She Is Change – #art collaboration with @VettingWolf

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog, I have found the art journal paintings of Tracee Vetting Wolf to be deeply inspiring. One of the results is that we’ve collaborated on a few videos. To be more precise, Tracee created the video. I took my inspiration into music and accompanied her brush and pen strokes, the results of which are on our video channels.

I never know which direction the creative urge will take me. (I’d love to hear if inspiration hits you this way.) In the case of the other videos, piano improvisation accompaniments seemed like a match — at least from the inside out for me. They were brief (one to two minutes). Keeping the improv that short was perhaps the greatest challenge in those pieces. Given what I was seeing, I could have played much longer.

But Tracee’s “She Is Change” video struck me in a completely different way. When I first saw the face at the beginning of the video, I had a sense of deep, powerful femininity with an added sense of uncultured freedom. Words like “aboriginal” and “unfettered” filtered through my thoughts. In my musical imagination, I heard drumbeats.

As I started to create and record the drumming and then the rest of the instrumentation, I kept going back to the images: changing, mysterious. The billowing of the journal page under the brush and the colors that flowed onto the paper informed the palette of instruments.

Even now when I view the video (yes, even without the musical accompaniment), I am mesmerized by the beautiful creation forming. “She Is Change” would be a lovely movie in complete silence. My hope is that the music it inspired in me will allow you to enjoy the video of both sights and sounds. (Your comments are always welcome!) You can also read Tracee’s reflection on the “She Is Change” video.

The version of the music in the video fades out before the instrumental is complete. Below is the music-only version of “She Is Change” that goes all the way to the last note…