http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRp9eG0A9dY

Video of "The Mark" during sound check at Le Tennessee in Paris - Thank you, James!

Well, hello there!  I’m sorry it’s been so long, but I’ve finally settled in Paris after a whirlwind few months.  After an amazing afternoon performing at the XPoNential Music festival, I had exactly one day to pack like a wild-thing and hop on a plane for France.  Since Paris clears out for vacations during August, I spent the month traveling around through Brittany and Normandy, stopping by Lorient for the Festival Interceltique held there annually.

If you’ve been following my tweets, you might already have heard some of my stories from abroad, but if you’re not on the twitter bandwagon, let me bring you up to speed.  I’m currently on the first leg of a year-long adventure funded by the Thomas J. Watson Foundation.  My harp and I will be traveling through France, Germany, India, Indonesia, China and Japan over the next 11 months, researching how new recording, distribution, and social media technologies are changing the lives of independent musicians abroad. Venus Zine in California ran a really nice feature on my trip that you can check out online here.

Web-designer extraordinaire Vance Bell and I worked hard this summer to finish unveiling the new face of www.gilliangrassie.com , transforming the site into an interactive, multimedia travel blog so that we can stay in touch during this year of globe-trotting discovery. Recent posts include highlights from the XPN Festival, my top 10 Desert Island songs for the new WXPN 885 countdown, (if you've submitted your own list, please post it as a comment on my blog - I'd love to see what you chose!), and my first post about my life in Paris.  There's also a photo album from Normandy up on my flickr account, which is linked on gilliangrassie.com’s front page (proper blog about THAT trip forthcoming).

I’m really excited about all this coming year holds in store for me and really do hope you’ll stay in touch – the new site makes commenting on the blog posts super easy! I’d love to hear from you.

All my best… from Paris!

-Gillian


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UPDATE:  If you missed the airing, have no fear - the link is below.  Thanks to all my friends on Myspace and Facebook for picking a "winner" :)

Watch the performance online!

Gene Shay will be featuring me again on the XPN Folk Show! Tune
in from 8 PM - 11 PM TONIGHT to hear a live, in-studio performance and
interview.  My full band will be joining me on air - that's Ross Bellenoit (guitar), Ryan Kuhns (upright bass), and Matt Scarano (drums)! 

XPN is available on the following radio frequencies and worldwide at www.xpn.org:

* WXPN 88.5 FM in the greater Philadelphia/South Jersey area
* 104.9 FM in the Lehigh Valley
* 90.5 FM Worton/Baltimore
* 88.7 FM Lancaster/York
* 99.7 FM Harrisburg
* WXPN is also available worldwide via streaming audio.


-Gillian

It is with tremendous gratitude and excitement that I announce my selection as a 2009-2010 Thomas J. Watson Fellow!

The Watson Fellowship is a prestigious and generous one-year grant awarded to college seniors of unusual promise for a year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States.

“The awards are long-term investments in people, not research,” says Cleveland Johnson, Director of the Watson Fellowship Program and a former Watson Fellow.  “We look for persons likely to lead or innovate in the future and give them extraordinary independence to pursue their interests outside of traditional academic structures. Watson Fellows are passionate learners, creative thinkers, and motivated self-starters who are encouraged to dream big but demonstrate feasible strategies for achieving their fellowship goals. The Watson Fellowship affords an unequalled opportunity for global experiential learning.”

The Thomas J. Watson Foundation awarded forty fellowships. This year, 177 finalists from select private liberal arts colleges and universities competed on the national level, after their institutions nominated them in the autumn.  Each fellow will receive $28,000 for the year.

I have spent the better part of the last year developing my proposal and am so thrilled that the Thomas J. Watson Foundation has honored me with the resources to materialize some big, bold dreams.  Starting in July 2009, I will spend a year studying how new music technologies – including recording software, digital distribution, and online communities – are influencing the production and appreciation of independent music around the world.  My project will take me through Germany, France, India, Indonesia, China and Japan.

As an independent musician, I have an invested entrepreneurial interest in an exciting and unpredictable industry that I plan to enter as a full-time professional after my Watson year.  I am an “Artist 2.0” as Clive Thompson puts it in his 2007 New York Times article “Sex, Drugs, and Updating Your Blog,” by which he means a musician whose success relies heavily on the use of technological advances and internet-based tools like Myspace, iLike, blogs, Pandora, iTunes and CDBaby to connect with, build, and maintain fan-bases.  Thompson describes this new model in which “being a musician is rather like being a business manager, memoirist, and group therapist rolled into one, with a politician’s thick hide to boot.” The artistic freedom of being an indie comes with a hefty trade-off, and that is the burden of needing to be as good at financing, marketing, organizing, booking, and promoting your music as you are at making the music in the first place.

