Mark Growden Interview

Mark Growden is a brilliant, curious, and expressive American multi-faceted musician.  He’s a multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, music educator, conductor, and visual artist. In this episode we focus on his large and varied instrument collection and he demonstrates several unusual instruments, including different jaw harps, biclycle handebars, and overtone flutes. He shares his unique journey, and how he developed new skills in response to different challenges and opportunities. I was fascinated to hear about his inspiring recent trip to Kyrgyzstan, about many of his mentors and collaborators, and his expressive approach to musicianship training.   Mark has devoted his life to making music for other people and to helping other people make music for themselves, and he is an advocate for openess about respect and understanding for people with neurodivergence and mood disorders. Mark  is the founder and Artistic Director of The Calling All Choir, The Chromatic Community Music Center, SF SingFest, and The SF Jaw Harp Choir. He has released several critically acclaimed albums and has toured the US extensively. He has composed original musical scores for dozens of dance and theater companies and scored several films. 

Below is the complete transcript of my interview with him, as well as the link to take you to the podcast, video and show notes

Mark Growden (00:00:12):

(music) Which was really nice. I had never had a music lesson, private music lesson my whole life at that point. You know what I mean? It was only that in college I actually started taking privates and stuff. I didn't have access to that. But then one day before school, he is like, "Mark, what are you doing here?" I said, and it probably took a minute to figure out what he's talking about, but I was like "getting a degree". And he goes, "screw that man. By the time these kids graduate, they'll have a degree. You'll have a name. I want you to quit today. I will give you an A in every class. Not every teacher's going to do that, but you just need to go." And he goes, "spend time with masters." And I remember he said," I don't care if they're blacksmiths tennis players or saxophonists, go, just spend time with masters and come back and show me your art, I can't wait to see it."

Leah Roseman (00:00:56):

Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. Mark Growden is a brilliant, curious and expressive American multifaceted musician. He's a multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, music educator, conductor and visual artist. In this episode, we focus on his large and varied instrument collection, and he demonstrates several unusual instruments, including different jaw harps, bicycle handlebars, and overtone flutes. He shares his unique journey in how he developed new skills in response to different challenges and opportunities. I was fascinated to hear about his inspiring recent trip to Kyrgyzstan about many of his mentors and collaborators, and his expressive approach to musicianship training. Mark has devoted his life to making music for other people and to helping other people make music for themselves, and he's an advocate for openness about respect and understanding for people with neurodivergence and mood disorders.

(00:01:58):

Mark is the founder and artistic director of the Calling All Choir, the Chromatic Community Music Center, San Francisco Sing Fest, and the San Francisco Jaw Harp Choir. He's released several critically claimed albums and has toured the US extensively. He's composed original musical scores for dozens of dance and theater companies and scored several films. We are featuring music from three of his albums during this episode, and you'll find his discography linked in the show notes.

(00:02:22):

Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms. And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. It's a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to you every week, and I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. You can support this independent podcast through both the unique collection of merchandise with a unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly, as well as through my Ko-fi page. This weekly podcast is in season four, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links. Now to Mark Growden.

Mark Growden (00:03:08):

Okay. Hi.

Leah Roseman (00:03:10):

Hi, Mark.

Mark Growden (00:03:10):

Hi. My camera's here.

Leah Roseman (00:03:11):

Thanks so much for joining me here today.

Mark Growden (00:03:14):

My pleasure. Yeah,

Leah Roseman (00:03:16):

When you had reached out to me and we made this connection, I think you were either going to Kyrgyzstan or you were there.

Mark Growden (00:03:24):

I don't know. I don't remember exactly, but yeah, I was there just recently recording and playing concerts and what have you. Yeah,

Leah Roseman (00:03:31):

It definitely caught my attention and these gorgeous pictures and the beautiful jaw harp music. And you appeared on their national TV as well?

Mark Growden (00:03:39):

Yeah, I did. Yeah, that was quite something. By the time I left, there were people I come, some people I guess started recognizing me. I got lots of marriage proposals. I guess it's totally common for women to walk up to a man and make a marriage proposal

Leah Roseman (00:03:58):

Because you're American.

Mark Growden (00:04:00):

I think because I'm American and I'm tall, and maybe they knew I was a musician or something, I don't know. But it was interesting. Probably 30 proposals. I think most tall white guys could probably get that there.

Leah Roseman (00:04:12):

So you speak some Russian

Mark Growden (00:04:15):

I'm learning. Yeah. Yeah, it's coming along.

Leah Roseman (00:04:18):

And they -

Mark Growden (00:04:18):

Mean, I work hard at it. I do work hard at it, but only recently, so I'm very much a beginner.

Leah Roseman (00:04:23):

And over there they also speak some Turkic languages, I believe.

Mark Growden (00:04:26):

Well, they speak Kish, which is a whole other, I know a couple words kitic, which means let's go. What was, thank you? Rachmad. Those are the two words. I know.

Leah Roseman (00:04:41):

So did you have a translator or a friend with you the whole time?

Mark Growden (00:04:45):

Oh yeah. I was with, so the project is my friend, my friend Irina Bogatyryova. She is an author and musician over there and a scholar on the vargan, as they call it, the jaw harp. We call it or jew's harp or mouth harp. And even though it has nothing to do with the Judaica. She was there with me. We went there thinking we were recording a duo album, but we got, but helping us set it all up was, Kutman Sultanbekov, I wouldn't say he's the king of musicians, and their status thing is very real, though. He's not the king of musicians. He's the prince. The master of masters is, I don't think he gets out much, but his two main students are, Kutman is one of them for the national. They did this huge national thing in the National Square, which I love there. It's not a government building. It's a museum. Yes. And they respect music is so highly regarded there. It's amazing. I can't, sometimes they get teary when I cry. I talk about music. I can't help it. It's my nature and I love music. So it happens. Anyhow, he led 2000 kids playing right there in the square. Beautiful. And just amazing. And the culture respects music so highly. And

Leah Roseman (00:06:03):

If I could just ask

Mark Growden (00:06:04):

Anyhow,

Leah Roseman (00:06:04):

I want to ask about these 2000 children. Were they singing? What was going on with that?

Mark Growden (00:06:08):

They were playing jaw harp and komus,

(00:06:11):

The string instrument. They're really, they do all this flashy stuff. So they were playing those two instruments. So one's the metal, I can show you one. This is made by their master maker in Kyrgyzstan, Baket. He made this for me. I got to go to his house. Oh my God. Anyhow, I'm jumping around a bit, but he made a huge meal. It was amazing. Spread out all these different layers. It was like a beautiful 3D art piece. He really worked with layers on the table and all these trays and so many items and beautiful. But okay, so for translation, my friend Irena. Oh yeah. We got there and we realized we can't record just a dual album. We're here with Kutman, who's one of the best players in the world. And then there was another visitor from Yakutia. Are you familiar with, it doesn't really matter, Yakutia Sakha.

(00:07:06):

It is a republic in the far, far northeast of, well, it's not really Russia. They're occupied. They've been occupied by Russia for a long time, but it's been the Bering over the Bering Strait and a great player from there. And so the four of us were there and we realized what we're there. Maybe we're not a duo, but a collective that's run by this duo just to help people make melodic jaw harp music all over the world. And we do place a specific style, which is technique, I should say this used in a lot of styles, which is we play melodically by opening and closing the glottis. You're familiar with overtone flutes, but it works on the same principles as that. And it's hard. It's actually quite difficult and not very common in the western hemisphere. So she speaks English very well. So she was the one holding it all together. We had four people in the same room, each with their own independent language that we did have the crossover, which was Russian, which I barely spoke at the time, but it was really, it was cross-cultural work is no joke. It's different expectations, different expressing certain feelings. It is like, oh, that's really not something you talk about in your culture. Things like that would come up and vice versa for all of us. But it was a beautiful experience.

Leah Roseman (00:08:22):

I'm sure you're going to show us a bit of jaw harp music?

Mark Growden (00:08:25):

If you like,

Leah Roseman (00:08:25):

But I was curious about the technique, the glottal thing. Is that related to overtone singing?

Mark Growden (00:08:30):

No. Well, okay. Yeah, it is. Here's the thing. With overtone singing, you always have to be moving air, right? And you can only access one overtone series while it's the same with trumpet, say bugle or alpenhorn, you can only access the one overtone series because you can't. I'll show you what I mean. The easiest way to show this is with, do you want to see some of this?

Leah Roseman (00:08:53):

Yes, of course.

Mark Growden (00:08:54):

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have numerous overtone flutes here. You can see a few there. There's a bunch of 'em. But the most compelling one, probably, I'll grab it now, bicycle handlebars,

(00:09:07):

They work well, and it is a nice way to show, it makes it real down to earth. But so the thing with overtone singing, you only get this one series, (music) et cetera. I could really hone it in, but you get the idea. Now, with an overtone flute, you cover one end, and you may know this, but when you have a cylinder that's closed on one end, like a clarinet, right? It can only play the odd overtones. It doesn't play the even ones, right? And also you end up with a new fundamental an octave lower, because the air has to travel, travel, the air has to travel twice as far. Now it can't play that fundamental. I think it's pretty impossible. I did find one way with the fipple fluid to do it, but I don't think I can do it here. But anyhow, it's way down there. A whole Octave lower. But what you do, so I get my camera right, here's the first overtone series with it open,(music) see, there's an octave,(music) et cetera. Now when you close it, you get, it's as if you're compressing the next octave that has eight notes into you can access higher overtones, so to speak earlier. So here we go.

