S2 E02: Joel Chapman and “Interdependence”
On today’s episode, we talk with Joel Chapman, the composer of “Interdependence,” a new piece premiered by Volti of San Francisco on February 13th, 2021. “Interdependence” is a live — yes, LIVE — performance featuring four remote quartets singing together through the wonders of technology that explores interdependence by way of choral music, augmented by our collective understanding of needing each other throughout this pandemic. We also catch up with Volti’s Artistic Director, Bob Geary, about the impact and significance of the piece.
Music Excerpts
Interdependence, by Joel Chapman
References
Theme Song: Mr. Puffy by Avi Bortnik, arr. by Paul Kim. Performed by Dynamic
Episode Transcript
Zane (00:00:07):
Hello and welcome to in unison, the podcast for choral conductors composers, and choristers where we interview members of our choral community to talk about new music, new and upcoming performances,
Giacomo (00:00:19):
And discuss the interpersonal and social dynamics of choral organizations in the San Francisco Bay area. And beyond.
Zane (00:00:27):
We are your hosts. I am Zane Fiala artistic director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco,
Giacomo (00:00:33):
And I’m Giacomo DiGrigoli, a tenor in IOCSF, the Golden Gate Men's Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. And this is
Both (00:00:42):
In Unison!
Zane (00:00:42):
On today's episode, we're joined by Joel Chapman, the composer of Interdependence, a new piece recently premiered by Volti of San Francisco. We also chat with Volti’s Artistic Director, Bob Geary, about his thoughts on the piece and how music can set the stage for meaningful social change.
Zane (00:01:08):
Alright, joining us today is Joel Chapman, and Joel is a San Francisco-based songwriter, bass-baritone, and conductor. Joel’s passion is in new works development and in addition to singing regularly with Volti, he is also co-creator of Gravity, a New(tonian) Musical, which was a finalist in the 2017 O’Neill National Music Theater Conference and most recently seen at the Brava Theater in 2019. His works have been performed throughout the Bay Area, and he has an upcoming commission to compose art songs for The Young Activists’ Songbook. Joel fights passionately for accessibility and loves public transit. Today’s conversation is going to focus on Joel’s new piece, “Interdependence,” which is a live — yes, LIVE — performance featuring four remote quartets singing together through the wonders of technology. The performance took place on Saturday, February 13th, 2021 and will continue to be available to view on YouTube until at least mid-April. Be sure to head over to voltisf.org/interdependence to watch the performance, and to voltisf.org/donate to support their efforts.
Giacomo (00:02:37):
Joel, we always love to start these conversations with a little bit of a left-field icebreaker, just something to kind of like flex your brain a bit. And something I was just thinking about was you've probably seen lots of these clips with people like Lin Manuel Miranda and other actors and people who have done that. But if you were to host a segment of Sesame Street, what would you do? What would it be like?
Joel (00:03:13):
Oh, wow. Okay. I love Sesame street. And I know it's funny. I was sick like three weeks ago. And it was, it was a rough time. I wasn't having a very good time, but I turned on PBS and Sesame street was playing and suddenly everything was a little bit better. So I love Sesame street. I will say, I mean the, the educator in me and the accessibility activist in me would want to do something regarding accessibility and making accessibility a thing that people want from the ground up as opposed to sort of an extra add on that you can choose to put on. Right. Cause that's sort of where people run into trouble when they think that accessibility is, is a burden, right. That's sort of the theme of the beast that I wrote. So I think that's my Sesame street. It's something fun and ridiculous that gets people thinking about integrating accessibility from the bottom.
Giacomo (00:04:20):
Who might you have, co-hosting it with you? Like, would you have somebody else with you that would be fun or
Joel (00:04:26):
Interesting. Oh, that's so good. Oh man, I'll tell you who my Bay area like disability idol is, and it's a person named Alice Wong. Hm. I dunno if there's any way else would listen to this, but Alice Wong is awesome and I think Alice would be a perfect co-host for the accessibility version of Sesame street, right on.
Giacomo (00:04:56):
We were just talking about this a little bit before, before we got on, but Zane and I both attended your performance of the performance of Interdependence by Volti. Last Friday night, it was extraordinary just before we get into anything else. I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased about this because I thought it was pretty amazing. But we had a host of questions we wanted to ask you about it because it just started this incredible dialogue amongst most of us and both sort of from the topic and sort of the, the impact of the piece itself, but also just the nuts and bolts of putting something like that together. And I think the choir nerds in us, the first thought we had when we were watching it was what the heck does the score for this piece look like? I mean, we were just trying to imagine how you were communicating this piece to the musicians. So what, what does the score, but what does the score look like?
Joel (00:05:46):
So it's fairly traditional notation, to be honest. Except there are moments where I didn't care about synchronicity. So, I used the, the long beloved shrug emoji to, to notate. I don't really care. You can do whatever you want here. So it'll be, it'll be sink, sink, sink, sink, Schrag emoji, do what you want. So there's a moment, you know, where, where the singers of winter would sort of fall with their voices. And I didn't really care how that lined up because that's not important there. So you might see a little striking nudging in the score. But the singers maybe didn't care for that too much, but I liked [inaudible]
Giacomo (00:07:03):
Pretty prescriptive with the score in other ways. I mean, there were so many details, I think that we saw you know, like there are moments where you, so for, for those who haven't seen the piece yet to sort of describe it a little bit for, for listeners of the program, the, the piece interdependence, basically it's, you're, you're playing with the notion of sort of this moment in COVID, right. It feels very specific to this moment where singers can't be in the same space together and what sort of works can you, can you create when you're put upon with the constraints of technology and streaming and sort of live music and sort of that that impact one question we had that related to that is, were there ever moments in the score where you wanted to intentionally create that effect? Did you ever say this needs to be specifically out of sync or ever try to artificially create something? Or did you just kind of let it all happen as it was happening?
