Hallo Good People,
I am back! And I have a lot to tell you...
On May 15th I arrived in NYC's Penn Station with too many bags for all the needed items for all the projects I planned to work on while there. I stayed in a lovely little apartment on the Upper West Side near Central Park and The Dakota Building where John Lennon lived and died. My plans included studying Dunham Technique and other dance styles at Alvin Ailey, doing tons of yoga, mastering the Sacred Whore Demos and designing the graphics for the CD and its full-color sleeve, scoring all the songs on my forthcoming album and creating and scoring string parts for some of them, drawing portraits of the people who inspire me (an on-going project that I do to get me where I am going), exploring Central Park, and doing some specifically NYC c ultural things. So my bags held lots of dance and yoga clothes, my yoga mat and sneakers, some translations of ancient yoga scripture, my journal, some piano scores to practice, my laptop, some reference books for orchestration and my new software, and my drawing pencils and markers and sketchbook.
On May 17th I went to my first Alvin Ailey class (of this trip - I took a few classes there in the mid-'90's when I lived in NYC) and found out that their usual extensive schedule was about to end for a semester break. I had planned on taking 1 or 2 classes 6 days a week, so it was a huge disappointment to find that most of the classes I wanted were not available. I researched other schools all over the city and attended classes at a few different places. The styles of dance I love best (so far), Dunham Technique and Haitian Folkloric dance, are not as readily available as many other styles, so my options were limited. After trying lots of other places, I ended up liking the classes I had planned to take at Alvin Ailey best, and chose to focus just on their reduced schedule, instead of studying elsewhere. I took 2 or 3 dance classes there each week, instead of my intended 6-10.
Attending dance classes after many years without dancing was both intimidating and liberating. I faced all my old fears about somehow not quite being trained enough, good enough, or thin enough to be a dancer. In the classes I liked best, I also danced best. I felt so at home dancing in those classes. And I randomly got asked if I was a dancer in some of my yoga classes, and decided it is high time I answered definitively, simply, "Yes." I started creating the dance for my Sacred Whore video in my mind, and I can't wait to have more time and space to work out the details and teach the dance to the dancers who will accompany me in the video.
I did TONS of yoga at many many different schools with many many different teachers, and although I really enjoyed some of the classes, I deeply missed my amazing teachers at Eyes of the World at home in Little Rhody the whole time! My NYC favorites were working with Seane Corn at the Yoga Journal Conference, working with Dharma Mittra and some of his student teachers at his Yoga Center, and working with Sandhi at Jivamukti. Seane has an amazing sense of purpose and passion in her practice and teaching. Dharma embodies yoga so fully that just being around him brings peace to his students. And Sandhi is both a yogini and an aerial acrobat, and I love being upside-down, so I very much enjoyed her classes.
During that first week of trying out all different dance and yoga studios in NYC, I also spent acouple of days mastering the Sacred Whore Demos and designing the graphics for the CD and its sleeve. I sent off the masters and Kim got to see them first, because they arrived before I came home. They look great! I am about to start signing and numbering them and sending out the ones that have already been ordered. There are only 300, so please order yours soon, here:www.kmetal.net/help.html .
As soon as I finished designing the demos, I devoted my at-home time to scoring all the songs on the album. I started with Aegis and then completed Dear Sister, Gutter Mouth, Sacred Whore, This Space Is All Mine., and Blessed Community, before returning home. I have 5 more songs to score vocals and piano for, and then I need to create and score string parts for almost all of them. I love my new scoring software, Sibelius 6. Notation software has come a very long way since I started scoring my songs by hand in 1986. Even through college and grad school I refused to switch to computer notation, because it was not yet flexible enough to be worth it to me. Now it is, and it is fun, flexible, beautiful and so efficient to use!
Within a week of being there, I got really sick from the pollution in New York. I had expected it to affect me, but not as severely as it did. Not only was my head full and achey, my throat inflamed and sore, and my lungs very tight and wheezy, but I felt like I was losing my mind. For over a week I had really intense mood swings and wondered if I should just return home. Kim was so helpful on the phone, reassuring me that the trip was not a failure or a waste even if I came home early, or even if I stayed but didn't dance as much as I had wanted. I decided to take Claritin, even though I almost never take any drugs of any kind, and two herbal remedies, and my symptoms got a tiny bit better. Then I talked to my holistic doctor on the phone and she helped me figure out what was going on and she did some energy work on me OVER THE PHONE(!), and it really helped! Who knew?
