Happy Birthday, John!

It's the birthday of my brother John Kennedy, of Santa Fe New Music, father of Jasmine and Jade, husband of Rozella, sister to Kathy in Australia, and only son of Joyce and Wally. Here he is on the North Shore of Lake Superior, swimming in the Temperance River.

Does your head swim? That's one of my favorite questions, perhaps because mine so often does, swimming or cascading with memories, images, sounds, and ideas. Cascades: it's a word for a musician like John, someone who hears things.

1. A waterfall or a series of small waterfalls over steep rocks.
2. Something, such as lace, thought to resemble a waterfall or series of small waterfalls, especially an arrangement or fall of material.
3. A succession of stages, processes, operations, or units.
4. Electronics: A series of components or networks, the output of each of which serves as the input for the next.
5. A chemical or physiological process that occurs in successive stages, each of which is dependent on the preceding one, and often producing a cumulative effect: an enzymatic cascade.

John has done many remarkable things, not least of which is the pulling-out-of-thin-air of musical concerts and compositions year after year, first with Essential Music in New York City, and now with Santa Fe New Music in New Mexico. He also organizes and conducts the Music in Time series at the Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

If you are new to the sounds of New Music (not to be confused with New Age Music), the Santa Fe New Music site is a good place to learn: you'll find archives, a page with links to the composers featured over their first seven concert series, and a "listen up" list of recommended CDs. John has been influenced by the aleatoric or "chance" music of John Cage, whose memorial service he organized as a musical tribute (with Merce Cunningham, Yoko Ono, and others) in New York City.

You can hear clips from John's own One Body here (click on "Listen to Samples" under the CD cover): it's a composition featuring poetry by Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Patchen, Walt Whitman, and others, set for the unique voice of countertenor/baritone Bruce Rameker. (Amazon has Rameker incorrectly listed as composer.) Here is more information about One Body, and the libretto. The beautiful CD cover is by painter Nancy Ortenstone, of Taos, New Mexico.

I can't listen to One Body without it bringing tears to my eyes, recalling the way my brother helped "conduct" the recovery of our father, Wally, when he ended up (almost by chance) in an intensive care unit a few years ago. John came to spend days and nights in the unit, watching the machines with intense sensitivity and intelligence, talking quietly with the night nurses. He was adept at tuning us into those moments when Dad needed us to talk to him, and he lead us in the reiki that helped prep him for the surgical procedure that saved his life. At night, in the background, this music played, providing comfort and connection for Wally. Listen to One Body, especially if you are in need of healing: it has great spiritual power.

Much love and gratitude to John on this day!

The Outer Reaches of New Mexico...and Outer Space

My brother John and his family finished the Santa Fe New Music production of The Language of Birds, to standing ovations (here is a pre-show report from the Santa Fe Reporter's John Stege). Then they traveled to one of the more remote parts of New Mexico, near Datil, on the edge of the Cibola National Forest, near the Very Large Array.

Before I looked that up, I was imagining a very large array of rock formations: instead, this is a radio astronomy observatory that studies radio galaxies, hydrogen gas, quasars, pulsars, supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, radio-emitting stars, the sun and planets, astrophysical masers, and black holes. Oh.

Our friends Cheryl Walsh Bellville and Don Hastings are building a house there. Cheryl is a photographer with a studio in nearby Magdalena. For years they've lived in western Wisconsin, where Don still maintains a business hauling hay and Cheryl documents life in the midwest and beyond (from a studio in St. Paul), often creating remarkable photographic children's books.

Cheryl just send me these wonderful photos of my family. She says "Your dad is looking through binoculars at the small mountain that rises behind our house. John and his girls have climbed to the top. They'd just walked out of range when I took this picture."