Joel (00:08:04):
Yeah, there's one moment in particular. So, the piece is in four movements to follow the four seasons spring, summer, then fall, then winter in fall. The whole thing is pretty sinked up and it's you know, very, homophonic very together until the end where we're actually wanted it to sort of tease apart, fall apart a little bit. You know, it's, it's sort of reminiscent it's, it's talking about thinking of a happier time and, ah, it was playing in the leaves, throwing all the heaps of leaves up high into the sky. They'd fall. I would get a face full if I fall too, I won't be as graceful. It's the lyric. And on graceful, I sort of want it to, to fall apart a little bit to sort of mirror that feeling of not really knowing what to expect or, or being scared of something, you know, it doesn't have to be limited to physical falling. I think that's, that's actually not what I want people to get out of it, the lyric there. But yeah, that's, that's a moment where I did, I did ask the quartet to intentionally fall apart. So you'll, you'll hear that toward the end of fall.
Giacomo (00:09:47):
What about the there are segments, I think maybe it wasn't involved, but I Oh, no. Actually in all of them where you had music descriptions that you had written onto the S the, the visuals as part of the video, where did those come from? Were those the same instructions that were in the score?
Joel (00:10:03):
Nope. those are, those are simply other access points for the audience to consider the music. You know, I think we limit ourselves to, to thinking that the emotion of music is auditory and it's not, you know, the, the emotion is the emotion. So if you can get the emotion another way that enriches the piece, and if you can't hear the music, you still have the emotion that you can tie them to the lyrics. So that's, that's w that's why they're there. And as to where they came from, you know, I would say I, I thought of them specifically what the words are. I, I, I thought of after the fact, once I sort of knew how, how it would land and knew what people would be hearing and experiencing and seeing. So that's how I came up with those words,
Giacomo (00:10:57):
Nico, Nico Muhly, I think tweeted something a couple of weeks ago that I thought was really funny, which was, he said to other composers who asked a question like have you noticed lately that your descriptions in your compositions are particularly of this moment? Like he found himself writing like lontanissimo now and just like grave and lonely, you know, like very, very of this moment in his sort of, kind of emotional state, were you finding the same things when you're kind of trying to describe the emotions that they felt very of this moment in this score?
Joel (00:11:29):
Well, I don't know about this moment, but I did try to mirror how, how I felt in each part of the pandemic. Right. Cause the reason I wanted to set this as seasonal was because we're, we're approaching a year many of us are approaching a year of being isolated and I felt that there was a collective understanding of what it to be alone for a year around the time of the premiere, so that the pieces themselves or the movements themselves very much a mirror, those feelings. So for example, spring you know, spring, maybe still had a little bit of optimism. I know this wasn't true for everyone. And I know some, for some people pandemic hit and it was terrible right away. Right. And for, for others that there perhaps was a bit of optimism. And okay, here we are. Let's see, let's see what we can do.
Joel (00:12:27):
So spring itself is a little bit bubbly as a movement sort of reminiscent of spring cleaning. Right. That was the sort of the reaching speeds yeah. Reach at. Yeah. Well, so there are two, there are two things in spring, right? There's this sort of conceit of spring cleaning. And then there's an accessibility concern of being unable to reach something. So spring music descriptions I wrote were bubbly, detached, hopeful, fast don't mess with me, I'm motivated, optimistic, like a morning person intertwined can handle this. So that's, that's an example of spring, but then, you know, for, for a lot of us, and again, I speak from my own experience and this is not true for everyone, but by summer I think it, it, it hit that, that the situation we were in was there for the long haul. So there, there's this sort of sunken sticky feeling that I remember from summer. So for music descriptions, I wrote sticky, slow, tired on shore.
Giacomo (00:13:35):
Yeah. That final line from the summer, what is it? Sid says, I can only do this for so long. I remembered that having that same feeling myself, it was like the spring was the sourdough bread making period of the excitement. And then summer was sort of when you were kind, everyone was kind of settling in. Yeah, that was terrific. I felt like I definitely got, got that from the structure, which we were thinking about that Y Y you had set that and now it's, it's nice to have it to confirm that it was your experience during that period of time. Here's a question actually Joel, from Bob's, since we just chatted with him and we asked him what he might've wanted to ask you about this piece. And his question was when you were musing about what you wanted to write, did you think it would end up where it did and in what ways maybe were you surprised by how it ended up?
Joel (00:14:29):
Hmm. I, I didn't quite, I didn't quite know what to write to be honest. I, I didn't know what would appropriately contribute to the moment? I, you know, w we, we have heard from a lot of white men already in the field of choral music. And I, you know, I am another one, so I'm like, okay, well, what, what is a way in which I can contribute that is actually helpful? And I don't know if this is helpful at all. And, and it is still reflective of my own experience and no one else's, but I, I did from the get, go, want to write about accessibility in some way. So that, that, that is what I wanted to write about. And I knew that I wanted to have a piece of online internet art that was not, that did not feel like choral music. That felt like a you know, in audio visual experience that we are familiar with or at least folks who use the internet a lot are familiar with. So that's where it started.
You know, I didn't necessarily have any idea if it was going to work. So the, the thing that surprised me was that we felt we found and something that worked which is great. Great. And, and it's just because I was able to have a lot of back and forth with each quartet, right. This was a very personal show. And you can feel that as an audience member, you're not focused on the whole chorus, you're focused on an individual in their trajectory in their moment. And that's a very different thing. That's not what we're used to as coral artists. So it's a little bit scary. But that, that play that back and forth that I had with each quartet.
We had really great conversations about what interdependence means to each person and each person, depending on ability disability age had had very different experiences with the concept of interdependence. And I think those conversations really teased out the show. So I think the thing that surprised me was that, you know, that the content became much bigger than my, my own content. It, it was, it was molded after, you know, weeks of conversation and really, really wonderful back and forth. How many rehearsals did you have? I think like six, I don't know with each quarter each quartet or six total, no, we had to break it up. So this was actually tricky because the, the technology we were using allows for, you know, only a few people in the room at once. Right. When you talk about these low-latency audio things, you can either have a model where, where it's hub, where, you know, there's some server that everyone is going to, and that can accommodate a ton of people or you can have peer to peer, which is, everyone is connected to everyone else.
