / HBO Documentary Films
Supervising Music Editor: Brett Morgan
Music Editor: John Warhurst
Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Feature Motion Picture
ELVIS
Warner Bros.
Supervising Music Editor: Jamieson Shaw MPSE
Music Editor: Evan McHugh
Scoring Editor: Chris Barrett
2023 Golden Reel Award Game Editorial Winners
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Game Dialogue / ADR
Immortality
Half Mermaid
Audio Directors: Kevin Senzaki MPSE, Priscilla Snow
Dialogue Editor: Diana Cha
Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Game Music
God of War Ragnarök
Sony
Music Directors: Peter Scaturro, Keith Leary
Supervising Music Editor: Sonia Coronado
Music Editors: Yuen Man Chung Kelvin, Glen Andrew Brown, Rob Goodson, Bill Hemstapat, Adam Kallibjian, Collin Lewis, Kory McMaster, Monty Mudd, Kye Sebastian Voce
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Game Effects / Foley
God of War Ragnarök
Sony
Audio Director: Frank Favre
Supervising Sound Designers: Michael Kent MPSE, Jeremy Rogers MPSE
Sound Design Leads: Alex Previty, Beau Anthony Jimenez, Bryan Higa, Stephen Schappler, Justin E. Bell
Supervising Sound Editors: Csaba Wagner, Samuel Justice
Senior Audio Artists: Nick Tomassetti, Aaron Sanchez, Ash Read, Dennis Bestafka, Derrick Espino, Jeshua Whitaker, Lewis Everest, Noburo Masuda, Tsubasa Ito, Ben Minto MPSE, Chris Sweetman MPSE
Audio Artists: Andres Herrera, Chris Kokkinos MPSE, Danny Barboza, Danny Hey, Kei Matsuo MPSE, Koji Niikura, Lewis Barn, Maria Rascon, Presley Hynes, Prin Keerasuntonpong, Robert Castro, Satsuki Sato, TJ Schauer, Harry Cohen MPSE, Luke Hatton, Michael Leaning, Barney Oram, Zachary Quarles MPSE, Stefan Rutherford, Paul Stoughton, Joe Thom MPSE, Graham Donnelly, David Farmer MPSE, Eilam Hoffman, Jason W. Jennings, Bryan Jerden, Fred Pearson, Stephano Sanchinelli, Thomas C. Brewer MPSE, Tim Walston MPSE
Technical Sound Designers: Sean LaValle, Cameron Sonju, Daniel Ramos, Enoch Choi, Gavin Booth, Roy Lancaster, Charles Dworetz, Bradley Gurwin, Mallorie Lesher, Dave St. Jean, Klaudia Schaffer, Aaron Cendan, Ashton Faydenko, Jessie Chang, Skylar Chen
Audio Programmer: Stepan Boev
Foley Editors: Blake Collins, Jeff Gross, Alex Robson, Rob Krekel, Cesar Marenco, Eric Paulsen MPSE, Sam Gray, Rostislav Trifonov, Keith Bilderbeck, Paul Fonarev
Foley Artists: Joanna Fang, Dawn Fintor, Alicia Stevenson, Matt Davies
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Student Film (Verna Fields Award)
Brutal
National Film & Television School
Supervising Sound Editor: Dan Hibbert
The trumpeter’s trio takes inspiration from traditional Navajo songs. Its work has stirred up global interest, as well as conversations about the responsibilities of Indigenous artists.
To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
FARMINGTON, N.M. — To drive the high desert roads of northern New Mexico is to navigate mountain passes, red rock mesas and dry river washes, and to spot the hogans, hamlets and sheep herds of the vast and remote Navajo nation.
Fiddling with the dial on the car radio during my time there usually generates only static. Except one day came the sound of a silken and soulful trumpet, as a station played a haunting ballad, “Narbona,” with unmistakable Navajo phrasing.
The song was the handiwork of the Delbert Anderson Trio, and it felt as if it had arisen from the folds of this land.
Delbert Anderson, 36, is a Navajo jazz musician, and he and his bandmates live in Farmington, a city of 46,000 perched just east of the reservation where he was born, which is the size of the Republic of Ireland. The trio’s drummer, Nick Lucero, 39, half Peruvian Quechua and half Spanish, grew up on a ranch in Colorado. Its bassist, Michael McCluhan, a tall, bearded, 55-year-old Anglo, was a former competitive swimmer who wandered in and never left.
A musician’s life is a tumbleweed journey in this land. The trio faces long drives to gigs and airports, snaking between peaks and across prairies that are home to elk, mountain lion and coyote. “It’s a flaky and weird little town,” Anderson said in an interview last fall at their studio in downtown Farmington, and chuckled. “The upside is we can afford to be jazz musicians.”