(00:10:44):

That's the four note octave do mi so te do. So if you are using solfege, right, this type of solfege.(music) Now, here's what I call, I'm coining lots of terms to describe the overtone series in a practical ways for people who actually play with them. Everyone plays with them. They're in every note we play, unless you're playing a sine wave, but we aren't necessarily using those pitches unless you're playing just intonation, which, do you do much with string quartets?

Leah Roseman (00:11:16):

I have, but

Mark Growden (00:11:17):

You have, yeah. But with these instruments, that's all you got. You can't play equal temperament if you wanted to. So here's the eight note octave (music) it's going to be really hard to get on there. I can do it on another flute there. But you get the idea,(music) it gets really high up there. But in the acoustic scale, do you use that term?

Leah Roseman (00:11:56):

Okay?

Mark Growden (00:11:56):

We use it to describe Do Re Mi Fi So La Do, but there's a ti in there, and I'm always saying to people, Hey, there's got to be eight notes. It's the overtones series. You can't have seven notes in an octave, you got to have eight. It always doubles anyhow, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, that's not a little geeky aside.

Leah Roseman (00:12:13):

So Mark, if we could just specify for the people who can't see that there's no holes, it's just,

Mark Growden (00:12:18):

Yeah, there's no holes in the flute. It's just this one has a fipple on the end, which is the device you see in every recorder which of course, if you blow harder, you're going to get sharp. So it has its downsides. And I am opening and closing the end. So here's open, closed, open, closed.(music) So I'm using my palm there and wavering my hand. I don't know how to put it, shake my hand. And I'm getting that really fast. Vibrato. There's a lot of techniques you can do, extended techniques and stuff.

Leah Roseman (00:12:57):

And that particular flute you're holding now, where is it from?

Mark Growden (00:13:00):

This is from Norway. Selijefloyte. The maker unfortunately passed away recently. I noticed a lot of builders are passing away, but this one, it's really nice. This flute, historically, you can build it out of willow. There's a little period to say February, it's around February, March, depends on the year where there's enough sap that the sap is in the actual bark of the willow, but there are no buds yet. So there's this week long span where you can harvest it, and then you play it and it stops playing in like four days because it cracks talk about ephemeral, you know what I mean? This instrument historically, in the tone, it is very ephemeral, but of course this is made out of PVC later on. And of course they would slit wood and hollow it later on. But originally, yeah, so Selijefloyte, sallow flute, I think is how it,

Leah Roseman (00:14:06):

I do want to ask, I know you play different Nordic instruments, but we were talking about the jaw harp. So if we could get back to that,

Mark Growden (00:14:11):

Which is also Nordic.

Leah Roseman (00:14:13):

Well, I was curious about the origins. I know it's played in Africa like all over.

Mark Growden (00:14:18):

Well, okay. You see it some in Africa, more likely in Africa, you're going to see a mouth bow.

Leah Roseman (00:14:23):

Oh, right, okay. Yeah, It's not the same.

Mark Growden (00:14:24):

And most places, like in North America, it's a mouth bow. You don't see jaw harp, well, you do now it's different. But with traditional cultures, indigenous cultures. Now, I'm not an expert on this, I'm not. But I do hear a lot of stories. And the oldest ones is, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest ones we found are in China. They found one that's from 400 bc, something quite old, and then they've got then from Norway.

Leah Roseman (00:14:50):

Okay.

Mark Growden (00:14:51):

Right. But see, now, Kyrgyzstan, it not a, well, I'm going to hold of my tongue. I've heard a lot of different conflicting stories there. So yeah, you'll hear. So in Nordic countries, in Norway in particular, when the Christians came through, they literally burned all the fiddles. They burned, all the wood instruments were burned, and these survived. And you can still see, go on YouTube, you can see this big room of people, and you hear these boots clomping and one guy in the corner. But they play the melodic tradition as well. Norway, Sicily, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, which my understanding is Kyrgyzstan, that came later. It's not traditional, but it's hard to believe that once I'm there, because it's the national instrument and they're so into it. Anyhow,

Leah Roseman (00:15:39):

Could you play something on it?

Mark Growden (00:15:40):

Yeah, I'll you, yeah, I'll play an original tune. This is one that I wrote with the Irina Bogatyryova. It's called, well, it's really written for her son, Marve, (music) it can help to do the solfège.(singing) It can help this. A lot of listeners aren't used to hearing a melody, which are, and so it can help to you understand what I'm saying? It helps bring out,(singing)(jaw harp music) et cetera.

Leah Roseman (00:17:21):

Beautiful. So you used to have a Jaw Harp choir in San Francisco?

Mark Growden (00:17:25):

Yeah, yeah. Before Covid, we had a Jaw Harp choir and a full on vocal chorus.

Leah Roseman (00:17:30):

Well, we'll get into that later.

Mark Growden (00:17:32):

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. But yeah, Jaw Harp choir, we still meet on our same night. We meet on Tuesdays. It's become an international jaw heart practice group.

(00:17:41):

It's tricky doing the melodic thing, and it's really hard for a lot of people. So what I'm doing there, and I think you may alluded to this earlier. I'm open and closing my vocal folds. We say the glottis, we can't close. The glottis is negative space. It's not actually a thing. So I prefer to say we actually close the vocal folds and open them. And that has the same effect as when I cover and uncover the end of it, the tube, it doubles the length that it has to vibrate to get back out. But you can only access those even, I mean the odd overtones.

Leah Roseman (00:18:18):

And what are you doing with your mouth and your fingers generating the vibrations?

Mark Growden (00:18:23):

Oh, with this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the way to think of a jaw harp is you think of a guitar or violin, any string instrument, lute or bowed or otherwise, but you only have one string. Now there are jaw harp in more than one tongue or reed. But let's do that for now. So imagine a guitar, a violin with one string, and the way you change the tone is by moving the shape of the body that the bridge stays the same,

(00:18:54):

But you're changing the shape and you're getting these different standing waves or different effects by say, so that would be having a violin that can do a little bit of also a violin that can articulate la la, la. But you don't use the voice hardly ever. I'm not actually engaging the vocal folds. (music)You could. There's no reason why you can't. But there's different opinions about that. I'm fairly neutral on it. I like to experiment with everything. I spend most of my music time, which is the vast majority of every day, experimenting, trying. I've got all kinds of cool techniques I've come up with recently. So you're striking, this is like the string. Your teeth are like the bridge and the head nut. And I'm going, you know how you can make a wind sound that's actually pitch? So with the open notes (singing, do mi so te, for example, it's more pronounced the way I'm doing it now, and I don't have a wind thing. I think, I hope that's okay. The tone (music) I am going as I play, and that's the standing wave in my mouth. And so the instrument will really sing now little bit. And actually that little bit of in the back of the throat helps the tone. It makes the air more adds to the turmoil in the air, which makes the pitch ring out. It's the same with a lot of in blown flutes. They use a lot of turmoil in their tone, and that's what's happening. And it makes the tone more rich too.

(00:20:49):

It'd be like certain types of bowing, when you dig in more, it's going to create a different quality. So there's a lot of parallels. Anyhow, and I can go on.

Leah Roseman (00:21:00):

You demonstrated briefly on the bicycle handlebars Mark. And I was thinking on your album, St. Judas, you have a bicycle handlebars.

Mark Growden (00:21:06):

Yeah,

Leah Roseman (00:21:07):

Solo. Maybe we could include part of that.

Mark Growden (00:21:10):

Oh, sure. Of course, of course. Whatever. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Leah Roseman (00:21:14):

You're about to hear an excerpt from Mark's fantastic improvisation, playing bicycle handlebars from his album St. Judas. (music)

Mark Growden (00:22:02):

And that's a nice crossover. I'm not just doing songs. I was for a long time, even when I was doing songs touring all the time, I had years of over 250 shows. I'd still open with the handlebars. I'd still break out these wind instruments and be like, get the audience, be like, oh, we'd have no idea what's going to happen next. You know what I mean? It is good for showmanship.

Leah Roseman (00:22:25):

Yeah. So let's talk about some of these Nordic instruments. I believe you play the lure horn and

Mark Growden (00:22:31):

Well, the lure I did, but unfortunately in my move, part of it disappeared. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:22:38):

Well, have you spent time in those countries? What was that connection?

Mark Growden (00:22:41):

I haven't. No. No, I haven't. I mean, I am a little bit Nordic, my blood, but I've been fascinated with Nordic, but it's way beyond Nordic. It's Baltic too. That's where I've toured in my really know much more than Nordic. So Nordic Baltic is, I mean, I could just go, it'd probably be easy to just go around and look at instruments. Sure. Is that interest to you?

Leah Roseman (00:23:01):

Yeah.

Mark Growden (00:23:01):

Okay. Well, how about if I show you what I've been really getting into? Awesome. Okay. Okay. So there's a variety of embouchures that you don't see very much in the west. And I've had the principle flautist for a big symphony say, give that to me. And then four days later be like, how the hell do you do it? But I've had my son, two of my sons pick it up instantly. I think because of modeling, they've been around it. So it doesn't actually have a name. I started calling it Bilabial in-blown. This is called in blown. And then the other one is, let's just specify.

Leah Roseman (00:23:44):

Some people can't see.

Mark Growden (00:23:46):

Oh, you're

Leah Roseman (00:23:47):

Right now playing the bicycle handlebars.