And you can imagine that that gets some strain as you add people. So it's difficult to have extra folks in the room. You know, it's difficult to have the Bob's in the room, in addition to the Joel's in the room, in addition to the quartet, et cetera. So because of that, I sort of had to bounce around and it was, it was difficult to you know, to be with each, each quartet as much as I wanted to be. But that, that is how we structured it. And what was the software that you were using? It's called Sonobus. It was actually, it was released very recently. It's, it's really made by this one developer named Jesse Chappell, who does amazing work with Sonobus. A lot of these things have come out recently. Right? So Jacktrip, it was sort of the first that was developed at Stanford.
And actually, while I was there, this is something that we played with just as like a fun little tool, like, Hey, look at this, like what you can do. You can talk to someone in New York and look at that. And now there's, you know, much more urgency and all these things have come out since, right? So now there's now there's Jamulus. There's SoundJack. And, and there's this one that came out recently called Sonobus, which is quite easy. It's not easy to use, but it's easier to use then you know, Jack trip in its original configuration. So that's why I chose it. You can sort of use a standalone app and it's a bit more user-friendly you can drag MP3s in and play it to everyone. It's just like, it's kind of nice. There's a metronome. Okay. All these things, you can do a Jacktrip, but I'm just saying Sonobus is pretty cool.
Giacomo (00:19:48):
Well, I mean, it's interesting. Cause one of the things we did talk about, I mean, everyone knows that the level of musicianship in Volti, the singer just extraordinary, it's pretty amazing. And the, the skill level of the singers probably has something to do with the success of the performance, but it's not just about whether you can pull the musicianship and the heart and the understanding of that being able to wrangle the tech feels like it was a big part of this. So like how much did the skill level of the singers have to do with the success of the performance?
Joel (00:20:17):
Oh, tons. I mean it, yeah, I mean Volti is, is, is, is filled with very capable singers who, who, who figure it out, you know, like the, the group is used to getting some music that doesn't make sense and trying to make it make sense. And in this case, it wasn't just the music that maybe didn't make sense. It was, it was the, the delivery mechanism. And so that took a while and, and it's not, it's not anyone's fault, right? Like there are real technical glitches that just pop up that sometimes take an hour to solve. And, you know, that cuts into rehearsal obviously. So it is quite difficult. Over time, folks got a bit more used to it, I think and, and figured out more quickly how to solve the problems, right? Like you learn over time that there are really a few problems that can happen and, you know, using the same software over and over, you can sort of figure out the quick fixes, you know, maybe so maybe you randomly can't connect and okay. Well, all right, everyone leave the room, come back. They're going to figure it out.
Zane (00:21:25):
You've got to create a little troubleshooting FAQ document for everybody. Yeah.
Joel (00:21:31):
But it's usually turn it off, turn it back on. Yeah.
Zane (00:21:34):
Did it, did Sonobus require specific hardware for each of the singers or was it more just software based
Joel (00:21:44):
It's software based. That's one of the reasons I chose it. So going back to Jack trip, there is a much easier configuration of Jack trip, which uses a box, right? It has a little raspberry PI that you can plug into your router. And that's wonderful. It's actually the, it's the best way to do this. If you really want to do this because your computer has a bunch of latency, it has a bunch of delay built into it. Just by the way it runs. So anything you use just in your computer, it's going to have a little bit of delay. If you can offload that onto a little box, you plug into your router, you plug your mic into that box. Great. It's going to be wonderful. That's, that's sort of the, the current state of Jack chip, but I, you know, some of the singers didn't even have a microphone. So we were sort of asking them to get new technology already. I didn't really want to add this extra thing. So yeah, Sonobus does not require extra hardware like that. It's simply software,
Zane (00:22:48):
But it's audio only not, there's no video component.
Joel (00:22:52):
It's audio only. The only thing out there right now with video built-in is sound Jack, which is a browser based low-latency audio platform.
Giacomo (00:23:02):
Hmm. Well, something, something related to the, to the technology. I mean, even just in this conversation that we're talking about, making something and composing something against what's available right now, this piece feels very much of, of this time and place. Like it, it feels like the consideration was very much about Queensland for right now. Would you consider this to be the equivalent of, I mean, I don't even know how you'd describe this appropriately, but like a, a site-specific piece. I don't know how you would translate that concept to this, but could you imagine these pieces ever being performed out of context? And did you, did you envision that, I mean, did you imagine, imagine this piece being performed 10 years from now in a completely different context?
Joel (00:23:41):
I didn't and in fact it came up in the FAQ and I was like, really, wow, this feels so specific. I very much wrote for the moment, for the time for the situation. And I, I honestly don't know if it makes sense to, to be done live even. I mean, yeah. I mean in person, right, because the, the whole piece is, is centered on being apart from one another and trying to get interdependence from that you know, desperate, isolated situation. So I don't, I don't know, I actually sort of see this as a, as a now project, which is maybe from a business perspective, a terrible mood for a composer, but it's it's what I feel. It's what I think,
Giacomo (00:24:30):
I don't know that it's ever stopped anyone from programming, something. I feel like there's so many pieces where I'm like, this is a coronation Anthem, and this is like a Thursday. Why is this being performed? You know, so I don't know.
Joel (00:24:41):
It's true. We still sing Dufay you know, whatever. Yeah,
Giacomo (00:24:47):
Yeah. I could imagine. I mean, it's interesting. It could be a very interesting, I just, I'm trying to imagine what it might be like to reconsider this moment 10 years from now. And it feels like this piece has captured something that is very specific to this moment in this kind of the encapsulated. So it would be very interesting to imagine what I mean, who knows, like when the technology changes, none of us may be sitting in a Davies symphony hall in the future when we, we may all be wearing the VR headsets and, you know, folks be tuning in from around the world who knows what will stick. So I'm just curious if that was something that had occurred to you.
