08 JunFrom Dorothy: Meet Muzieklab

Did we explain who Muzieklab is?  This wonderful group, who have brought us to
Holland and set us up in such style to do our favorite thing in the whole, wide world –
make music with brilliant, inspiring colleagues – is an old hand at doing pretty much
the same thing we have designed TruckStop™ to do.  They scout out and contact
musicians, at home and abroad, out of the blue, and invite them to participate in
collaborations with other musicians from different genres and communities, either
very spontaneously, for an afternoon or so, or in a true residency, like ours, lasting
a couple of weeks or more.  Their goal is to inspire, refresh, inform us (and thereby
our audiences) through such stimulus, and also potentially occasion some really
great art.

Our experience here, in their hands, will yield all of the above, I am quite confident. 
The rehearsals are transporting.  We are all stunned and energized.  ETHEL is as
happy as I have ever seen it and is seeing with clearer eyes.  This is such a gift
to us.  Such a privilege to be called on this way.  And it is clear that our collaborators
have found in us a medium they admire and delight in exploring.

We learned today that the presenters can put us all in the recording studio next week
several days before they had said initially.  We will be able to work in the studio most
of the week, so we hope to have a more representative selection of tracks from these
sessions to bring home and make available – maybe here, maybe through our new
licensing library.  It is beautiful stuff, never to be forgotten, but it is also “Time Based
Art”.  Catching it, holding it and sharing it are an essential trick, another relationship,
and an art of its own.

xo,

Dorothy