Mark Growden (00:23:48):

Yeah, these are bicycle handlebars. I have both my lips purse. I'm not blowing across the top like you would a Coke bottle or a transverse flute, a Boehm system or what we call silver flute or what. We just unfortunately call flute because there's thousands of flutes in the world, and I'm a proponent of 'em all. So there's a lot of flutes that use that embouchure. But a good example, of a bilabial flute would be the kaval. Now with the K from Bulgaria or Romania, there's also the Koval with a C, which is, I think it's Chongo, which is Hungarian. But living in Romania,(Music) et cetera. I haven't been working on my tone on this much recently. After about 30 years, I finally figured out the in-blown. Have you heard of the Interdental embouchure?

Leah Roseman (00:24:49):

Nope.

Mark Growden (00:24:50):

There two embouchures. I know it's really specific. So the Interdental embouchure is you put your teeth on the top, your top teeth. Then you say through the, you direct the air with the little canal, actually try it, say shh, and see what's actually happening. Do you sing? Are you a singer?

Leah Roseman (00:25:13):

No, I'm a violinist.

Mark Growden (00:25:14):

So IPA. But yeah, no, I knew you were. Well, that doesn't mean you're not a singer.

Leah Roseman (00:25:18):

No, not a singer.

Mark Growden (00:25:20):

Yeah. But IPA, you hear singers talk a lot about IPA international phonetic alphabet because how we frame diction and man, I just want to say anyone out there who's a singer, you can improve immensely just by learning some of the basic diction. It'll just make everything. It's how we use the mouth. It's not all tone production. A lot of it's how we use the mouth and that affects the tone production. Anyhow, I like to mention that because it's accessible and it's concrete, you can see it and experience it while the tone production of stuff from inside much more abstract. Anyhow, that's music educator in me. You are all musicians. You are all singers, I guarantee you. Anyhow, so this is an in blown flute. It's based on, now they play, the Ney in Persia is similar. The Choor all through Central Asia is similar. And the kurai from Bashkir, Bashkuristan, which I know there's all these republics out there, that's one of the best things about learning music from that part of the world. So, oh my god, there's so many cultures that I had never even heard of. So you put, send the air through, when you say it sends the air down that channel in the middle of your tongue. So I'll show you what it does.

(00:26:38):

Always takes me a moment to get it going really well.(music) You hear my tone wavering because I'm still very much a beginner on it, but this is what I've been focused on. I built,

Leah Roseman (00:27:08):

So before you put that away, Mark, so it looks like a PVC pipe from here.

Mark Growden (00:27:11):

Yeah, it's just a PVC pipe. That's all it is.

Leah Roseman (00:27:13):

It's just a few holes.

Mark Growden (00:27:14):

I'm doing all my prototypes on. Yeah, but it's got five holes I can show you. The next very similar is choor from Kyrgyzstan, but it doesn't have that fifth hole. Right. And they play with this posture. They don't have a fifth hole in the thumb. They can keep it against the body, but they stand looking up. And I need to ask Kutman why that is. Actually, I think I did, but my language, my Russian was terrible.(music) You're going to hear a sign inequal temperament. Right? Which is nice. Yeah. What, you know, they say the real culprit for smashing out all these dialectic tonalities and tuning systems is the accordion, which I play. But the accordion was, is set to equal temperament, and it was taken all over. And so all these other regional tunings disappeared slowly or quickly.

Leah Roseman (00:28:23):

Let's talk about your start. You're from New Orleans, right?

Mark Growden (00:28:27):

Oh, no, I'm not from there, but I did live there. I'm from the mountains in Northeastern California. I'm in the Cascades. I don't know if you're familiar with that Mountain range. It runs up from northern California up into Canada, Northern Cascade National Park. It's an international national park. Wow. It's shared by both my country and my country. I don't know that it's my country, but the country that I live in. In the country that you live in.

Leah Roseman (00:28:51):

Okay. So when you moved to New Orleans, is that when you got into the Blues and playing?

Mark Growden (00:28:58):

Oh gosh, no. No. Okay. So in high school, when I was a kid, I just played all kinds of instruments. But I didn't have any teachers. No, I did have a teacher starting in fifth grade. I did have a saxophone teacher, and I was playing clarinet flute. I'm from the mountains where most people have multiple jobs. You can't just have one job. My dad was a teacher, firefighter, construction. I mean, he did everything. And being a generalist is just not a big deal. You know what I mean? That's just what's expected of you. And I was that way with music. I never thought anything of it. I just, okay, well, I'm going to play this one too. I'm going to play this one. I just did it. So I into, I was fortunate enough, I won a scholarship. The neighboring county that has a bit had in those days a lot more money.

(00:29:42):

Actually, a couple of the saroptimists saw me play somewhere. They said, Hey, wait, they got a good kid over in Westwood there could play. And they gave me a scholarship and I got to go to a jazz camp in sixth grade, and that meant a lot to me. But in college, so I was playing Blues and stuff and punk through high school, but I was in a town of 60 people within nearby town, maybe 923 kids in my graduating class. It is a small, and that's three towns combined. It wasn't a big musical culture up there. There was in the neighboring county a little bit more. And they were the ones who looked out for me and got me scholarships and what have you to camp some what have you. But it was really in college. I mean, I was in a band called Ears for Elephant, and we were really popular in our region, and there was a whole movement of bands. I dunno if you know the bands from that time, like Mr. Bungle or Primus, but it was all these jazz musicians, young guys who were training in jazz, who were into circus arts, because I was a juggler and stuff too. But who were writing this music, this kind of circusy and wild, but really nty, some of it, I was really influenced this by vinky. I was writing these highly textural pieces. It wasn't notey so much as it was a quilt, like a tapestry. And I was influenced by Steve Reich. But there was this movement in California at the time. There were four bands that came out of that movement. Some that did way better than others. Ours probably wasn't with the least known because a few of us left the group early on. But I think Blues, gosh, I just listening to, I'm big on Muddy Waters and just the whole Chess records thing.

(00:31:24):

And then, oh, you know what it was too, I was studying Orff Schulwerk, which I'm sure you're familiar. Orff Schulwerk,

Leah Roseman (00:31:31):

You mean the Orff Method?

Mark Growden (00:31:33):

Well, it's not a method, it's an approach. But yeah, with Xlophone and where dancing and singing and playing are not separate. They're all one. That's from Orff going to, Carl Orff, going to the World's Fair. But through that, I was studying, most of my students were Black and I, so I had to study because in or you don't play, really shouldn't be doing the music from the books, really, the teacher's meant to be arranging. The music of those children were ideally, for me, the children, you have their parents to their favorite music. Seriously. It really generates excitement. And also the kids who are connecting. That's what I would do. We would do Sly and the Family Stone. We were doing all this music in San Francisco of the parents.

(00:32:20):

I had my teacher, Loren Pickford in New Orleans, he always said to me, he goes, who would you do you listening to? Okay, who do they like? Who do they like? And no matter what, if it's American music, if it's any kind of, even the slightest tinge of blues or jazz, you can trace that music back to the prison work songs, the ring-plays and songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. A lot of it, you can trace it back. Or a good example would be, I dunno if you know about the Fife and drum Blues from Mississippi Hill Country, it's one of the two places in the US where enslaved people were allowed to drum. And they still are. I mean, still, it's obviously a different time, but they're still playing. The granddaughters got, she took the reins, and it's an oath of turner anyhow. So there's certain traditions we can trace it all back to. And that's what I did. I traced it back and I just steeped myself in that music. And I will tell you, when I was 23, I was composing music for, I think it was for Joe Good, which is a dance company in San Francisco, rather. For a long time, someone broke in and stole all my instruments. I had nothing. So I guess I said, okay, I'm guessing I'm going to sing. And a part of me feels odd about it because of the cultural appropriation.

(00:33:43):

But at that time, I asked myself, what is the most soulful music I've ever heard? That's what I value in music. I don't care. What they say in New Orleans about young players who are overdoing it. Like, oh, they know how to play all the notes. As people get older, I don't care about your chops. I care about your, what are you doing with your music? What are you saying with your music? If you're saying, look at me. Am I cool? Please like me. I'm good. I can feel it. And it doesn't do much for me. If I'm on stage and I'm wondering what the audience thinks of me, I am not doing my job. My job is to bring music to these people. They're giving me their most valuable asset, their time. And my job is to give them music. It's not about me.

(00:34:25):

It's not about that. But anyhow, obviously a lot of culture gets caught in that. And it's competitive. I understand. And we're all insecure. Come on. I get it. And no judgment for me, honestly. But I've been there plenty of times. But I do have a practice. If I start thinking, what are they thinking? I feel my back. I bend my knees, I drop my hips down. I saw the stuff I learned from Chinese medicine. I feel my back. I feel the back of my calves. I feel the back of my thighs and I just sink in and I give it to the music. Again, the music, it's not about, not Mark. Ooh, I'm not there to impress. I'm there to inspire.

Leah Roseman (00:35:02):

No, beautifully expressed. If we could go back to New Orleans, I was curious because

Mark Growden (00:35:05):

Yeah, yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:35:05):

You spent some time there. You co-founded the New Orleans Dance Festival?

Mark Growden (00:35:09):

Yeah. Artistic. Have you heard of the Marini Opera House? No. Have you been there to No, I have not. It is a Spanish church. Most of the buildings, the most, the vast majority of buildings you're going to see in New Orleans are not French. They are Spanish. The Spanish were there for 40 years before the Louisiana purchase.