Joel (00:25:16):
Yeah. something I read today, someone wrote a little bit about the piece and said at the end that you know, they, they wondered if but I wonder what the piece would be if someone else did a different version with a different video concept, which I thought was really interesting. Like maybe, maybe there are different versions of the piece that have different visual. Conceits and, and that's actually really exciting. It's almost like taking a script and, and putting it into a different era or something like that, you know, on, on the stage. So that, that is kind of exciting to me. Hmm.
Giacomo (00:25:54):
Did you feel compelled in this to have a visual component?
Joel (00:25:58):
Yes. I mean, that was it felt necessary to me. I am really interested in making music that is not just auditory, because I think, I think it's a choice that we have made as choral musicians to make that the world. And I think, I think that's gatekeeping and I think it leaves out so many people and I think it doesn't have to I, I think that there's plenty that we can do to improve the accessibility of choral music and creating a visual access point is one of them. You know, I would love to see more of this in live coral music to, to have some other thing that you can tune into. And, and like, I always say, and like we say, in accessibility circles, and like I said, as in, like I said, in design circles when you make something more accessible, it benefits everyone. And I think people, people, I hope realized this from the piece where, when they saw music descriptions, they sort of had another access point themselves and it was a richer experience for it.
Giacomo (00:27:19):
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think that ties into something to a friend of mine Judah Adashi out of Peabody conservatory. He had this conversation and he did this talk about how the word show, isn't a dirty word as in, you're putting on a show, right. That people show up and they want to see something that's like that. And I know that you're fairly playful, I think, in your compositions as well. Your YouTube channel is, is just loaded with really sort of fun bits. And for the folks listening, you should definitely check it out. Cause there's really, there's, there's stuff that's just very playful and fun. And it feels also almost not in a derogatory way, but like a disposable sometimes that like, you just are creating something that's for the moment. But it sounds like you don't have a problem with the idea of, you know, air quotes, classical music or choral music specifically being a show.
Joel (00:28:12):
No, no, not at all. No. Yeah. Show is not a dirty word for me. I, I think the, I think the, the perceived stuffiness of the classical music world, and it's actually maybe not perceived, I think the is of the classical music world and the, the, the stuffiness of the choral music world is a problem. I think we're just alienating so many people. And in fact, if, if we just bring some other people in and maybe, you know, this is not to say, let's, let's get away from the super complex quartal harmony. Like let's, let's keep doing interesting things, but maybe let's give people access points into it. So it's not just like, okay, you need a conservatory education to come to our show. And if you don't have that, you're not really gonna understand what's going on. Good luck. So I, you know, that's, that's something that I feel personally, and that's the, that's the young rebel in me for sure. That I'm sure many people would disagree with.
Giacomo (00:29:15):
Well, I mean, it sounds like you're also interested in just, you realize you're, you're, you're talking to people, you're communicating with an audience and you want to make an impact. And with, with interdependence seeing the final product, I don't know if you've gotten a chance to actually take a breath and just co-pack and rewatch it since you were involved in actually in the midst of creating it, but maybe just seeing the final product, what was the, what, what, what was, what was the impact that you wanted to make, and then do you feel like it was successful? Like, do you feel like you got to the place where you made the impact that you wanted to make?
Joel (00:29:52):
I think the impact I really wanted to make was to help the singers feel connected to one another and to help the audience feel that through the singers. And I think that was successful. You know, one of my favorite things I did actually rewatch, I watched it, I hadn't really watched it all the way cause I was pulling all the ropes and stuff. But I watched it today for the first time and that was pretty cool. I don't know. It was interesting. So, okay. The thing that I noticed, the thing that I really loved watching was the singers sort of breathing each other in and actually communicating in real time what was going on. And that was a really special thing that, that we've completely lost in the pandemic. You know, we, we've all had to migrate to recorded music and virtual acquires and, you know, I have no problem with recorded music. I have a degree in it, but it lacks something that choral music brings, which is community, which is laughter, which is snacks in rehearsal, which is et cetera. And seeing this energy was, was really lovely to me. And, you know, that's what I wanted people to see when they saw this show. It's like, wow, we, maybe we can have connection from the far. You know, maybe there are ways that we can feel a little bit less lonely.
Giacomo (00:31:24):
I don't know if this was an intentional choice or not, but that feeling actually there was, there were some details about how the performance was set up in terms of the live aspect of it that actually also gave the audience that feeling amongst ourselves, that, you know, there were small little details. Like you actually could see the count of the number of people who were watching with you on zoom. Like you could see the list of participants, not unlike when you go to a hall, you can look to your left and your right, or you can hear other people around you. And that was actually surprisingly moving to me. I don't know if you felt that way or if you got a chance to take a breath afterwards, but it almost felt like for the audience, the experience afterwards of being a part of the Q and a of seeing who else was there, I mean, that was so much of the experience of the community as well. And I don't know if that was intentional or if those choices were also intentional as well, or they just were a happy accident.
Joel (00:32:21):
Well, I think that's a fallout of doing a live show, like a, like a live stream where you say you have to come at this time. I think that's, that's special and that's exciting. And I totally agree. Like that's, that's it like, that's, that's the, that's the butterflies for the performers and the audience, you know? So I, I, I like that too,
Giacomo (00:32:42):
But they sometimes you'll see these stream things as just being in one direction. Right. Instead it's like, actually we don't want you to know how many other people are here because for whatever reasons, you know, or that audience members sometimes, or, you know, I don't want you necessarily, I mean, there there's maybe a privacy concern concern there, which is like, I don't know that as an audience member, I want my full name, visible to other people. And yet in that moment it felt so vitally important. Like it felt really good to look at that list of participants and be like, Oh, my friend so-and-so is here. And you know, so-and-so that I know is here and you could reach out and say hello and kind of have those intermission moments that I feel like we're missing so much right now. Yeah.
Joel (00:33:22):
Yeah. It's also a reminder of how small the Bay area choral community is.
