New Thought Music - The Sacred Music of Our Times

As musical director, I had several challenges. This has been my first experience with musical direction for such a conference, so many ideas were put forth - some working and some not. Big surprise.

I thought I'd share with you some of what I've learned:

1. I had opted to rely upon the musical talent of the band to carry the show forward. This makes sense in the way that I play and how improvisation based I am as a musician. So, if there was a need for something, I would rely upon orchestration of the band - consisting of tabla, drums, bass (amplified wooden), acoustic guitar and a Yamaha C7 piano. So I could highlight duets, trios and solos as a means to create different feeling tones. There's something magical about solo talba... In general, I think this was successful. I might have generated more charts for even simple stuff, since clarity is what you need in the throws of a conference.
2. As you can see, I decided to use a very acoustical environment as much as possible. This would reduce the need for high volume monitoring and therefore stage volume. By keeping things acoustic, it necessarily limits the sound levels which assist the front of the house to make things sound nice and balanced. The tabla obviously needed amplification to come up to a band level, but its presence also enforced a more sensitive approach from the drummer (usually the key volume element on stage).
3. On a practical level, I needed to settle as much of the conference line up very early. Obviously, it is difficult to book people for dates long in advance, so I was fortunate to have people offer themselves as fillers for dates as they came up. The problem I found was that there are so many fantastic artists, and only so many slots for featuring. This is the nature of the beast, and I'm hopeful that over time, I can share features better. Balance is key: Who has performed before and when; What kind of message is being given by the overall event itself and how does the flow work through the days of the conference. It's quite an undertaking. I was very fortunate to have Rickie Byars-Beckwith there to support me in both the planning and the implementation of the conference. She bailed me out on more than one occasion!
4. Consciousness is indeed the answer. Whenever there are people organizing around an effort, there will be moments of absolute terror and conflict. The key is to not get hooked into the drama, but to keep the intention foremost in your mind. The rest is noise. Tomorrow really is another day, and most of the noise is lost in the midst of the good that is unfolding. Maybe we should use principle, neh?

Peace and Blessings,

Ben Dowling