(00:35:33):

And so anyhow, it's a Spanish church built in 1850. So stunning. And they became an art center, and I was an artistic director. And so me and David Hurlbert, the co-founder and still running that, actually, I think he retired, but he's still involved, I'm sure. But he and his partner, Scott, bought that building and they hired me as an artistic director. And I've been artistic director at other venues before. So that was really fun. It was fun to be artistic director of a performing arts center. The challenge was we didn't have all the licensing yet, so we had to be a little sneaky that we got caught. We had to shut down for a while. But it was still a really special experience. And you were asking, oh yeah. So New Orleans. But I will say New Orleans, man, the thing is, you can work there every night as a musician and not have to worry about drawing an audience,

(00:36:23):

The audience that most venues is built in, because truth told that the star is the alcohol most of the time. Sometimes the musician's the star, but even the really killer weeklies friends of mine had, they're in service of the alcohol, really? But it's great though, because they're working seven nights a week. You don't have to worry about it. There are a handful of venues in town, the Marina Opera House, Snug Harbor, where if you're talking, if you're being obnoxious, if you're talking at all, they're just going to walk up to you go, excuse me, this is a music venue. If you do not stop talking, we'll ask you to leave. And I love that because we need that listening rooms as well as the party places.

Leah Roseman (00:37:01):

Yeah. So you have a couple of albums. You have an album called In Velvet?

Mark Growden (00:37:06):

Yeah, that's with the New Orleans Heavies. I have actually like a dozen, but they're not allowed. And I took a job at a fancy music school and I took a couple of my albums, have some fairly blue songs, dirty songs. So I took them off. I need to put them back up because I'm not there anymore. But so I have lots of albums. But anyhow, I have lots of albums.

Leah Roseman (00:37:31):

So at that time, were you, I mean, you had this administrative job. Were you having time to tour?

Mark Growden (00:37:37):

Oh, okay. The administrative job. It was artistic direction.

Leah Roseman (00:37:41):

Okay.

Mark Growden (00:37:43):

I wouldn't really call it, I guess it is administrative. It was creative,

(00:37:49):

But I was not, no, at that time, I had been touring for years. That was my third album in three years. And I needed a break. So I was happy. I had a nice place in New Orleans. I had a good, steady job. I was spending my time between New York because I was starting to study at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. It was an interfaith seminary for chaplaincy, which I figure a lot of my music work is kind of chaplaincy. I mean, I'm not religious at all, and I don't have any one tradition that I necessarily hang my hat on. But I do see the value in all of them, and I think it's really valuable to understand that. So I was splitting my time, but yeah, I was taking a break from touring. Oh man. And have been since, I mean, still, if a venue contacts me and they pay a reasonable route amount and they're going to bring me out, I'll go do the gig. But I'm not working all the time. I used to, well, I am working all the time, but not in the same way. Being on the road, I'm in 54, it's tiring being on the road like that.

Leah Roseman (00:38:58):

And I was curious, I really want to talk about your community choir work. And I saw a really cool video on YouTube with you doing this exercise.

Mark Growden (00:39:07):

Oh, that's an improv structure I developed. I've developed lots of, I'm really interested in creating formats for a group who's never met before. Although that was a choir, the preexisting choir up on Whi Wouldbe Island. I'm interested in creating, what do we call in theater scores? Do you know that term? Like a score, A loose score? Like, okay, the easiest one is usually, I learned this from Miguel FRAs. Miguel, you're amazing. I love you. He a composer. He's Canadian composer. The class orchestra was his project. Anyhow, which is start together in Together. That's a great score because you actually in together, and if you don't, you're not done. It's just little simple things like that. But the umba is a little bit more, but I'm glad you saw that. I like that one.

Leah Roseman (00:40:03):

Yeah. And I also came across, in terms of your life as a composer, there was, I forget the name of the song. It's a beautiful song, and it was a children's choir in Germany singing a song. It's up on YouTube.

Mark Growden (00:40:12):

Oh gosh, I don't know which one. I mean, the most popular one is called The Rain Song

Leah Roseman (00:40:16):

That was it.

Mark Growden (00:40:17):

This body okay? Yeah, I would call, I guess it's beautiful. It is sweet. It's a simple, it's what it is. A simple part song.

Leah Roseman (00:40:25):

Yeah.

Mark Growden (00:40:25):

So Ostinati, right? The point of that song and another group of songs like that. So I write for community choruses. I also write for high school, college and professional choirs. But I'm also really interested in writing for community sings, which to me is when a group is together once, and there's no Sunday, now we're not rehearsing for Sunday, it's Sunday. This is it now, and let's get into it. So if I have, there was actually a study in California on senior singers. It was an inter UC thing. They had me come and lead. The Community Sings for that, because the key for that was you have to be real flexible. You don't know who you're going to get. And I've had groups where no one can keep a tune. So everything I do has to be echoed, you know what I mean? Or something real simple structures.

(00:41:18):

And I had to dig into my bag, man. I was like, oh crap, what am I going to do? But fortunately, I've done it enough. But if I get a place where I am there and there is a choir, if I know that I've got a ringer on each part to get people singing polyphony, not homophony, but polyphony. Oh my God, they love it. So I like creating pieces that are concise with say four bar repeating pattern, but that really speak and can develop and that you can develop by adding sections or dropping sections, or there's a B section, say a body percussion thing in case you're putting it on stage. You don't need that for just rehearsing. And in fact, for a Community Sing, the body percussion would take too long.

(00:42:04):

You know what I mean? But I want it to be flexible. So I try to also, I like writing accessible material, but also I've had commissions. I had a commission for a big marching band, and the piece that came out was too hard. It was. But I was like, for one, I was volunteering because I'm a member of that marching band. So they didn't pay me. So I'm like, well, hey, y'all get what you get. But at the same time, no, this piece is it's piece. And I'm sorry, I have to follow the piece. If they had paid me, it would've been different.

Leah Roseman (00:42:36):

What do you play in the marching band?

Mark Growden (00:42:38):

Oh, Alto Saxophone.

Leah Roseman (00:42:39):

Okay.

Mark Growden (00:42:40):

Yeah. Bari Sax, which I have over here is part my main horn. I play the some of the Cello Suites. But I have my horns from, it's so ironic. I mean, I'm not from a family, without much money. It's like when I graduated, it was basically a tuna sandwich and go get 'em, kid. I didn't have any. They did try to help here and there, but it was, you know what I mean? I don't have that. I've never had a good horn. My main instrument is it is over a hundred years old. The tone's amazing. But the intonation and ergonomics are hellish, but I still play the Bach Cello Suites on them. It's fun.

Leah Roseman (00:43:20):

So did you go to college?

Mark Growden (00:43:22):

Yeah, I went to a few colleges. I went to City College, Fresno City College. They had a jazz studies program, which I had scholarships. I call a scholarship in sixth grade. I was playing at a Solon ensemble. I had got a scholarship in sixth grade to go to Chico State. The head of the department, he was my guy. And he's like, son, when you graduate, you are welcome here. You've got a full ride. Don't worry about anything. Come here.

Leah Roseman (00:43:50):

Wow.

Mark Growden (00:43:50):

Yeah, I know. I was pretty lucky. And then same thing with UNR in Reno, which is the opposite direction. I'm from the mountains in the middle, and they offered me, that was my senior year. They offered me a full scholarship as a timpanist.

(00:44:02):

And my band director's like, you should hear play saxophone. And he's like, what? I'm sorry, that sounds braggy, but that's the truth. It's the truth. But yeah, I had scholarships, but to both of those, I had to play in the pet band. And they did not have jazz programs, and I wasn't interested. So I passed 'em up. So I went to Fresno. They did have a jazz program. My grandma lived there. My grandpa just passed away. But I had some connections there. I lived there in the summers. But also the teachers they had, man, it just worked out perfectly. My friend Loren, who just passed away, he plays alto sax on that album of mine in Velvet. Now you'll notice on that album, the alto sax player sounds like he might be drunk. It sounds like, I dunno if you've been to many Black churches, but sometimes there's that aunt who's really going off and probably maybe a little bit high.

(00:44:53):

Sometimes that happens and that's how he sounds. But it's just because his chops were going, he's old, but I love his sound. It's like there's something raw and unpretentious about his sound. He doesn't sound like the best him, but it doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? Anyhow, he was my teacher. He was in Fresno for reasons I can't disclose here, had family stuff. But he was in Fresno, and he took me under his wing. And one, he would sub me when I was out of town. He'd sub for me in the Band Ears for Elephant. He'd play saxophone. But he really got me from the very first time, from the very first time I played for him was saying, man, you are musical. You are a musical player. He put me right away in the advanced classes above ahead of people who were technically way more advanced than me, but he liked what I was doing musically.

(00:45:42):

He got, which was really nice. I never had a private music lesson my whole life at that point. You know what I mean? It was only at that in college, and I actually started taking privates and stuff. I didn't have access to that. But then one day before school, he was like, Mark, what are you doing here? And I said, and it probably took a minute to figure out what he was talking about. I was like, getting a degree. And he goes, screw that man. By the time these kids graduate, they'll have a degree. You'll have a name. I want you to quit today. I will give you an A in every class. Not every teacher's going to do that, but you just need to go. And he goes, spend time with masters. And I remember he said, I don't care if they're blacksmiths tennis players or saxophonists, go, just spend time with masters and come back and show me your art. I can't wait to see it. And so I did. I quit school and I have bipolar type two. So I was on a manic phase anyhow, not manic, but hypomanic. And we don't get manic anyhow. And I was like, okay, great. I gave away all my possessions. Started walking across North America, meeting all these people for a couple of years. Oh, it was an amazing experience.

