Phase Two of my Fall 2016 sabbatical was a week-long residency, Oct. 4-12, at Lawrence Conservatory of Music, in Appleton, Wisconsin, hosted by ethnomusicological colleague and fellow Didgeri Dude, Dean Brian Pertl, his gracious wife Leila, and faithful blue heeler Zeek, the Official Conservatory Dog.
In spite of its brief timeline, my residency was jam-packed with acoustic research, student interaction, academic presentations, improvisational opportunities, performances, and live recordings.
Beginning with an Ethnic Studies lecture highlighting the career of Native American jazz singer Mildred Bailey…
…followed by student didgeridoo class free improvisation sessions in the reverberant Health and Wellness Center racket ball court…
…as well as impulse response (IR) capture sessions in the racket ball court and the 80′ secret subterranean tunnel underneath Seth’s drive-thru coffee shop in downtown Appleton.
No sabbatical is completed without its gastro perks. Excellent food and drink was abundant in Appleton, but the stars of my stay were the excellent tacos al carbon and jalapeño margaritas at…
…and the amazing Afghani omelettes at the Queen Bee diner.
In addition to a plethora of didgeridoo playing, my visit also featured sitting in with some excellent Lawrence Conservatory world music ensembles, including the high-energy Sambistas, and (after a thirty-one-year hiatus) an opportunity to once again play in a Balinese gamelan ensemble.
I was ” deeply” impressed by my Friday evening session with the student-run Lawrence Deep Listening Club.
The weekend was punctuated with a hiking trip to High Cliff State Park, which offered scenic vistas of Lake Winnebago…
…and hiking trails through some ancient Indian burial mounds.
My final days at Lawrence were chock-filled with academic and research activity.
But, the culminating event of my residency was the Didgeri Dudes’ reunion concert, presented in Harper Hall, on October 11th.
The evening began with the performance piece “ICU2”, composed by Brian Pertl, and featuring illuminating “eyeball didges” played by Brian, James Cunningham, Izzy Yellen, and Emmett Jackson in a darkened concert hall.
The second selection was a performance of the classic “We Are the Didgeri Dudes” from the Didgeri Dudes first album, released in 1994.
This version of “WATDDs” featured an IR reverberation signature captured in and transported from “The Silo,” a favorite ambient site on my home campus, in Boca Raton.
The third selection in the concert was a tribute to honorary Didgeri Dude Stuart Dempster titled “The Dempster Pacific Railroad” (Cunningham, Pertl 2016), featuring Stuart’s son Loren Dempster on cello.
The piece, inspired by Stuart’s love of the sounds from the many nightly train crossings in Appleton, and featured a newly-captured IR from the Lawrence University racket ball court.
For me, the highlight of the concert was the world premier of “Land of Snows Live” (Cunningham, Pertl, 2016), which recreated the Didgeri Dudes’ Ft. Worden Cistern recording from 1997.
In addition to conch trumpet, sewerphone in b-natural, and Tibetan dung chen, the Dudes’ performance reproduced the original acoustics of the Under the Earth Tones CD with an IR from the cistern itself.
The evening concert concluded with the group improvisation “Now You’re Talkin’” by Brian Pertl, James E Cunningham, and Lawrence students Emmet Jackson, Sam Genualdi, and Izzy Yellen.
I greatly relished my time at Lawrence Conservatory and expectantly anticipate my return to that creative oasis.