Zane (00:33:27):
That's a great point. Yeah. It's, it is a small, small community, but that's when we got done, when we joined the zoom call for the Q and a, I had my, my camera turned off and, and I was sitting off to the side and Giacomo was across the room, but we were both together, physically in the same place. And I got so excited to get up and move the computer to a spot where we were both in the frame and turn the camera on because I wanted to be a part of that group of people that were all chatting about the piece and who had just experienced it together. And so I feel like, you know, we were talking about obviously the pieces called interdependence. So that's a core theme of the composition and then the accessibility side. But I feel like the third, you know, big part of that whole experience was the inclusivity part of it. There was something about the entire experience, the music itself, that the visual part of the performance, the way you conceived of it. And then the fact that there was a Q and a that it just, it didn't, we all felt like we were a part of something bigger than ourselves, and that's really at the core of choral music. And so I feel like in that regard, you know, you really nailed it. You really hit it on the head.
Giacomo (00:34:34):
It was sort of like a chorally bliss. Yeah.
Joel (00:34:39):
That's really fantastic to hear. This is also why I, I personally love YouTube chat, like live chat in the middle of the show. I know some people hate that, but I like that in this new environment, we can have interaction that doesn't necessarily interfere with the show. You can always turn it off if it's bothering you. I just like that, that, that we have this new element that previously it would be a big disruption. Yeah.
Zane (00:35:03):
Yeah. Me too. I have a friend in the central coast, who's a singer songwriter and he started doing live stream YouTube performances, know every third, Saturday or something like that. And the first couple, the first one I went to, I was watching and he made a comment about a guitar that he had next to him that he said he had bought in Bangkok. And I was like, that's fascinating. You bought a guitar in Bangkok. I want to know what the story is. And so I put in the chat, Hey, tell us about, tell us the story about that. And then he was able to answer that in real time during the show. And that's a certain connection between audience and performer that you just never could get in a normal world. You know, we get it because of this new way that we're taking in music. So could the singer see each other during the performance?
Joel (00:35:53):
Yep. They could. Yeah, they could. So we use discord, you know, the gen Z chat app.
Giacomo (00:36:03):
How dare you, sir? How dare you? I used to work for Slack. That's unacceptable. Boy.
Joel (00:36:11):
Slack is done.
Giacomo (00:36:13):
Oh, we're cutting that right out immediately. No, no, it's true. I mean, when you're watched like the Twitch streams and all that, I mean, folk are folk, they're using discord and it's being blended and it's because of the audio, right? I mean, this sort of audio component of that is the thing that makes sense.
Joel (00:36:28):
The audio is good. And I mean, we actually didn't use the audio, so that's not what we used it. The video is low latency. It's, it's better than zoom and the quality is better than zoom. And on my end, this is a really nitpicky thing that no one's going to care about, but I'm going to say it anyway, discord video, alphabetizes the people who are in the room. So if you, for example, need to make sure that the same person is in the same location every time they will be. Right. So the zoom kind of rearranges based on entry and discord does not. So that's why we use discord. It's amazing.
Giacomo (00:37:03):
Some of those very small differences suddenly make a world of difference in some small implementation details suddenly becomes this incredibly outsized impact on your ability to,
Joel (00:37:14):
I mean, Discord has made discord has made for the gaming world, which is like, so ahead of every other world in terms of latency, in terms of, you know, online collaboration. And now the audio world's like, wait, we want to play too.
Zane (00:37:27):
Yeah. So some stuff was prerecorded and some stuff was live. Most of it was live. Right. And it was just a few prerecorded things. What, what was prerecorded? And can you give us a quick rundown of what was prerecorded?
Joel (00:37:40):
Yeah. So each season was live spring, summer, fall, winter, those were live and then to transition, those were recorded. Right? So there were little videos that I would play. And in the background, I was like, all right, I got to connect to the next group. No, one's going to notice though. Cause there's a prerecorded video playing. And that's, that's what it was. So it was live pre-recorded live prerecorded.
Zane (00:38:02):
Yeah. That's what I thought. Cause one of them, I noticed, I think it was before fall, perhaps in the singers were in little, little circles and they were zooming up and above and then zooming back the other direction. Yeah. When I was listening, I was like, Oh, that was panned. The stereo is panned. I could tell that, you know, it was, it moved across the room in our, in the house. And so I was like, is he doing that live? I was baffled. I thought that was shockingly amazing if you were doing it live, but you were not,
Joel (00:38:29):
I did want a bit of that mystery, but I also, you know, it wasn't important though. Spoiler alert. Sorry guys.
Zane(00:38:37):
Didn't mean to mess it up.
Joel (00:38:40):
No, I just mean like, ah, that's cool. Yeah.
Zane (00:38:42):
And there was another thing that we noticed in reach in particular that the, the, the first singer that started singing, she was the second person down. I still remember the Melody's such a haunting melody, but she was shaking out laundry and you could hear it when she shook it. You could hear it. That sounds, and I wondered if that was, if you had said, I want to hear that or if it was more of, Oh, I can hear that, but it's cool. That's leave it in.
Giacomo (00:39:12):
There was a spray bottle too, I think. Yeah.
Joel (00:39:15):
It was the latter, you know, that sort of the back and forth. I was like, all right, folks, what do you have in your houses? You know, what can we clean? And Blythe had some laundry she could fold. And it turned out everyone had a Swiffer, so we turned the Swiffer into a thing. But yeah, that, that was, that was a back and forth. That's an example of a back and forth.
Giacomo (00:39:33):
Yeah. That's so cool. You'd spent so much time thinking about places where the technology might fall down. Yeah. That just points of failure, PEBKAC right? Like half the time, the problem is the human being who's between that. Did you have understudies for your piece? I mean, was there ever any consideration about this live performance that like, maybe it's the humans that might go sideways and not the music or the technology?
Joel (00:40:02):
No, no understudies. I had a lot of backup plans for technology. Right. So we, we, we have recordings from the rehearsal before, for example, that if for some reason the folks couldn't connect, you know, there, I had another person on backup following along who was just going to pop in and play the scene that we recorded just in case. So there, there were a lot of, you know, technology fail safes. But I, I relied on the singer to be there for sure.