Leah Roseman (00:46:47):

This is Driving into the Sunrise for Mark's album In Velvet with the New Orleans Heavies(music)

(00:46:52):

Hi, just a quick break from the episode.You may be also interested in my episodes with other wide-ranging musicians involved in community music, instrument-making and exploring, such as with Linsey Pollak, Kavisha Mazzella, Philip Griffin Polina Shepherd, Jesse Stewart, Sarah Jeffery, and Gary Muszynski. It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and you can browse clothes, phone cases, notebooks, water bottles and more. You’ll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Please check out my back catalogue, with weekly episodes going back to 2021. Now back to Mark Growden.

(00:51:07):

You mentioned you juggled. So were you busing using different skills?

Mark Growden (00:51:11):

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would busk a lot in those days. In the eighties I was playing didgeridoo, I was one of the earlier, it was me, this guy Steven Kent, Stuart Dimster from the Deep Listening Ensemble, Norman Rutherford. There was a, I forget their names. Tanya and Rob, who got me started, they were in Colorado, but there were very few of us, I mean 10 maybe. And it hadn't become the nineties hippie instrument yet. And I'm not trying to dis anyone when I say that, but it did become associated with the nineties hippies, very much so. Like the Portlandia kind of vibe, you know what I mean? The dream of the nineties. Anyhow, so I would play didge, I would juggle, although I didn't juggle, I juggled more. I liked passing clubs, and I did it more for the experiential than I did for the performative. I almost say that's a lot of my music. I studied with masters from all over the world, but I would only play that music or those instruments on stage if they invited me to play with them. I'm not going to go play bansuri on stage like Northern Indian classical flute because I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable as a white guy doing that. I don't never have.

(00:52:23):

But I was never invited on that instrument. But other instruments, I was invited, then I would go because I'm there with a master. They're choosing me. It's very different than me choosing myself. Hey, I'm a representative of Ghana and know it makes me uncomfortable.

Leah Roseman (00:52:36):

So were you meeting these people in different places in the States, or was it touring more?

Mark Growden (00:52:39):

Oh, it was all in the States. I didn't have the resources to travel. And then I ended up, my first kid I had when I was 26, so it was just a pretty short window. But that last a few years where I traveled, oh, in college. So I went to, for music, I went to study, studied jazz. Then later on I went back to school. I studied art. I'm also a painter and a printmaker. And then I went to Holy Names in Oakland, which had, they don't have anymore, but they had an amazing Kodaly program.

(00:53:12):

And that's where I got to study with the Hungarian, who changed my life. Judit, what is her last name? Judit Hartyányi. Oh, man. And Michael Caulkin. There's a whole lineage because they've been there for a long time. So there's a lot of teachers around with that. And the way that changed my life, seeing the way having been taught the American kind of theory way of learning music where you write it on the board but you don't actually get it in your body was very, and it never made sense to me because no one in that class could just sing you a harmonic minor. They might be able to sing a harmonic minor, but they couldn't do it readily. That's not what we were learning. We were just seeing it, right? Information. And that's theory as information theory is really just terminology. It is, but you got to ground it. So that's the Hungarians. Everything's in your body. Oh, amazing. Amazing stuff. And that changed, thankfully, I had already, well, you know what? Part of it's the thing that we do a lot in North America of here comes the bride. Yeah, that's the perfect fourth, but that's the So to Do. That's five to one. That's not one to four. And to try to imagine some other song while I'm trying to sight sing something, a lot of people of us were taught that way.

(00:54:35):

I'm sorry, but that's whack. It's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. Once you know about function and then the Hungarians, you listen to the quality of the notes and you just know where you are. You don't have to measure out a major seventh by adding up minor seconds. You just get it in your body and bam, just like having this yardstick that's super accurate and flexible, boom. You just want a fifth, boom, here it is. Instead of it's stacking up other intervals. Right?

Leah Roseman (00:55:03):

Yeah. Anyhow. So Mark, you do teach a lot of choral singers. You do these musicianship courses. So how do you teach people to sing intervals then?

Mark Growden (00:55:11):

Oh, interval. Okay. Well, to sing intervals, they're already singing them. Yeah, what I do. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. One of the main things I do is focus on function, the feeling of the notes within a diatonic scale to start. So say we have, you should be able to hear this. Did you hear that? Yep. So let's say C Major. So I will say, Re, it's not stable. It wants to go down to Do. It could go up to Mi, but it really wants, for Mi, my opinion, it feels like it wants to go down to Do and subjective perspective on this is perfectly fine. Whatever gets you through the night is the way I see. For me, me, which is So out of tune, equal temperament drives me nuts. But that's what we got. And I know that some people argue with that, but I promise you, listen to a see major triad in just intonation next to a one in equal temperament and go back and forth.

(00:56:02):

Oh my God, equal temperament. Sounds like a cat fight. Comparative, relatively, truly. So here we are, see me, or the major third is happy go lucky and stable. It doesn't really need to go anywhere. Fa is the note of love to me. It really wants to go down to Mi, but it's more out of desire and natural gravity more than neurosis, like another note coming soon. So if it's harmonic, it's very stable. If it's a harmonic interval, even here, or even here, it's stable. But once you make it a melodic, it must go back down to do or up to do, probably not. If you're singing from the bottom though, right?

(00:56:49):

Et cetera. La is like la's really aloof and kind of just doesn't care, and it is stable in that way. That doesn't, and she reminds me of someone who's really, really good looking and got a lot of attention when they were a teenager. So disassociating just kind of flips around being, don't look at me, know what I'm talking about. Then Ti, Ti is neurotic, Ti needs, although Ti, oh my God, so beautiful. Especially when, if it's not like in a chord, a seven chord, if it's voiced right and balanced, right? Not too big because Ti can take over the whole thing. But if it's subtle, oh my god, t's so beautiful, that tension. You use it as a composer and then very stable again, et cetera. And then I do a lot with seeing the tonic, locking those in tune, and then I add the third. Do you know the Wedge book, George A Wedge. It's like over a hundred years old. It has these exercises. I always tell my students, do not read the text. It's so archaic, it's going to mess you up. But the exercises, if you do them with a drone, that's one thing too. A lot of people, I see singers practicing like this with their phone. You know what I mean?

Leah Roseman (00:58:14):

In terms of tuning, watching the needle or

Mark Growden (00:58:18):

Yeah, those are for instruments. Those aren't for us. You tune to something else. You've got to have something else in the environment, a drone or a chord progression or a practice track. I like drones. I realize I'm looking down here a lot where the cameras, hi everyone,

(00:58:33):

I'm actually paying attention to you anyhow, but to sing with drones, I learned that from the great composer, David Conte, who's the head of the composition department in conservatory in San Francisco. He goes, oh, you need to be doing all these with the drone all the time. And it's like, oh, duh. Once he said that, I have lots of influences from a lot of places, but a million solfege exercises and ear training. It's a whole integrated world. But teaching that and stuff, I do still teach my students the crutches just as a point of reference,but not until they've got this down.

Leah Roseman (00:59:11):

So how did you get into choral direction?

Mark Growden (00:59:15):

Yeah, okay. Remember when I said all my instruments were stolen?

Leah Roseman (00:59:19):

Yeah.

Mark Growden (00:59:20):

I was not a singer at that point. I was still in the mindset that I have to specialize somewhat and be a this or that, and that if you haven't done this or that since you were a little kid, you're never going to be good at it ain't necessarily So there aren't very few violinists, saxophonists, clarinetists there. Instruments like that, oboe that really take a lot of effort for tone. Flute, no flute is way easier, frankly. It is the tone. I mean, you get light headed at first, but it's easier to attain a strong tone. Bowed strings, especially violin, because of the proximity of notes. It's hard. It takes a long time to get a really solid tone. Chances are you're not, I'm sorry, you're probably not going to be first chair on the symphony. You're not. It's unlikely, but voice is actually, we all have it.

(01:00:07):

It's a different thing. And a lot of singers who do have classical training, young end up having as much stuff they have to break down as they have to develop. You know what I mean? Well, depending on their teacher. Some teachers really buy into the, if you are better at this exercise, you are a better person. No, we are all equal of love. We are all equal of respect. I don't care how good you are at sewing, how good you are, music, it doesn't matter. It doesn't make us better. We're not special. We might be more skilled in a department, but that does not make us superior. Power, which is an illusion. The only way they can feel it is by putting other people down, and it doesn't actually substantiate it. It just gives a sense of substantiation and it feeds the addiction. Anyhow, I'm very much into humanity.

(01:00:59):

So I had lost all my instruments, and then I found an accordion in the basement of the elementary school I was teaching, and the head at the high school where I was teaching music, head of the theater department, heard my plight and he gave me his grandpa's banjo, which was not the great banjo, but I had a banjo. And I started singing and I realized, oh my God, anyone can do this. I had a terrible voice. And now that's what's been paying my it's voice. Main thing people come out for. Now, if I'm in a Jaw harp festival, that's different. There are people that think I'm a jaw harp player, don't even know I'm singing. And there's people who, I mean, I have different world completely different worlds. But it dawned on me is that anyone can do this and I have to help them. I have the skills. I was already an Orff trained teacher. I already had a bunch of other music education, and I was already teaching high school and middle school, even though I didn't have a degree. I was teaching at really good schools in San Francisco, and it is my calling. I have to help people make music. I have to. And

Leah Roseman (01:02:02):

You put out a Bluegrass album?

