Cranberry Coast Covid Special (with Moi reading three poems set to music)

First musical interlude installment is due tonight, Dec 24, at 12AM, Miami time, Dec. 23, 10 PM CA time. Stay Tuned. I have poems set to music in later broadcasts. My poems were prerecorded, looking forward to seeing the collage. Ok, so it went up on YouTube on Dec. 26. Erm, 27th. There was a traffic jam, a technical delay. Installment no. 1, is 22 minutes long (it goes by fast). Take Five is lively.

https://www.facebook.com/whipplemorales/videos/10159287656274767/

Part two. Originally it was supposed to be one one-hour broadcast, but it proved to be an unwieldy octopus, that wouldn’t upload. Besides, everyone and their uncle was on the internet doing the virtual Christmas-sing thing. Get in line!

https://www.facebook.com/whipplemorales/videos/10159299000704767/ There’s photo of me performing for the Cranberry Coast Concert series in Wareham, MA, in 2014, my reading begins at 3:20 minutes in, Betrayals of the Mind, followed by Wrong Roads, at 4:50 minutes in. Most of those photos in the photo montage are mine.

Part three debutted heads with time on Little Christmas, thus ending the holiday season with cymbals galore. Well, maybe a kettledrum, or three. No flatulent partridges in pear trees.

https://www.facebook.com/whipplemorales/videos/10159325062334767/ My poem on Vincent van Gogh, Perhaps a Garden, begins 7:30 minutes in if you want to rush right in.

Or, if you prefer to avoid Facebook completely, you can go direct to the source and watch all three videos on Kirk & Mari’s YouTube channel.

Elemental Portraits Reading, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales 3/7/2014

Elemental Portraits Performance and Reading, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and Unitarian Church, Santa Rosa, CA, Maureen Hurley reading her poems from Elemental Portraits, with Pianistas Duo, Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales 3/7/2014

 

Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales, with special guests...

Elemental Portraits Performance, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales Cape Cod    

Elemental Portraits with Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, Florida   

ELEMENTAL PORTRAITS: NOCTURNES FOR TWO PIANOS

Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales, with special guests Bob Afifi & Maureen Hurley perform Elemental Portraits at Sebastopol Center for the Arts

We had a blast performing Elemental Portraits: Nocturnes for Two Pianos at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts.

Kirk Whipple & Marilyn Morales Duo Pianists & Compsoers in Concert

Kirk Whipple Marilyn Morales, Duo Pianists Composers (Press Democrat)

Facebook Events

We also performed at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa, but there were no programs, just a poster. I wasn't listed on it. It was also poorly advertised (other than on Facebook), so we had a small turnout. But it was there, where I got my groove back—after being so long away from those poems.
Hangtime: Whipple & Morales, Duo Pianists & Composers in Concert

Facebook: Whipple & Morales, Duo Pianists & Composers in Concert

In the mid 1990s, Kirk and I did a collaboration where I wrote poetry while he composed musical portraits of Sonoma County musicians. As he composed, I freewrote to the music, then I interviewed him (also his dream journal), then I interviewed the people the portraits were composed for. I put it all together.

The last time we performed Elemental Portraits was in in Onset, Ma., in 2008: 

Cranberry Coast Concerts Sun Chronicle. ArtsBoston

More on Cranberry Coast Concerts at MySpace
More on the poems at the Unconservatory website:
Elemental Portraits: Nocturnes for Two Pianos (the poetry)

ELEMENTAL PORTRAITS: NOCTURNES FOR TWO PIANOS 20 poems

Whipple & Morales, Duo Pianists & Composers in Concert—with special guests Maureen Hurley

This Friday and Saturday evening, I will be reading several poems I wrote while Kirk Whipple was composing his "Elemental Portraits."

That's two chances to catch the piano concerts of the fab Pianistas duo Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales in Sonoma County this weekend—with special guests Maureen Hurley and Bob Afifi!
This Friday, March 7th at 7:30 PM at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol, 95472

Saturday, March 8th at 7:30 PM at the Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino, Santa Rosa, 95401. Please come and join us.

Kirk Whipple & Marilyn Morales will perform a concert of their original works and arrangements for two pianos. The internationally touring husband and wife duo will perform a retrospective of works, spanning their career of over a quarter century.