After playing county fairs, arts centers and bars, and splitting earnings so meager their wives stared at them plaintively, Anderson and his bandmates appear poised for something bigger.
By mining traditional Navajo “spinning songs” of love, healing and courtship, and marrying them to jazz and funk lines, Anderson and his trio have taken a place at the forefront of a vibrant Native American jazz scene. They stand alongside the Nez Percé singer Julia Keefe — a songbird of a jazz vocalist, who also fronts a big band — and the Wabanaki bassist, composer and vocalist Mali Obomsawin.
Last October, the Delbert Anderson Trio flew to Johannesburg to play at World of Music, Arts, and Dance, or WOMAD, the festival founded by Peter Gabriel. While there, the trio collaborated with South African artists on a forthcoming album, “Kindred Spirits,” produced by the South African Grammy winner John Lindemann.
A haunting single, “Grandma’s Song,” is slated to be released on March 8. Written and sung in Navajo by Alex Rose Holiday, it features the Anderson trio playing with fierce intensity and Nelisiwe Mtsweni, an Ndebele singer, contributing piercing vocals. Two languages — Navajo and Ndebele — once all but forbidden by conquerors, and given full throat.
Native lineage threads through jazz history. Black stars like Charlie Parker and Don Cherry were part Choctaw. Miles Davis had Cherokee heritage. The saxophonist Jim Pepper was Kaw and Muscogee Creek, and several of his compositions featured a Native American chorus.
And yet: Few associate Native Americans with jazz. And those in the scene face battles over Indigenous identity and the perceived obligation of Native artists to engage in justice struggles.
“Indigenous activists say we’ve got to Indigenize and take over these showcases,” Anderson said, with an ever so slight roll of the eyes. “I’ve got seven family members who expect a check when I get home. I can’t stand on the side of the road and Indigenize.”
Anderson and his bandmates rely on grants, which are relatively plentiful at present, and work with dancers, painters, photographers and classical musicians. And they have become jazz evangelists. Anderson’s passion is to bring his music to Navajo children for whom such sounds remain terra incognita.
On a crystalline sharp September day, Anderson and Lucero drove west toward the 9,000-foot limestone peaks of the Chuska Mountains, which divide the New Mexico and Arizona sides of the Navajo reservation.
Pulling up at the tiny Cove Day public elementary school, they found 50 Navajo children sitting in the auditorium, and Anderson gave a performance. Soft-spoken and amiable, he made his trumpet moan and bark and sigh. Slowly, he drew smiles and laughter.
Cove elementary in Arizona sits among so much beauty and so much hardship. The school looks upon red mesas, buttes and Ponderosa forests. The same land is spotted with abandoned uranium mines. Another nearby school has a well that runs dry, faucets spitting and coughing.
Anderson has aunties and uncles and cousins who live in this world of the Diné, as the Navajo know themselves.
“I’m a rez boy,” Anderson said, after pulling into a Navajo roadside stand for fry bread, onions and mutton flecked with enough green chiles to draw tears. “It’s beautiful but, man, a tough life.”
IN THE 1980s, Anderson’s grandfather, a Navajo immersed in the traditional culture, told his son: You and your wife need to leave the reservation — the Navajo are the largest tribe in the nation — and let baby Delbert learn Western ways. Delbert’s family moved to Farmington and his father worked in the oil fields.
In fourth grade, Anderson watched a jazz combo on the stage of his elementary school auditorium. At the end, a musician with a trombone closed his score book and leaned back and let loose. “Oh my God!” he remembered. “He was just wailing.”
Anderson was besotted. He tried the trombone, but his little lungs could produce not a squeak. He picked up the trumpet. “People kept saying I could not be a jazzman,” he said. “I knew they were wrong.”
He listened obsessively to recordings by trumpeters like Lee Morgan and Davis, and developed his rich tone. College professors steered him toward classical. He steered back toward improvisation. “The faculty were like, ‘Can we pass this guy?’” he said.
Friends suggested Anderson work in the oil fields — cash was plentiful and that’s what Navajos did. He said no.
He wanted to be a jazzman.
One day, while shopping after Thanksgiving, Anderson and his wife rounded a corner and he spotted Nick Lucero, a salesman, with his wife. Both men harbored musical ambitions and loved jazz. “I said, ‘You’re that guy’ and he said, ‘You’re that other guy,’” Anderson recalled. McCluhan, a Deadhead bassist with an appreciation for jazz and jamming, would join them as well.
They played jazz standards at first with a large band. Then a singer wandered off and a guitarist split to labor in the oil fields. “We said to hell with it,” Lucero said, “let’s try a trio.”
Anderson, Lucero and McCluhan have children and bills, and gig money was scant: $80 here, $90 there. “I would blow money on dumb things and come back with $20,” Anderson recalled. “My wife said, ‘This really isn’t going to work.’”