Mark Growden (01:02:05):

Oh, it's not bluegrass. No, but I understanding what you're saying. Well, bluegrass is a specific style. It is not folk music. It is popular music. It's made for the stage depending on what your criteria is for folk and pop. But is commercial music made for the stage? The album I made is more Western. It's with all these musicians from Tucson, because I play banjo.

(01:02:24):

I play Claw hammer. So in Tucson and outside of Tucson, there are all these Western musicians. They don't identify as country. They're not, certainly not rhinestone in Nashville country. They're more outlaw Western. And my friend Clay, growing up in his family, they'd all regularly sing songs together from all kinds of traditions. But they'd have an upright bass, a mandolin guitar, a banjo, I dunno if they actually had a banjo and whatever, different instruments, and they'd swap. They'd just circulate the instruments every time. And Clay, I'm going to sound like a terrible snob, but there are only really two guitar players I really, really, really like to work with because a lot of guitar players tend to play a lot of cliches, a lot of, but rock stuff. And these two guitarists are Miles Boison from Oakland, who's in Clubfoot Orchestra plays. He's mastered a lot of and recorded Kronos Quartet. He's a master in his field, and he reads nobody's business. I mean, it's not the easiest thing for him, but how many guitar players do you know that read? It's hard to find. And anyhow, this other guy, Clay and Clay's from the desert outside of Tucson. Anyhow, yeah, so that's that album. I will say with those albums, they're all recorded. Live in the studio. We're all together. We did put the harmonica player in the other room because his tone,

Leah Roseman (01:03:55):

Are we talking about Lose me in the sand?

Mark Growden (01:03:57):

Lose me in the Sand, yeah. And I'll say some of those songs are originals and some of 'em are like, well, gosh, I'm doing an album with all these country, these western musicians. I don't know exactly what to do. So I pulled out some old classics and it has its upsides and downsides. But I do really, there's some improvisational elements on that album. I really like textural. I really like atmospheric.

Leah Roseman (01:04:20):

You're about to hear Shady Grove from Mark's album. Lose Me in the Sand. (music)

(01:08:53):

And now you live in Portland?

Mark Growden (01:08:55):

Yeah, unexpectedly. I had just gotten a new place in the Bay Area. I was there four months, and the day I moved in, my whole body itched. I didn't know what was going on. By the time I left, I had a rash over almost my entire body. I was losing sensation. It turns out I had black mold. So I left immediately and I was in a hotel for a minute there. And then my friends up here who've been following my work for about 30 years, and Tia, thank you, Jen and Tia, they heard my plight and they said, Hey, we own several properties in the Portland area. We have one that's vacant and black mold is a real thing up here too. But we've been through it ourselves and we've had the house checked twice. We'll have it. Well, we had it checked once. We'll have it checked again before you come.

(01:09:42):

We get going to get you a U-Haul. Don't worry about it. You pay us back someday. Get your ass up here and heal. And I did. Oh my gosh. So much better. I mean, it's still, mold is an issue up here, but being, it was a very small space, a tiny house. Oh my God. And not enough was hard enough. I couldn't even turn. I have big shoulders and I turn and knock things over, you know what I mean? So it's nice to be in my own place. They really saved me there. So yeah, I'm in Portland and I'm way out in East Portland in a neighborhood called Rockwood. And it's an old, I dunno if you know the history of Oregon, but it was founded as a white utopia. Super racist. Yeah. Oh yeah. This is real. This is real. And people of color were not allowed to live in city limits. Nor were they allowed there to be in city limits after sundown. They call 'em sundown laws. Right. It's a sundown state. So this area where I am was unincorporated. So it's super diverse. I love it. But I'm really far away from the rest of Portland. And it's also regarded, it was just cited as the poorest neighborhood in all of Oregon in the newspaper like a week ago, in fact.

Leah Roseman (01:10:54):

So are you doing community singing up there?

Mark Growden (01:10:58):

I'm not. I'm looking for a venue, a way to do that. I just started playing shows out. I mainly, I had some really big challenging gigs this year, producing a thing for the One Archives in Getty Museum that took months.

Leah Roseman (01:11:13):

What was that project?

Mark Growden (01:11:15):

Oh man, it was really cool. It is actually, it's not done. The exhibition is in October, but there's a woman, her given name is Edyth Eyde or Edith Ida or Edith. I don't know for sure how to pronounce it. But she was involved in the very beginnings of fandom for Sci-Fi in the forties and thirties. She went by Tigrina and she put out a hymn as a zine. Its a hymn to Satan. And she put out in 1941 or 40, oh my God, this was a big deal. And she started the first lesbian periodical in North America. She was a great composer. And she only got to hear this performed once when it was sung in Esperanto. Is that the language?

(01:12:07):

Esperanto, to cover up the meaning of the song, which I thought I think is brilliant. I mean, I don't know that that was her intention, but seems like a fairly likely that she chose to do Esperanto to cover up that the song was for Satan. But she identified as a satanist, but she didn't, as far as we know, didn't actually worship Satan. It was more to, she's just super punk rock in the forties. She's very counterculture. And she was raised by a really restrictive family in the Midwest and came out to San Francisco and just got loose. So there's no recording of this. So I got a call from a scholar in Boston. I shall know that he's in Boston in Massachusetts saying, Hey, here's the sheet music, and is handwritten really hard to read. The ledger lines were all a lot of variation with or height you could say. You know what I'm saying? So man, and it is also him to say to him, did the person who wrote this write this on purpose, make it so difficult to read on purpose just to make it, you know what I mean, to show it, not say it. I don't know. You know what I mean? Right.

(01:13:24):

And they approached me and I didn't really realize what it was when I heard about it, I heard about it from a friend. Then I got it. I was like, I heard about it. And I booked the Big Basilica in San Francisco. Beautiful tone. That's where the choir I directed performed a lot and where a lot of the great choirs down there record, and I had booked it. I talked to all these musicians in the San Francisco Symphony who are all religious, many of them, a lot of choral singers are religious. It's just the nature of the beast, or not the beast. Pardon me. And then I saw the title. I was like, oh, this is not going to work. So I had to cancel everything I planned because I hadn't actually seen the title yet. I just heard about it this piece by this mid century. And then I saw, I was like, oh, okay, we're starting over. But it was hard getting group of singers together to sing that song. I worked months just hiring, and then people back it out once they saw it. But then I found a group of people who were either identify queer and who were science fiction fans, or some of them actually like Satanists, who are like, yes, let's do this. I don't want to get a bunch of people singing on, I produce a lot of music and a lot of work, and I do not want anyone up there feeling uncomfortable about there, what they're doing. No way. No way. Especially if they're afraid there's going to be consequences later.

(01:14:50):

Yeah. Not a chance. I want people got to feel what they're doing. So I finally got the right group. We had a few cancellations on the day, so the parts aren't as full as I would like, but so I did that. And then she also wrote a piece for, it was an art song, basically a Halloween Carol you could say. And so I know Carol is specific to Halloween. It says Christmas, but you get the idea. And they asked me, the people who hired me to do it, the scholar, their publishers and scholars. Historians, they asked me to add strings. So I added upright bass because you got to have bass if you're going to add anything else. And then I added violin. I would've been fun to do more. But anyhow. But yeah, it was a really fun project. And then there's the Kyrgyzstan trip, and then I was also in Hungary. This year has been more about outside. And also I had students who had big projects. Some of my more advanced musicianship, students who sing with the symphony and stuff has some more demanding projects. So I was focused on that. But now I'm actually focusing on Portland. And fortunately, the guy who owns almost all the music venues in town, he's one of my best friends and he's a big fan. So I have carte blanche, which is handy. So I'm just starting to spread out that direction.

(01:16:10):

It's more like I had to pull my roots in for a while, and now I'm starting to spread 'em here.

Leah Roseman (01:16:15):

And the trip in Hungary, what were you doing there?

Mark Growden (01:16:18):

I was performing jaw harp at a great festival. It's only one day long, but Oh, what a beautiful festival by Aaron Szilagyi. He runs doromb.com, which he and his father are makers. They make great harps in the Hungarian tradition. It is not melodic. It's rhythmic it. And they do a lot of back and forth. (music)This harp's not made for that. But yeah, the knees, the trigger's too long. But yeah, I don't have a proper harp in front of me, but you get the idea more of a, they call it techno now because you can taste that. But he's a great player, and there were players from mainly Europe. I think I was the furthest the one who traveled furthest this year.

Leah Roseman (01:17:04):

So it's the Jaw Harp Festival.

Mark Growden (01:17:05):

Yeah, world vibes. World vibes is how you say it. There. The word is that this instrument has over a thousand names. But when I was in Kyrgyzstan and I said that Kutman looked at me and he said, 2000 easy. So I'm not going to argue, let's say, but it has a lot of names around the world. Right.

Leah Roseman (01:17:31):

So are there maybe a couple other unusual or favorite instruments you have that you would like to show us?

Mark Growden (01:17:37):

Yeah. I'm trying to think of what's really special that you won't see hardly anywhere else. Well, let me just, I'll play a bass harp. These are hard to find. You can find 'em in the US. There are players, but often there's the whole melodic element, (music) right? Isn't that beautiful?

