David Darling

2:30 – 6:00 pm Friday, September 14, 2012
Workshop: David Darling
Title: Finding Your Long Lost Musician

Everyone has creative expression within them. If you have ever dreamt about boldly unleashing your creativity through music, movement or sound of any sort, rediscover your inner artist in this energetic and inspirational play-shop, where we experience the joy of music-making with Grammy award-winning artist David Darling.

In a fun and supportive environment, discover that it is never too late to reconnect with your natural creativity and intuition. Learn how to shed a negative musical self-image as you creatively express yourself through music and movement in spontaneous new ways.

We will clap, jingle, drum, chant, make strange sounds, sing on- and off-key, dance, use our bodies as musical instruments, and celebrate the improvisational musician, artist, dancer and performer within each of us.

No previous experience in making music is necessary. This workshop is appropriate for musicians and non-musicians, educators, artists, performers, entertainers, and anyone longing to bring more self-expression into their lives in a dynamic and interactive way.

 

Musical Bill of Rights

Developed by David Darling/Music for People

  • Human beings need to express themselves daily in a way that invites physical and emotional release.
  • Musical self-expression is a joyful and healthy means of communication available to absolutely everyone.
  • There are as many different ways to make music as there are people.
  • The human voice is the most natural and powerful vehicle for musical self-expression. The differences in our voices add richness and depth to music.
  • Sincerely expressed emotion is at the root of meaningful musical expression.
  • Your music is more authentically expressed when your body is involved in your musical expression.
  • The European tradition of music is only one sound. All other cultures and traditions deserve equal attention.
  • Any combination of people and instruments can make music together.
  • There are no “unmusical” people, only those with no musical experience.
  • Music improvisation is a unique and positive way to build skills for life-expression.
  • In improvisation, as in life, we must be responsible for the vibrations we send one another.

Drums and a piano will be provided, along with small handheld percussion instruments. Bring an instrument, if you have one. Bring poems, a novel, journal or any other form of creative expression.

Concert

7 – 9 pm Saturday September 15, 2012
DAVID DARLING AND FRIENDS
Location: The Dome

This concert by David Darling and Friends will feature music from many genres, including jazz, classical, ethnic, folk songs and contemporary to avant-garde improvisations. From time to time, David invites the audience to participate. In 2010, Darling was honored with a Grammy for his Prayer for Compassion album. David promotes self-expression through music and improvisation. Gathering momentum from more than 20 years of workshop and concert experience, David and Bonnie Insull founded Music for People in 1988. Based on the principle that music is a natural creative expression available to everyone, this right to creative expression is expressed in their Bill of Musical Rights (see his Friday afternoon workshop description).

 

“At all my concerts I play a rhapsody for cello, and it’s always made up on the spot. It has the textures and timbres of Bloch’s Schelomo, the Dvořák Cello Concerto, and Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich, and Bartók.”

Darling says one of his tasks is to help classical musicians overcome their skepticism and believe that they can play music that’s not printed:

“…to have the guts to walk onstage with nothing prepared. It’s just amazing to me that you have someone who’s trained themselves for years and years, they have scales down, they have thirds down, they know 13 modes, and if you ask them to play something they say, ‘No, I can’t; I didn’t bring any music.’ Well that’s just absurd. Music should be something that isn’t served just by the notes; it should be something that’s about the human condition of expressing oneself through notes.”      — Reprinted from Strings #34, by Joshua Rosebaum

Bio

David DarlingDavid Darling, has been called a “Maverick cellist,” but it hardly captures the richness, diversity, breadth and sense of humor of a man who literally redefines the way the cello is played and the way music is taught. His playful and unconventional teaching methods have helped open the world of music and improvisation to thousands of individuals. In the summer of 1970, he joined the Grammy Award winning Paul Winter Consort, an extraordinarily progressive band for its time blending jazz, classical and world music. David’s recording CelloBlue was nominated for a Grammy in 2002 and his recording Prayer for Compassion won Best New Age Album of the Year at the 2009 Grammy Awards. He has collaborated with a wide variety of international artists including Paul McCandless, Jan Garbarek,Paul Horn, Terje Rypdal, Bobby McFerrin, Spyro Gyra, Arlo Guthrie and Baba Olatunje; Writers: Coleman Barks and Joseph Campbell; Choreographers, Dancers and Dance Companies: Alvin Nickolais & Murray Louis, Jonathan Walken of Pilobolus, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, The Hong Kong Ballet, Tai Chi Master Chungliang Al Huang, and numerous others. In 1986, he co-founded “Music for People,” dedicated to teaching and fostering music improvisation as
a means of creative self expression. He has traveled around the world for over 40 years enthusiastically encouraging people to explore their musical talents and creative abilities.

In 1966, David Darling began his professional career in Evansville, Indiana as an elementary and secondary school orchestra and band conductor. In 1969 he became faculty cellist, community college orchestra conductor, and music education teacher at Western Kentucky University.

In the summer of 1970 Darling joined the Grammy Award winning Paul Winter Consort making his home in Nashville, TN. There he served as assistant principal cellist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and worked as a studio session player in the Nashville recording scene with the main focus of his career being the Consort, an extraordinarily progressive band for its time. The Consort sound was a rich blend of jazz, classical and world music incorporating, at times, the voices and sounds of nature. As a soloist, composer, and vocalist with the Consort, Darling was exposed at length to ensemble and solo improvisation. He retired from the Paul Winter Consort in 1987 to begin the exploration of a solo performance, teaching and recording career.