They drew up a business plan even as they grew restless. Why remain a little jazz trio in this remote corner? Anderson wandered into a library in Aztec, N.M., and found a cassette of Navajo spinning songs from the 1920s. He listened and took notes.
“My culture was speaking to me,” he said.
Some Native activists argue it is sacrilege to expose songs of ancestors to the non-Native world. Anderson disagreed and went from elder to elder asking permission to be inspired by these songs. The world of traditional Navajos is not hierarchical, and no single judgment rules.
Elders were generous. “They said, ‘You’re Diné. These songs were ours and now they are yours,’” he recalled. “‘This is your time.’”
The band began to breathe and make music differently. There were cringe-worthy moments, like when the promoter at a Texas fair worried that Anderson, dapper in his suit, did not look “Native” enough. The promoter placed a feather headdress on the musician’s head.
Mostly though, their music ratcheted open a world.
In 2014, the trio released “Manitou,” its debut album, incorporating spinning songs in a multitonal feast. Then the group worked with the Navajo rapper Christopher Mike-Bidtah, a.k.a. Def-i, who would hop in his car and drive the high desert composing lyrics. The resulting 2018 album, “DDAT,” blended rap, jazz, Navajo sounds and Latin rhythms and led to another takeoff.
What they want now, Anderson said, is “to put Native sound back into jazz.”
THREE YEARS AGO, Anderson’s trio landed in New York City for a showcase — 15 minutes to display chops to booking agents. Navajo are not chest-thumpers; showy self-pride is not rewarded in their culture. “Nick tells me not to apologize for myself,” Anderson said. “My rezness comes out.”
Anderson carried his trumpet to jam sessions across the city during that trip. He heard musicians hitting keening, acrobatic notes, and high registers, each player a would-be Dizzy or Coltrane. It was daunting. “I honestly felt like one of the least talented players there,” he said.
David Greenberg of Music Works International, a booking agency and music consultancy, has voluntarily mentored the trio. He waved off Anderson’s self-deprecating recollection.
“I told Delbert to forget those guys with their pyrotechnics,” Greenberg said in an interview. “No one ever told Miles he wasn’t playing enough notes; he played the notes he wanted to play.
“You’ve got a soulful sound and your artistry is deepening.”
Last summer, the Anderson trio hit the road as artists-in-residence with the Bureau of Land Management on the Painted Mountains Tour. Working with the Native singer and lyricist James Pakootas of the Colville Confederated Tribes, the band traveled to Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, and the King Range in California. The musicians sought out Native elders and asked about their ancient stories and then incorporated those into original compositions.
They performed outdoor concerts and through their collaboration began to heal centuries-old wounds between that federal agency and Native tribes.
South Africa felt no less transformative, as they traveled into Soweto and met Indigenous musicians from Argentina, Brazil and New Zealand.
“There was a suturing between music and language,” said Kristina Jacobsen, a songwriter and an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who accompanied them. “This is what it means to reclaim a language one word or one song at a time.”
For a gig in Sonoma, Calif., last September, they piled into their van and drove 16 hours through the night. McCluhan shrugged at the yawning distances. “Drink coffee and be honest if you get tired and take a nap,” he said. “Simple.”
The group has plans piled atop plans: prestigious residencies, operas, albums, musicals, perhaps a trip to a throat-singing jazz festival in Mongolia, which just might be where Navajos hailed before beginning a millenniums-long trek to the American Southwest. Funders have advised the trio to consider a move to Los Angeles, or New York, the better to prosper.
The men recoiled.
“I have six children and a wife and I’m going to look for housing?” Anderson said. “How is that going to work?”
“I know Navajos who choose the life over families,” he added. ‘Oh, we broke up, oh we divorced.’ I don’t want to be that Native. I don’t want to be that stereotype. I want to be the one who kept it all together and takes joy in my art and changes my world.”
Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.
Encounter Iced Sound Pavilion / rotative studio
Text description provided by the architects. The Zürich-Rotterdam-based architecture practice rotative studio (a collaboration between architects and urban designers Alexandra Sonnemans and Caterina Viguera) was invited by Zürich-based composer and musician Ramon Landolt, to create a pavilion in public space on the occasion of his project ‘Iced Sound’, for which he composed ‘music by and for glaciers’, through field recordings, algorithm processing and performances with various artists in Alpine glacier caves and crevasses.
The pavilion and its sound installation represent a glacier talking to the city. The sound installation embedded in the facades of the pavilion interacts with the visitors and the surrounding urban soundscape. One of the main themes of his project, transformation (or flux), formed an inspiration for and aligned with the focus of (the work of) the architects.