Leah Roseman (01:18:26):

It is beautiful!

Mark Growden (01:18:26):

I want to say here, I have a dream. I used to be John Sherba, the, is he second violin or viola? I think he plays viola with Kronos. I was his son's music teacher for a number of years when he was in elementary school. This is 25 years ago. But John Sherba, I really want to write for the Kronos Quartet, but I think it would be great to write some jaw harp, get these the best players in the world together with Kronos or another quartet too. The thing is, you'd have to use just intonation, right? Which would be fun. I think it'd be a really fun challenging project. Well, like I said, I'm really into the in-blown flutes these days.

Leah Roseman (01:19:10):

Sure.

Mark Growden (01:19:11):

Well, the Bari Sax, you're going to see Bari Sax all the time. You can edit. I'm going to peek around real quick and see what I have.

Leah Roseman (01:19:17):

Sure.

Mark Growden (01:19:17):

Is that cool? I have lots of string instruments, but they're not tuned in. They take a while to tune because they're not geared. I'll show you one. I'll show you one. Oh, you know what I think, my, if I were to talk about an instrument, I'll show you in a second here. I should tune these though. They're tuned whole tone, right? It's not in tune now, but you know who of, you're probably aware of that. Debussy's often credited with bringing the whole tone scale to the west. And then he claims that he heard Russians using this. They don't use it in Russia, but at that time, Lithuania was part of Russia. And I think that, so there's a style of music called Sutartines from, this is something I toured in Lithuania with the two stars of their folklore music show. This is the most popular show in the country on Wednesday nights. And that part of the world uses the whole tone scale, and their music is secondal, the harmonies. Oh my God.

Leah Roseman (01:20:35):

What do you mean by secondal? Based on seconds?

Mark Growden (01:20:38):

Yes. What's the word? It's not based on triads. It's based on seconds. Yeah. Oh my God, so beautiful. Listen, if you check out, are you familiar with Veljo Tormis? The Estonian composer. Oh, wow. He's, man, he has a piece called, well, it's actually really long, but it breaks down as tabu, T-A-B-U, which is taboo. You shouldn't talk about this. The whole song is a reference to being listened in on by the secret police. (singing). But it's all seconds. And we did it. We did it with the community choir. We killed it too, but it was hard. It was a lot of hours. You know what I was going to say one thing that might,

Leah Roseman (01:21:25):

But wait a minute. It's that instrument. So it's the type of zither you were holding?

Mark Growden (01:21:28):

Yeah, yeah. It is zither or a zither typically, I believe has It is a type of psaltery. A psaltery, right? It's a Baltic psaltery. It's handmade in Lithuania. You can see the tuners. Those tuners are hard. You got to have to have this special tool, and it's just friction. They're just a headache. But I have lots of instruments like that. If you ever want to do another second one, I can tune all that stuff in advance. But I mean, no pressure, by the way. I'm having such a good time though. Good. I really like you have a really nice presence. I feel comfortable. But I was going to say, the instrument that I've been exploring a lot recently is video. I'm making visual musique concrète, I take,

Leah Roseman (01:22:16):

Yeah, I saw a little bit of that. Yeah.

Mark Growden (01:22:18):

Yeah. I have a new one I'm going to release today, actually. So this one is me playing, not this one. I have another one with nine strings. 11. It's meant to have 11, but you take one off. There's this whole tourist, and they have, so this one is me playing one of those under, remember in May, it was the flower moon. I don't know if you caught that. It was something special about the moon. Either we had two in the month or there was some kind of what it was that made it a flower moon, which was special. And so when I was just out there, I had finished some late night thing and I was out there. I often play psalteries at night. They actually dream of making a bed that has psalteries built into the sideboard and headboard that tune automatically, that will somehow, so that people can lay down and go seriously a harp.

(01:23:10):

I mean, it's just a harp with a body that's underneath it, but it's a harp and there's something so calming about that instrument can be Also, I know people that play it in Russia, they play it like an auto harp where they cover the strings you don't want to hear, and they strum it. So it's much more lively sound. And that would be a Slavic zither, or Slavic psaltery, actually. But anyhow, so I took this one where just these little moments of me playing, and I made a whole, I mean, it's only a minute and 30 seconds song I'm going to post on Instagram. So it sounds funny, but it really is a developed composition. I would call it an opuscule, you know that term?

Leah Roseman (01:23:50):

Nope.

Mark Growden (01:23:50):

Little works.

Leah Roseman (01:23:52):

OK

Mark Growden (01:23:52):

A little work. So it is an opuscule, but it is a work. It's a real work. I put, there's harmony. I take little elements. I speed up the video. I slow it down at precise amounts to create, to get just intonation and then to make harmonies with what I'm doing out of these original sounds. I did one you may have seen with, it's just me stepping onto an escalator and getting off. But I have an eight minute video. I send out a condensed one that I just take all the sounds from that and develop 'em and bring 'em out and use 'em in harmony. So it's music, ret, but with video. And most of them are literally just the tiniest little snippet. Another one I did is I'm playing an in blown flute or, and I'm standing on a stairwell and I'm layering it, and you can tell it's the exact same take, but sped up. But I have to do this whole thing, right? Export it and then bring it back. It's this whole thing to get this clips to be the same length, but at different pitches.

Leah Roseman (01:24:58):

Well, for the listeners, first of all, we could edit something in, but if it's highly visual, it'd be better maybe just to put a link in the description.

Mark Growden (01:25:05):

Yeah, that's great. I would love that. What I could do is I could put them all under one. They could go to see the little body of work.

Leah Roseman (01:25:12):

Like a playlist

Mark Growden (01:25:13):

I've got three of them now.

Leah Roseman (01:25:14):

A playlist,

Mark Growden (01:25:14):

Yeah, a little playlist. Yeah. That would be great for me, because each one, I'm still very much in the very early embryonic stages of this particular craft. I'm not much of a video editor. I'm just learning. So anyhow. But it's been fascinating for me. I will admit though, sitting around and playing a flute is much more fun than sitting at a computer editing. But the craft of that, I really have enjoyed it and I'm liking what I'm coming up with. It feels accessible. Like other people could do it easily too. Anyhow,

Leah Roseman (01:25:47):

I was thinking, I talked to so many fascinating musicians around the world, and you're in a certain group of people I've talked to that are really interested in different styles of music, different instruments, making instruments. It's a pretty small subgroup of musicians, I would say.

Mark Growden (01:26:03):

It is. Yeah. I think that's true. But we're not special or anything. We're just got our love. And the people who are more specialized, they have their love. And I've often envied, I dunno, do you know Carla Kihlstedt the violinist?

Leah Roseman (01:26:17):

Nope.

Mark Growden (01:26:17):

Tin Hat. Oh, she's great. Oh, I think you'd like her. She's in a group called Tin Hat, Tin Hat Trio. But when we were young, we kind of grew up together as adults. We met when she was, I was 22, she was like 19, something like this. But I was often envious. She had lessons basically her whole life on violin I was like, oh, I wish I had yet. But as I grew older, it's like, oh man, get over that shit. We our, everyone has their gift. And the reason I have really great mentors, really in the classical world, very famous people who took me under their wing because I'm not from the same cloth. That's what attracted them to me. They're like, Hey, man, I want to work with you. And I'm like, how about Vance George? He said, the old director of the symphony Chorus, Vance George, he took me, oh, I went to Westminster Choir College. So I keep my studies going in summers and stuff. And he took me under his wing and I was like, I was curious. I was like, what's that about? And he goes, you're unlike any musician I've met, and you're so passionate. I want to help you. And I said, well, how much are your lessons? He goes, I'm not going to charge you a dime. We would meet sometimes three, four days a week for hours, and he never charged me a dime. That's why a lot of my students that come on scholarship, even though they're not underwritten, and I don't have anyone paying for them, but I do it because that's what was done for me.

Leah Roseman (01:27:39):

So Vance George, what did you learn from him? Mostly?

Mark Growden (01:27:41):

Oh God. Diction. Diction. Oh, setting texts. I mean, as a choral composer, I worked with a lot of composers, but Vance, he sees the text and he goes, oh, no, no, no. You need to move this over. This is all falling on the wrong beat. He knows from directing so much choral music for centuries. For decades, he had a stroke, so it's not the same. He did direct a bunch of us though at his, we had got a bunch of singers from the symphony and he directed us. Oh, so beautiful. He's my adopted father. I mean, I have my father who I love very, very much. And I just have two dads. He felt he always wanted kids and he never had 'em. So it was kind of that I still am for him, although we don't see each other as much. But that was the main thing of setting texts, really studying the text.

(01:28:34):

And also that comes from Alice Parker. Are you familiar with her? Oh, she was Robert Shaw's arranger. And oh, she just passed away. But oh man, such an important woman in the history of American music. Oh my God, I got to spend a week with her, not a whole week, but I won this thing, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to leave that alone. A lot of what he's taught me I know, came down from her. Oh, he just did conducting just at ease. He had me doing lots of exercises, but almost all of it was about being at ease, which is already I'm aware of. But I'm a spazz, you know what I mean? I get really excited and I can get wound up when I don't need to be, and it's part of the bipolar thing, but just helping me stay calm, how to read a room. But the main thing, seriously diction, how to sing well with diction, how to use language. He taught me all the IPA stuff. I mean, I knew some of that in advance, but man, that was so helpful. But he's a great composer, even though he's not a great composer. If you were just to hand him something, he probably wouldn't even touch it. But to help me refine my work, oh my God, He had the very powerful outside eye. The composers didn't touch on, composers didn't even mention,

Leah Roseman (01:29:51):

And I had Michael Kaulkin is one of your mentors.