Kim visited for two days in the middle of my 5-week stay in NYC. First I showed her the neighborhood I was living in: Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey, Carnegie Hall, and Patelson's (which is where I used to always go to get scores, but it is closing! It feels like a death in my family.). Then we explored the East Village and SoHo together, where I spent most of my time when I lived in NYC, visiting some new and old favorite places. We got super-yummy pretzel croissants at Birdbath Bakery, a bakery that decided to build a completely green facility to go with their completely organic and local ingredients (www.birdbathbakery.com). Their wall paint is made of milk! We visited NY Central Art Supply, Veselka, 9th St Bakery, Enchantments, Flower Power Herbs and Roots, Tompkin Square Park, Life Cafe... We stumbled upon Jill Anderson's Dresses, whose designs are so beautiful we hope to have Jill make a couple of dresses for me to wear in the Sacred Whore video. Then we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame NYC Annex to see Yoko Ono's new exhibit, John Lennon: The New York City Years. John is a hero of Kim's, and John and Yoko are both inspirations of mine. It is a very special exhibit. We were so inspired by it that we visited The Dakota Building, Strawberry Fields, and the John Lennon Memorial the next day. I thought I might return home with Kim at the end of her visit, but I decided to stay. I had adjusted to the pollution and city life and my class schedule, the mini-vacation with Kim helped my heart, and I wanted to get as many dance classes in as possible.
I got to see Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble at a free concert in the park at Lincoln Center. The compositions, performances, and instruments were all exquisite. They are supposed to be airing that show on PBS at some point. I got yummy organic and local food from Josie's Express delivered to my 4th floor walk-up during a major thunderstorm. I saw the movie Unmistaken Child, about a Tibetan Monk's journey to find the reincarnation of his mentor, such a beautiful land and culture. I got amazing organic macrobiotic food from Souen in the West Village. I wandered all over the top of Central Park to be in the woods in the middle of NYC! I bought yummy knishes, rugelach, bagels, and white fish pâté at Zabar's. When Kim visited again for my last weekend there and to bring me home, we saw the movie Food, Inc., which is digging deeply into how big corporate structure has been changing the quality of the food we eat in totally unsustainable ways. It is so densely informative that I think everyone needs to see it, at least twice: www.foodincmovie.com . We went to a fantastic gourmet pizzeria and gelato place called Otto's, right near the lovely Washington Square Park archway. Otto's gelato is so good that it almost made me cry. We also went to Katz's Deli (which has been there since 1888) and Yonah Schimmel's Knishery (which has been there since 1910) in the Lower East Side.
If you don't know what a knish is, it is a thin pastry filled with things like potatoes, cabbage, kasha, onions, cheese... When Eastern European immigrants were adjusting to the fast-paced factory life of NYC in the mid- to late 1800's, they created knishes as a take-out version of their traditional foods. The fried version of knishes that is sold from the street carts in NYC are not really the same food as the original baked knish. There are maybe 5 places that serve authentic old-style knishes remaining in NYC. Zabar's and Yonah Schimmel's are two of them.
We love NYC, especially Greenwhich Village, but we are so glad to be home! We are currently exploring the Rhode Island coastline, farms, farmers markets, and ourselves. We are working hard to gather the money to make the next album, meet all the right people in NYC and LA, and get the right team to book and promote the album and a worldwide tour. Little by little, we are getting there.
The Hi Hat has reduced its hours because it is having trouble staying open, so our options there have been very limited. So we have been looking into other options. We think I will be playing a show on a BEAUTIFUL Yamaha grand piano with AMAZING sound at our favorite piano tuner's lovely store with a nice stage in Middletown. We hope this pans out for an early August date. I will keep you posted with details as soon as we have them!
Meanwhile, enjoy the thunderstorms and the sunshine and the warmth and the farmers markets and the local organic berries and greens and the beaches of summer!
Be peace,
Kristi
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Kristi Martel, avant-soul piano diva
Featured on MTV/LOGO, NPR & in Curve Magazine
Best Female Vocalist of Rhode Island
"a fine musician...incomparable!" - Utah Phillips
Sealed Lip Records
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