The spatial expression of the pavilion reflects and makes experienceable, that what we can not see, and in this case, hear; the story of unseen and unheard, fragile, landscapes, that are slowly, gradually, but also ever faster, changing, as a result of our own, human, action(s), which has major consequences for our planet. The pavilion, with its subjective acoustical and visual voice, embodies this tension, as a sonic exploration of the climate crisis.
The pavilion as a public room will remain on the Schiffbauplatz for a period of three weeks, so the sounds are accessible to all and listeners can approach the topic at their own pace, yet always in a simultaneity of urban and remote alpine sounds.
The interplay of space and sound is a continuation of earlier collaborations between rotative studio and Landolt, for example, the architects invited Landolt in 2019 to contribute to their research project Evidence of the Absent, which they developed in a one-year residency in (Kulturfolger) Zürich. LIVE PERFORMANCES. During this period Landolt will organize a series of performances in and around the pavilion, with invited musicians, who have performed Landolt’s compositions specifically written for the performer and the glacier where the performance has taken place.
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TikTokers freak out after learning how their voices really sound In The KnowSAN FRANCISCO -- At one of the top music schools in the country, two students and their professor set out on a remarkable journey. It was an endeavor that would take them on an exploration into the mysteries of the human brain and Alzheimer's disease.
Inside a studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Natasha Frank and Lina Harrison listened to an original piece they've created called "The Spinning Wheel." The recording is more than just a piano and cello.
Incorporated into the composition is the electrical activity of brains, measured by electroencephalograms. Doctors recorded them as subjects slept. Special software then converted the data into a musical score. Some of the individuals had Alzheimer's.
"It was our job to translate it into art -- something that everyone could feel and understand," explained composer Natasha Frank.
Sounds generated from healthy brain sound perfectly in tune but, because Alzheimer's patients' sleep patterns are erratic, music derived from their EEGs sounds off key.
"So, when you hear this in contrast to the healthy human sleep, that's when it all comes together and makes sense by the end of the piece," Professor Barrera said.
Along on this musical odyssey are two UCSF neuroscientists: Dr. Sri Nagarajan and Dr. Kamalini Ranasinghe.
Dr. Ranasinghe provided the data to the young composers. As to why the sleep patterns sound out of tune, Dr. Ranasinghe explained.
"In Alzheimer's disease -- it's a disease of aging and it's the disease where the neurons and neural circuits die and what we found in our research is that the rhythms in their brains -- the electrical activity that's generated by these neurons -- they change," Ranasinghe said.
It's a change that can be devastating.
"One way we can appreciate that is, I suppose, through understanding how it might change the corresponding musical patterns," Dr. Nagarajan added.
Back in the studio, Lina Harrison revealed how the composition struck a personal note.
"I have some family members who have suffered from memory loss conditions and I think that it really struck me on what might be going on in their mind," Harrison said.
"On a larger scale this is a way for us to incorporate science, art and technology," said Professor Barrera.
The unusual collaboration was a mutual success.
"I would really like to see more and more music produced in different stages of these brain rhythms and what happens to them in the different stages of this disease," Dr. Ranasinghe said.
Everyone involved told KPIX that they hope the creation inspires compassion as it offers a new perspective on dementia.
WEBLINKS
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
NASA has shared the creepy sound a black hole makes, just in case you really want to amp up your existential dread vibes.
You’re probably familiar with the Alien tagline: “In space no one can hear you scream,” but that doesn’t apply to the noise emitted by black holes, apparently.
The US space agency explained that there’s a ‘misconception’ that there’s no sound in space and has managed to pick up the ‘actual sound’ of a black hole, amplified it and mixed it with other data to create this eerie little remix:
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Posting on Twitter, the NASA Exoplanets account wrote: "The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~ vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel.
"A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we've picked up actual sound. Here it's amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”
In a statement released last year, NASA gave more details on how they managed to create the ‘remix’ of the noise of the black hole in the centre of the Perseus galaxy cluster.
The agency explained that the black hole had been associated with sound since 2003, adding: "This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note – one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C.
"Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine.
"In some ways, this sonification is unlike any other done before because it revisits the actual sound waves discovered in data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory."
NASA was able to use sonification to make the sounds available in a pitch that humans can hear - as the clip above reveals.
And if you’re interested in exactly how they managed that, then please hold onto your hats for the science bit.
"The sound waves were extracted in radial directions, that is, outwards from the centre," NASA continued.
"The signals were then resynthesised into the range of human hearing by scaling them upward by 57 and 58 octaves above their true pitch.
"Another way to put this is that they are being heard 144 quadrillion and 288 quadrillion times higher than their original frequency."
Words by Claire Reid
Residents of Tampa, Florida have reported hearing strange noises coming from the bay for years, and now scientists believe it may be fish ...