Mark Growden (01:29:54):

Yeah, he's, it's interesting. He was my assistant director of the choir, but he was my composition teacher, but I also work with, we're like, I would say, I think that's fair. Michael Kaulkin. I hope you concur with that. I think he would agree. I help him. I think the thing I brought to him is helping him abandon a little bit more, not worry about it being right. You know what I mean? Most of my classical friends, that's one thing with all my students. When you make a mistake, you name it and you laugh at it, don't beat ourselves. You know what I mean? You know how it is. I know you've been in different worlds and jazz and classical. There's something, they're virtuosic forms and making mistakes can be associated with being a less of a person. Sorry. No. If you're not making mistakes, you're not challenging yourself. It's okay. Make mistakes and laugh at 'em. How else are you going to get good at it?

(01:30:54):

Anyhow, so I think I brought him some of that, but he's taught me a ton. Oh my God, we went through the Fuchs together. He's been a huge help in my life, and a dear friend. I mean, I love that guy. I honestly, I don't really work with people I don't love truly. I mean, I love most everyone for one. But that's one thing. One of my other mentor, Loren Pickford, said, success in music is making music with people you love. And he is right. He's right. That's what success is. I think so. I mean, it's a very broad and very, probably over simplistic, but at the same time, there's something really valuable in there. I think.

Leah Roseman (01:31:34):

I'm curious, Mark, you mentioned a couple times that neurodivergent, which can mean different things. It could be attention or more like autism spectrum. What do you think those neurological differences give you in terms of the differences helping you?

Mark Growden (01:31:50):

Helping me? Well, it's definitely a give and take. I mean, I am kind of person who will, if I'm working, my ex-wife, if you could call her, would tell you that once I start working on a piece, I usually won't put it down until it's, I will do the entire orchestration of full orchestral work in three days, which is usually weeks and weeks of work. I can't stop. Well, I can now. I know how to, but then I didn't.

(01:32:23):

I would get going and I was up. I wouldn't have any drugs. I would just be up for three nights. And I start getting these tests, and I get more and more mad man, and I do just, I mean, that's how they depict Mozart too. And it thought posthumously that he and Beethoven both had bipolar type two. And there's a really famous book called Touched by Fire, I think it's called And or Touched With Fire, and it's about the artist subtitle, the artist, bipolar and Manic Depression on Artistic Temperament, something like that, or bipolar and the artistic temperament. And so people who have what I have tend to be poets and composers, and I'm both, and there's certain things that we're attracted to while bipolar type one AKA manic depression. They realize not everyone gets full mania. That's why they came up with the term bipolar and then bipolar type two.

(01:33:25):

And then Cyclothymia/k is the other one. But they tend to be like people. The artistry in that realm tends to be prose writers and comedians, and it's a different animal. We tend to be really attracted to stimulants. Like Lord Byron was doing a bunch of cocaine, and that's really common for people with bipolar type two, while people with bipolar type one or tend to be more attracted to alcohol and opiates and that, you can see it all through time. Hemingway was obviously a big alcoholic, but classically manic depressive. And so we got these two. And what I'm telling you is at the time, based on a survey of over 50 studies done in Europe. So it's not just like this is real information here. Scientific. That's the thing though. That book came out 20 years ago, so I don't know where it is now, but for me, I get excited and I'm really good at the impetus. Sometimes I have a hard time finishing things, though. I have so many projects going.

(01:34:31):

One of 'em is going to fall aside downsides. There are times where I would have weeks where I couldn't even move. I was so depressed. My trick for that though, I keep those little squeezy, like apple juice, apple sauce packets for kids, like toddlers that you just squeeze. I keep 'em under my bed, and if I'm depressed, I go, oh, yeah, I reached out and I grabbed one, and it just increases my getting back on my feet and cooking and going for a walk. Speed it up by weeks. Seriously. It used to be really bad. I wouldn't eat for days. I wouldn't do, I barely even have water, man. And going to the bathroom was such a headache because I just was listless. But that was often after a period, almost always after a period of hypomania where I was working on a piece for three days straight.

(01:35:23):

So I've learned how My trick now is, and I also, I don't have an official ADHD diagnosis, but I know lots and lots of doctors and lots of really good psychiatrists who were like, oh, dude, the second I met you, I knew you had ADHD. Come on. And they're like, child, please, of course you have ADHD. But I haven't pursued it in an actual diagnosis. But I think one of the main tricks for me now is if I am composing, I'll call a friend like Miles or Frank or whoever and say, Hey, I'm composing. Call me at 11:00 PM and you watch me put a sleeping pill in my mouth, under my tongue and swallow it, or else I'm not going to bed. And they do it. That's one. I've burned some bridges. I mean, it's inevitable. People with this kind of neurodivergence or mental, I don't like calling it a mental illness because it's a blessing. You know what I mean? If I was raised in Papua New Guinea, I'd be a shaman. Anyone who has what I have is ready to be a shaman. You know what I mean? We just don't have support here. We don't know, I mean, for a million reasons. But the stigma against this stuff is so strong,

(01:36:42):

Man. I'm a very much a community advocate. But having those little things like the friends, oh, I was saying, it's inevitable. You've lose people. That's one of the worst things about bipolar type two where it manifests the most. And from every article I've read, we get really, our psyches get turned on and turned up for an event, but then we end up self-sabotaging, and it's the things we love the most that we self-sabotage. So we keep losing the things we love the most over and over again. It's really hard. I'll tell you right now, there was a time when I could not go to the finale on my own choir that I'd worked months. I booked all that material. I memorized all that material, I taught all that material, and I couldn't go. I was frozen

Leah Roseman (01:37:31):

To conduct? Someone else had to do it?

Mark Growden (01:37:33):

To conduct and with no warning. I know that's the downside. That's why I've been creating a life where I don't have to necessarily be there at that time as much. It's an accommodation for myself.

(01:37:45):

But the thing is, then people who don't understand will make all these assumptions or think that you're an asshole when really, no, I was so I couldn't move. Literally. I didn't even have the strength to stand up if I wanted to. And it gets that way. It's hard. People living with different conditions like schizophrenia, I tell people, I was next to a gay couple, and I'm guessing they were gay. They're holding hands in the Castro, walking down, they turned and looked at this guy who I knew from the neighborhood who has schizophrenia, who suffers really bad and is not getting the care he needs. They go, they ought lock him up. And I turned, I said, they used to say that about you too. And they were like, they're like, oh my God. Oh my God. They were like, oh, thank you. They hadn't thought about that.

(01:38:37):

But the stigma against people with mental health conditions, the way we talk about them on the street as crazies and all this stuff, oh my God, look at next door or Facebook. It is devastating the way people talk about people who are suffering from mental health conditions. These people came by it naturally. They inherited this. And people with schizophrenia, they're going through the whole day, listening to people berate them. Can you imagine that? It's real to them? That doesn't make them less of a human being. They need more care. We have a long way to go with racism, a long way to go. But we've been talking about it for a long time. We have a long way to go with sexism. Sexism in our world, the belief that men are superior to women, absolute bs. And the only way that men can substantiate is by trying to put women down. And it's ugly, and we've seen it. It's done, but we're not done. But we have talked about it for a long time. People with mental health conditions, this is a brand new conversation.

(01:39:35):

We're just fighting for people's rights now, man. But I stand up for people who are suffering. They aren't meant to be locked up. They are meant to be cared for. And the same with the drug substance abuse. These are not people who are just trying to flake off. They are hooked on hard drugs because they went through a probably really hard time. Or people on the streets, of course, they're on drugs, man, try living on the streets. You go. I mean, not you personally, but anyone. Go try it for a week and see how it feels. And that's why all those young women are on meth, because it makes 'em feel strong. Seriously. But at the same time, I have empathy for them. I also have empathy for the people who are not very educated and think that they should be locked up. I understand that that's where you're coming from, and I'm not going to fault you for it. And let's look at it though. You know what I mean?

Leah Roseman (01:40:25):

Yeah.

Mark Growden (01:40:25):

So you can tell I'm passionate. See, that's one upside is I'm passionate. And when I'm on stage, if I'm not there, if I'm there and someone says, Hey, play a song for us, and the audience isn't there for me, oh, that's hard for me. But if I know the audience is there for me, oh, I let it rip. I bring it everything I have because they're there for it. So I'm going to give it everything I have, and it's hard for me to do things half-assed.

Leah Roseman (01:40:53):

So look, thanks so much for sharing this depths of perceptions and really showing the world how beautiful music can be in so many different ways.

Mark Growden (01:41:05):

Oh gosh. I hope that comes through because music is, and when You know what? It's all of ours. There's not single one of you that can't play music. You can play music. It is in you. It is your birthright. It is your birthright as a human being. And just because you had a shitty teacher, because your family told you weren't a good singer, doesn't mean anything except for what they said. It is just their words.

Leah Roseman (01:41:26):

Okay. Well, thanks.

Mark Growden (01:41:27):

Yeah, yeah, my pleasure.

Leah Roseman (01:41:30):

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. Or you can browse the collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly with notebooks, mugs, shirts, phone cases and more. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.