Zane (00:40:35):
And during the performance, what were you doing specifically? Were you orchestrating anything at that moment or was it more of a we've got it all down. And so you just sat back and let it happen.
Giacomo (00:40:47):
What does the command center look like
Zane(00:40:49):
I picture Joel, like sitting at this computer with like multiple monitors and all kinds of tech surrounding him.
Joel (00:40:57):
Yeah, not far. I mean, it looked like that. Plus a lot of door dash bags. The thing I used was well, all I have is, is my laptop and I, I didn't even have a proper monitor. So I, I use my TV as a second monitor. So all of the visuals were way above me, kind of huge on the TV. And that's where I grabbed the, you know, the video display from. And then in my, on my laptop screen was the, the OBS stream I used OBS to stream out to YouTube. And that allowed me to go through scenes. So to answer your question, I, I, I pulled every rope on the show as it went. So, you know, time to go to the first scene, let's go, here's the prerecorded video. All right, I'm going to log on to the fall quartet. I'm going to count them down. Here we go. Five, four, three, two double click go. Wow. So it was, I, I sort of played a stage manager for the show.
Zane (00:41:59):
Fascinating. You didn't, you didn't want Bob to take care of that stuff for you.
Joel (00:42:04):
I did not.
Zane (00:42:07):
You know, we we've talked about it a couple of times during this call is the idea that there's this idea, this conception, that choral music and, you know, live performing music in general is meant for people who can hear. And if you can't hear, then why would you bother with music like that? That seems to be kind of a preconceived notion that people have, like, why would you go to a choir concert if you can't hear the choir? Isn't that the whole point? And obviously that's a conversation we're having right now. And, and I, and obviously Joel I think we all feel pretty strongly that music should be for anybody and everybody. And that was a big part of this performance. So you worked in a lot of really cool things into this performance to make it a visually engaging experience for people who may not be able to hear it. And so I want to know, Joel, what can we do as people who get up on stage and perform music live? What can we do to start giving those access points for the hearing impaired so that people can come and take in choral music in particular, but music in general as well. Even though they can't hear it,
Joel (00:43:26):
That is a fantastic question. And I think the idea that you just articulated, which is okay, choral music is, is only accessible if you are hearing is just super abelist. And it is where we are as the choral community. And I think there are steps that we can take to, to fix that. It, it it, as I, as I always say, like, it is a choice that we have made to make choral music only accessible by hearing. And it's sort of like telling me as a wheelchair user Hey, don't enter this building there a bunch of stairs. Why should you even consider coming in this building isn't for you? And, and you can see how that, that is. That's an institutional problem, right? That, that, that is the sort of political institutional level of this. So, so we have the power as, as a group of musicians to change that.
Joel (00:44:22):
And, and the first thing I should say about this is I am not an authority. I am hearing, and the first thing you should do is start following deaf hard of hearing folks. You know, however you'd like to do that. If it's, if it's blogs, if it's Instagram, if it's Facebook, whatever I have one I can mention for your audience which is Christine Sun Kim. She is, I believe Berlin based and has talked a lot about captioning music specifically and, and how annoying it is to look at a feed and say, and see all the texts, see the dialogue. And then it says, bracket music bracket, and then like, where's the emotion of that. And in fact, what you need is some emotional coerce, something, something that says, well, okay, you know, this is not music. This is not just music.
Joel (00:45:17):
It's, it's, it's the ocean, you know, it's, it's, it's the, the, the glistening of wet grass, you know, it's, there, there's some, there's something that you can tie in that is so much more than just music, you know, it's just, there's, there's a lot more we can do. So, so, okay. Following people who are authorities in this subject is the first thing you can do. The second thing you can do is yeah, caption, I mean, obviously caption and, and the way to do that is unclear. And I think that's the discussion that core musicians need to have is how do we capture it live in an integrated way. Right? a lot of times we think of accessibility as an add on, on the side that you can choose, right? Like you can turn captioning on if you want, but what if captioning were actually a part of it for everyone, right?
Joel (00:46:13):
Like what would that feel like? It would probably feel richer and more robust for everyone, and it would be more accessible. Right. The problem is, is, is when it's such an add on, and then you know, people have this idea that, that, that the accessibility is distracting and, and that's ablest, and that's a problem. Like why not just integrate it, let's just integrate it to the actual thing to the actual production. So music captioning, anything that you do auditorily, you can also do visually there's, there's always a way if you have program notes, make sure that there, that there is a version that has large print, make sure that there is a, an audio recorded version that people can listen to just make sure that everything you give to your audience, you're not just giving in one way. And this is where the you know, this is where communal access might come into play. Perhaps one person is not going to be able to do all of this, but if everyone can contribute a little bit, it's not hard, accessibility is not hard. It's just an institution that we need to, to build in from the bottom looking forward who is inspiring you right now,
Giacomo (00:47:30):
When you look at what's being written right now during the pandemic, or just sort of the work that's being done for ADEI, or just in general, what's happening with social issues, who are some of your heroes? I mean, Christine Sun, Kim clearly is a resource that we can look to who is also inspiring, but who else?
Joel (00:47:50):
Mia Mingus, Alice Wong to Leila Louis, Leroy Moore how do you burn that? There, there is a whole contingent of of disability idols that I have just learned so much from and, and value their, their presence on earth so much. So those are, those are some of my heroes. Absolutely. and you know, I, I have musical heroes as well. You know, Stephen Sondheim is one of them, Natalie is another all sorts of people. I very much look up to. Yeah.
Zane (00:48:31):
Are there any things that are coming up for you that you'd like to shout out, give a little plug to that we can tell our listeners about to look out for future projects, upcoming projects, or just about anything that you're excited about right now?
Joel(00:48:46):
Yeah. I'm composing a couple art songs for youth through something called the young activists song book, which is a series of commissions by my friend and colleague Chelsea Hollow.