The duo’s program will be selected from works available on several of their recordings: Elemental Portraits ~ Nocturnes for Two Pianos, Latin Lovers, The White Season, Danzas Para Dos Pianos (Dances for Two Pianos) and Celebrating Americans.

Special guest artists will join Whipple & Morales on stage. Maureen Hurley will read her original poems inspired by Elemental Portraits and Bob Afifi will be the featured flute soloist in selections from Danzas Para Dos Pianos.

To hear selections performed by Whipple & Morales, please visit:
www.Reverbnation.com/KWMM


Friday, March 7th at 7:30 PM at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol, 95472  Tickets: $20 general, $15 for seniors and Youth (18-25), 17 and under free when accompanied by adult with paid admission. Child care is available with advance reservation.

Info: (707) 568-5381
www.glasercenter.com

ELEMENTAL PORTRAITS: NOCTURNES FOR TWO PIANOS 20 poems
 

Elemental Portraits Performance, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales, Cape Cod

Maureen will be performing with Unconservatory pianist duo Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales at the Cranberry Coast Concert series in Cape Cod, MA.  

We read at several venues, Onset Community Church, Onset Chapel, Wareham Bank, Wareham School, and the Wareham Library.

Performing Elemental Portraits: Nocturnes for Two Pianos (2 performances), Muddy Cove tabernacle, Onset, MA. Festival organizer and composer, Kirk Whipple and his wife, pianist duo Marilyn Morales.

 

 Festival organizer and composer, Kirk Whipple and his wife, pianist duo Marilyn Morales and Maureen Hurley.

 Second performance of my poems for Elemental Portraits: Nocturnes for Two Pianos, composed by Kirk Whipple, and played by festival organizers and piano duo, Kirk and his wife Marilyn Morales, Muddy Cove Tabernacke, Cranberry Coast Concerts, Onset MA, 2008.

Eastern Bank performance in Warham, MA. — with Neil O'Neill. We did several performances at the Cape Cod Cranberry Coast Music Festival this August. We performed in churches, tabernacles, banks, libraries and a school.

 Reading poems to kids at the Warham Library

 Neil O'Neill, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple, Caterine and Marilyn Morales.

Elemental Portraits with Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, Florida  May, 2004

Elemental Portraits Reading, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and Santa Rosa, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales 3/7/2014  
Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales, with special guests...
ELEMENTAL PORTRAITS: NOCTURNES FOR TWO PIANOS 20 poems

added 4/24/2016

 

• Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
• Confessions of an iPod Roadie
• Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
• Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

Cranberry Coast Concerts Season III, Cape Cod MA poster

Steadfastness

I am uncertain of this new writing system I feel a little uneasy as I don’t like contemplative states—at least not for art or writing. But they're all big meditators. I have issues with most conceptual nouns. Image/comparisons: That’s my wicket. But the steadfastness of writing puts me on an even keel. That’s something I can do. My meditative world. But I can’t help but enter the visual world too. 

There’s a name for the roots of kelp, standfast. Stand/stead share the same etymological root. Or call it a holdfast. I am visualizing afternoon light in a kelp forest. Filtered green, suspended plankton and debris, small glistening bubbles escaping from below. And that snapping sound in the ears. I think it’s krill snapping their claws, or the waves retreating. 

I don’t care to name it, but, to experience it. I love that buoyancy as we hover, suspended between worlds: air and water—male and female. Once in the Galápagos, I was snorkeling in the cold water off Bartolomé Island and an equatorial penguin buzzed me, zipping up from under me, swimming upside down, so he could see me better. We stared at each other for a split second but in a flash, he flipped over and took off so fast, I could’ve imagined it all, except that I got so excited I screamed and my snorkel filled with sea water and I nearly drowned. Silvery bubbles like shooting stars trailing from her body.

OK that three-minute pause definitely intruded and interrupted my train of thought. the train has left the station. no one aboard. So now I can’t pick up the penguin line, or rather the feeling of awe. I was reliving the moment. Perhaps that’s the key to good writing is to relive the moment. 

Last Sunday as I read my poems with pianist Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales I read a piece I had never read before in public to the woman for whom the Nocturnes were written. Ilá, dressed in white, danced a fluid tai chi movement as I read my poem. 