In many ways, my project uses the medium of music and its modes of production to address much larger questions about globalization and our ability as a community of nations to interact healthfully and productively as a whole, while preserving that which makes us culturally unique.  Music has become the lens through which I make sense of the world and my life, so it is predictable that my proposal would be structured around the production of music, but I hope to gain much more from my Watson year than just a keener understanding of world music scenes. By examining the independence and interdependence of technology and artistic production, I hope to also consider how these patterns have important political, socioeconomic, and cultural parallels in our increasingly global civilization.

During the course of my Watson year, I will not be allowed to re-enter the country, and so my United States performance schedule will be on temporary hiatus.  I do, however, intend to post regular updates via a new blog, including audio, video, and photographic materials during my travels, and hope that you will all stay in touch.  I may very well return from this incredible experience with a new album of songs written during my twelve-month project! 

Thank you all so very much for your support.  I am terribly excited about what the future holds and hope to share my adventures with you!

All my best in everything always,
Gillian


This is an abstract of my proposal:

Gillian Grassie, Bryn Mawr College
Artist 2.0: The Impact of New Technology on Independent Music
Germany, France, India, Indonesia, China, Japan
In the U.S. and U.K., technology-driven changes have revolutionized the way the music industry does business as well as the types of music produced. But what’s happening beyond these English music powerhouses? How accessible is new recording software, and how compatible are these programs with non-Western music? What types of musicians and music are being left behind? I will travel through Germany, France, India, Indonesia, China, and Japan to investigate these questions, studying the impact of new recording and distribution technology on musicians worldwide.

You can view the other 39, incredible abstracts online at www.watsonfellowship.org

I wanted to send out a special note thanking all the beautiful people who joined me at Puck for the Valentine's show and who helped sell out (!) the MilkBoy and Kennett Flash shows.

As you may or may not know, I’m in my final semester at Bryn Mawr College with plans to graduate with a B.A. in Comparative Literature in May.  I’ve decided to cut back on my concert schedule during the last few months at Bryn Mawr as I write my thesis and make the most of my remaining time at this incredible place.

I really appreciate all of your overwhelming support over the past few months since the New York Songwriter's Circle contest, and, for some of you, the past few years.  I'm looking forward to completing the college chapter of my life, jumping into the music world full-time, and seeing a lot more of you soon.

All my best in everything always,
Gillian

The wonderful Gene Shay will be featuring me on XPN's Folk Show! Tune in from 8 PM - 11 PM TONIGHT to hear a live, in-studio performance and interview.

XPN is available on the following frequencies and worldwide at www.xpn.org:

* WXPN 88.5 FM in the greater Philadelphia/South Jersey area
* 104.9 FM in the Lehigh Valley
* 90.5 FM Worton/Baltimore
* 88.7 FM Lancaster/York
* 99.7 FM Harrisburg
* WXPN is also available worldwide via streaming audio.

Ben Arnold will also be featured on tonights show.

I'll be playing Winter, Fire and Snow along with some originals.

Happy Holidays!

-Gillian

Wow. I've just returned from an absolutely amazing two days in New York performing and competing at The Bitter End in the New York Songwriters Circle contest. There was an incredible line up of twelve finalists, selected from thousands of submissions, and we all played our songs for the all-star panel of judges and a room packed both nights with fans and industry professionals. I am thrilled to announce that I was awarded 2nd place in the competition!

The honor came with a wonderful package of prizes including studio time and a $3000 cash prize, but the real highlight of the evening came when Grammy award-winner Marc Cohn took a moment out of his set to give me a special shout out, with some very kind words about Silken String and my perfromance. It was a real treat to meet him after the show.

I am so grateful to the New York Songwriters Circle for this incredible opportunity and will keep you all posted on where things go from here. This is only the beginning. Congratulations to 1st place winner Mieka Pauley and 3rd place winner John Schmidt!

Please come and celebrate with me this Saturday, November 15th, at the Riverspace Arts Benefit concert for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. I'll be playing a 90 minute set with full band in this beautiful theatre and would love to share my excitement with you about the competition while making music for a good cause! The Journal News is running a feature about me and the benefit. Look for it in the paper on Tuesday, November 11th or online at lohud.com.

Much love and appreciation,

Gillian

David Hiltbrand has penned a feature about my selection as a finalist in the NYSC competition. Look for it in the entertainment section of today's (Tuesday, October 21st) paper!

If you aren't in the Philly area or can't get a copy, you can also read the article online:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/31521449.html

Enjoy!