Zane
Oh, I know Chelsea!
Joel
Wonderful. Yeah. Everyone knows. Chelsea is great. So that's what I'm working on right now. And I don't have a date for that for when you will hear them, but that is on the horizon. I have a link in the, in the bio I gave you.
Zane (00:49:13):
We'll let our audiences know where they can find, where can we find you online?
Joel (00:49:19):
You can find me@joelchapmanmusic.com. You can also find me on YouTube. I release a lot of videos, YouTube that's Joel Chapman music, and I'm on social media in various ways, Instagram, Joel, Chapman music, tick-tock Joel, Chapman music, et cetera.
Zane (00:49:35):
Yeah. If anybody wants to know how to ask where McDonald's is in Japanese, there is a video that Joel made that you can find out.
Giacomo (00:49:45):
And of course for those who are listening, who want to experience interdependence, we'll have this in the show notes, but the place to go is Voltisf.org/interdependence. Is that right? Have I got that right?
Zane (00:50:01):
That's right. And we'll put a link in the show notes as well. So that people can go and check it out and it'll still be up online for another week, at least after the airing of this episode. Well, thanks, Joel. It's been really fantastic to chat with you and to get to know you a little bit better and, and hear about your motivations behind this piece, but also just the intricacies of putting it together and how complicated that was. And yet it came across in such a wonderful way. And yeah, I think that more composers and people in music in general should be taking a page out of your book looking to ways to make things accessible and inclusive and interdependent.
Joel (00:50:46):
Well, thank you very much. And thanks for having me, Zane and Giacomo, this has been super fun
Zane (00:50:51):
Before we sign off today. We also caught up with Bob Geary, artistic director of Volti who shared his thoughts about Joel's piece and the cultural importance of music to impact change in our lives and in society.
Bob (00:51:04):
Hey, I'm here. Hi guys.
Giacomo (00:51:07):
Hello!
Zane (00:51:10):
Ready to jump into a little talk about the piece itself and the performance Giacomo you ready?
Giacomo (00:51:15):
Oh yeah. What was the actual ask that you put out there? I mean, what, when you, when you reach out to these folks or like when you reached out to Joel, what, what was the, what were the parameters around?
Bob (00:51:26):
Basically it was really, I, I, because of the amount of the commissions, I said you know, we don't have much, so it would you know, if we could get a five minute piece or, you know, a five to 10 minute piece, which is asking a lot for that money on a certain, from a certain point of view I said, you know, but we want something that is, you know, it was a usual thing. Like I said, you know, if you got, if all you got is a log to make music with you, make music with a log. So I said, you know, we're stuck out here in this world now where we, we can't gather and rehearse and make music together the same way. So we want to figure out how to be creative. And I think I said, be creative more than make music, but, you know to those folks, and they were, I think we talked about this, but they were all people who I knew had either from their compositional style or their prior experience had, you know, I thought would not have to make a major turn to think about doing their stuff online.
Bob (00:52:27):
And then I had to say that I, you know, happily for us, sadly for me, there are a fair number of people like Pamela Z might be one of them who were, you know they're, they're, they don't just say, I'm sorry, I can't, because Volti has a little bit of cachet around that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's not a bad thing for a composer to, I mean, it's going to be more fun for composer because the Volti people are used to working in a little uncertain world in a way and having to adapt and respond and all of that. And then it's not a bad thing for Volti to be somewhere down the list on who you composed for. So I think that has made it a little easier. I'm guessing at that part, I've never asked anybody.
Giacomo (00:53:18):
But you weren't specific about anything like it, you didn't say interactive or video or anything you were like, do whatever, but it just needs to fit this moment.
Bob (00:53:27):
Yeah. Correct. And Anne was the one who she said, I'm going to try to do a combination of live and prerecorded. And she had had experience with live from her girls' course experience. So she used her and the children's choir is, or actually in the virtual choir world, the children's choirs are actually a step ahead because they've had to survive in order to survive. They've had to provide services. We can kind of suspend things with our adults and hope that they come back, that they're either, you know? Well, anyway, so yeah. And Danny did all prerecorded as you know, and just turned it into his own creative exercise. I mean, he went that he did the entire visual thing and all of that too. And then Joel went back to kind of the same model and was using just different technologies, but a little bit of prerecorded. So yeah, I'm tend to be less specific in general. It's like, here's the money, this is how much of a program I need, you know, how many minutes I'd like to have in all three of those guys went way beyond Joel I think was 25, 30 minutes or something. And he was, he went way down the road which is, you know, long as we'd like to quality is, go for it. You know?
Zane (00:54:52):
How did you feel? I mean, did you feel like it got that there was the impact of the piece that you had expected or thought by the, by the final performance?
Bob (00:54:58):
So, you know, I had so little to do with this because they couldn't include me with the technology until the last three rehearsals, I think. So I was really disassociated from it. I had seen the score played through it. Okay. Music is pretty good, you know, just kind of that level of participation, but and then in the performance itself, there were a couple of moments that I had a little bit of an emotional response to. I think that there's more potential there for me and for everyone, but I being sort of in the production end was not coming to it quite the same way plus what he was trying to do with, you know, the idea of the interconnectedness of things with his visuals. And he went out of his way in every way to create access, whether it was subtitles or his program notes.
Bob (00:56:01):
He also had them available to listen to, right. And he was really sensitive to even in the rehearsal processes and even in discussions, he kept coming back to, I want to make sure that the access is as open as it can be in every way to the well I'm rehearsing with them. So I dunno, I think it got mentioned, but Phillip, the guy who held the gold ball he has a slow internet and I forgotten his reasons, but whatever they are, Joel just said, okay I'm going to work with that and I'll build that in. So what Phillip did was not needing to be metric, you know, so much.
Zane (00:56:45)
So in, in the crafting of the composition, did you and Joel work together? Did he show you early drafts? Did you talk about it and you help him help or work through it at all?