The audience were strangers to poetry—which requires another kind of steadfastness, an anchor, in order to hear it. And so I filled the auditorium with my intention and my voice, wrapping it around the backs of chairs, and sending it to every corner. But I was chained to the microphone and I couldn’t pace. I was anchored to the floor as surely as the kelp and all I could do was to sway with the words. Believe in them again, truly a re:vision as I find tuned an updated version of the words to fit this millennium. I was the sea. the sea, thalatta, thalatta. The sea.

52/2/06 Writers' Group

Elemental Portraits with Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales on ArtStreet

I performed my poems based on Elemental Portraits with composer-musicians Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales on ArtStreet, with Meredith Porte, PBS TV, WLRN, South Florida. We also performed at Florida State University

Photos by Kirk Whipple

Elemental Portraits Reading, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and Santa Rosa, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales 3/7/2014 
Kirk Whipple, Marilyn Morales, with special guests...

Elemental Portraits Performance, Maureen Hurley, Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales Cape Cod  
ELEMENTAL PORTRAITS: NOCTURNES FOR TWO PIANOS 20 poems

added 4/24/2016

• Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
• Confessions of an iPod Roadie
• Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
• Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

Elemental Portraits

Here's a link to our debut performance in 1997. I was in a car accident on June 18th, so I never had my debut. A punctured lung precluded my participation at the events on June 28 and 29. We did perform a preview at the Friedman Center on Mother's Day. It was hotter than Hades. And it was a luncheon. Nothing like the clatter of silverware during a performance.

From the Cloverdale Reveille May 28, 1997

Elemental Portraits performances

A TRIO OF MUSICAL NOTES Piano bravo: Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, Maureen Hurley, Press Democrat

June 15, 1997 | Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Author: Dan Taylor Entertainment Editor | Page: Q27 | Section: ON Q| Column: Dan Taylor

Piano bravo: TV has been good to husband-and-wife piano duo Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales, too.

Last February, they appeared on Miami TV host Don Francisco's Spanish-language variety show, ``Sabado Gigante Internacional.''

``It's like the Spanish `Tonight' show,'' Whipple says.

The couple also played in December on Costa Rica's national telethon. Having connected with the Spanish-speaking market, Whipple and Morales (a native of Cuba) hope to tour South America and Spain.

In the meantime, the pianists plan two local concerts: 3-6 p.m. June 28 at Chateau Lanson, 1497 Hurlbut Lane, Sebastopol. The program includes ``Wedding Music for Two Pianos'' and the world premiere of ``Gourd Music for Solo Piano,'' both by W. A. Mathieu, ``Rumbada'' by Morales, and ``Esperando'' and selections from ``Elemental Portraits'' by Whipple. Poet Maureen Hurley will read original work based on ``Elemental Portraits.'' Admission: $15 per person; $25 per couple. Tickets: People's Music in Sebastopol.

Elemental Portraits readings

Touring with Elemental Portraits

Last evening, after teaching, I met with Kirk Whipple and Marilyn Morales to pursue grants for touring with Elemental Portraits—for all of us. Kirk gave me carte blanche to pursue self interest. He said, You don't have to be responsible for the larger picture, but if we get a large touring grant it will benefit all of us.

I will also get paid for my time if I write grants is the is the oblique message. It's on me, they're taking care of themselves first, and the amount of dollars to be raised to nourish their dream is enormous. Half a million. My needs are considerably less, but my dreams should remain big, I shouldn't be afraid to manifest those dreams—why not?

The other day I was telling someone about working with Kirk and Mari developing the Elemental Portraits, and they were clearly impressed. It was not my intent to do so, I was merely explaining something I was working on. And they saw me in a new light. 

I saw myself in a new light too. I was out there galavanting around with important musicians, just like in centuries past—when artists collaborated. I don't think my poems are particularly avant garde, but Kirk considers himself to be a late late late romantic composer, so I guess it's okay to have some tangible, concrete imagery. 

I still think I need to work on the Elemental Portraits more. I've got the human portraits down, but are they in essence, elemental? My framework is the scaffolding is air, earth, fire, and water—with a dash of classical references, seasoned with quantum physics. 

Maybe I need to see the Elemental Portraits in a new light, as multimedia events. Yes, I realize that I will be riding on Kirk and Mari's fabulous coattails, but I also will have earned the right as well. I did earn a fellowship for them. When will I quit thinking of myself as a fraud and begin to take myself seriously?

Elemental Portraits

Elemental Portraits, Press Democrat, Dan Taylor