W&M Featured Events

Location

Ewell Hall, Ewell Recital Hall
221 Jamestown Rd
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location

As humans, we move through a sonic landscape day in and day out. Sonic matter is one of mankinds most powerful resources for making sense of the human condition and the natural world around us. People throughout the world employ music as a means to express their inner beings and to bridge the divide between self and other. In the West, songwriting has garnered a special status as one of the purest forms of musical expression. Popular songwriters hold an almost mythical status for their ability to create songs through a seemingly innate capability. When asked in 1990 how the Rolling Stones compose songs, Keith Richards responded, "With songwriting - you're more of a receiver - you sit around with an instrument and you put your finger up in the air and songs come through you [.] I think songs are all around us. It's really a matter of being ready to pick 'em up." It is this intuitive process of expression that makes songwriting a fundamental art form for understanding ways of being distinctly human. During the first half of this lecture recital I will discuss the ways in which songwriters create, learn and conceptualize music as an intuitive process and the difficulties in articulating this process. In addition, I will illuminate how songwriting enlarges the potential for humans to creatively connect with each other and to the natural world.

After this discussion, I will perform several of my own songs.