Bob (00:57:00):
He did not. He mentioned general terms towards the beginning. Like I'm thinking about ability, disability, I'm thinking about connecting. I don't even think he probably, at that point was using the word interdependence, which came out quite strongly. And he told me a couple of times that one of his experiences during the pandemic, or maybe he started to told you this was you know, realizing that, that he wanted to ask for help that carrying this thing upstairs to his apartment was really hard and going to take a long time for him. But if you put a sign on this and said, would you please carry this up to my apartment? And he did it a couple of times and it happened within 10 minutes, you know? And he w he was like, this is what we should all be doing. And he said that it's a false, he didn't use the word false narrative, but it was sort of a false premise that we all stay. You know, no man is an Island that we all stand strong and independently of one another, when in fact we actually need to, should and have to rely on each other for, you know, various things, material, emotional, whatever,
Giacomo (00:58:16):
The anti Fountainhead, the anti Ayn Rand, whatever that philosophy is, the absurdity of that philosophy that most of us got over in middle school. But some people still seem to cling on to today. It's my, my personal opinion about that piece of trash of literature, but I'll put my opinions aside
Bob (00:58:36):
Really feel it's another symbol of arrested development, not a lot of people with arrested development. Really. It works for them perfectly, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think they're among the 77 million that voted for Donald.
Zane (00:58:52):
Yes. Yes. I would agree with that. I think most people recognize the interconnectedness of human beings period, and that it's a necessary part of life and an important part of it. And it's not,
Bob (00:59:02):
I have to say I got it. Yeah. I've still got work to do in that area. I grew up in new England, you know, and, and the idea was you were as self-reliant as possible, you know, so you, you knew how to, Oh yeah.
Giacomo (00:59:15):
Robert Frost, it said good fences make good neighbors.
Bob (00:59:18):
Right. And you, you learned at a plumb, your sink and change the oil in your car. And, you know, you, you learned all as many of the skills that it took for you in case you were out at Walden pond, living in a cabin by yourself, and you had to take care of yourself. But what we only learned later, like what I only learned in the last couple of years was that apparently most nights thorough went home and had dinner with his mother.
Giacomo (00:59:52):
Well, she lived in Walden too, I guess, or whatever. Yeah. How fantastic, how fantastic. So, so Bob, in, in what way would you say the singers of Volti are well-suited to a performance like this?
Bob (01:00:11):
Good question. I think that most, if not all of them, most of them are at a level of creativity in their own persons. That is not, it's not the same, it's not the same level of creativity that I would find in my choral society people. Hmm. So they are, if Joel has an idea, it's going to inspire them in ways that I don't think would be so readily inspirational to people who are more fundamentally focused on singing, you know, masterworks or even right now, a program of music with black composers. I mean, these are, these are, so there's something in the makeup that allows them to shift that they don't have a pre necessarily a hardened preconception of what is beautiful or what is music or w you know, they're, they're more, I think, engaged in being creative, embracing an idea, a concept, turning it and turning it into sound, turning it into movement. I think that, that, and then even for those of, because some of them are, you know, some, some, a couple of them are, tend to be more conservative and in some ways I probably am too. But I think that those people, even in an kind of self-motivation and intellectual way want to be pushed outside the envelope. Now they want to, they want to work outside the envelope as much as, as they can. And, and whereas I think most people in music choral music, I mean, you guys know this, but most of us in choral music are doing our level best to read and sing with skill and technique. We don't necessarily have the, then a lot of room to take that outside the box. We're so busy trying to perfect it inside the box with wonderful results. You know what I mean? It's two, just two different orientations.
Zane (01:02:42):
Yeah. Volti, I mean, so many Volti performances involve blocking and staging in ways that, you know, your average choral concert doesn't involve. So this is kind of a digital extension of that, I suppose. Yeah.
Bob (01:02:56):
Yeah. I would say, and then, I mean, and then Joel, of course, had he took, took those ideas and ran with them and, you know, from how he wanted this thing to look how he used individuals, as I say, you know, part of his aesthetic was to work with each individual singer in the group. So yes, he wrote all these quartets, but you know, he not only did he have to technologically make sure that sauna bus was working for, between him and that person and that, you know, and each individual person, he was being the tech wizard on that. But it was, that was the tech side of it. He also did that same thing, I think, emotionally with each singer. So you saw at the end of the chat, all these sort of loving accolades coming into Joel from singers, you know, I mean they, and, you know, rather than having the old bald white guy, that's been there forever leading them to be led more by one of their own, I think for the younger set of singers was I think it's, it's been coming, you know, in some ways I've had, I've had to I've personally had to go through some things with Bolty at various times when the idea of volt is, you know, I grew group of collegial artists, me being one of them. And we, we are all in this each with our own roles to play, and then we're on equal footing, but then somebody's got to make the decisions and, you know, older and white and male isn't ness and straight isn't necessarily the best recipe for that these days. So watch out, Zane!
Zane (01:04:50):
That's fair. That's a fair statement.
Giacomo (01:04:53):
I was just gonna say, it seems also just a type to, to put a bow on that, but it just seems like the singers of Volti are also very comfortable with the levels of ambiguity. It takes to bring something like this project to life, right. It's not necessarily complete when it first hits their hands. You've kind of got to move with it and go with it. And there's just a level of ambiguity of the group seems to be comfortable with, or most of the members seem to be, and you see that
Bob (01:05:18):
In the parallelism of the social issues that wash through cause Volti is never sought out. You know, sort of, although it, often we have done things that are on more relevant topics, political and social topics that finding the interesting musical expression has been the motivator, not where is there something that talks about the Supreme court or talks about, you know, ableism disabled or whatever the cause might be. But when those topics do come up, like Black Lives Matter came up, or #metoo comes up. And all of that, there's, there's this like heightened sensitivity for younger people in general. But and I see that in Volti you know, a lot.
So it's a little bit of a, you know, are people with an artistic temperament and a high degree of discipline, you know, they've, they've gone through a lot to get to where they have gotten to as singers and musicians, you know, more than more than again, to use a community course. I mean even if you were a music major in college, 40 years ago, that's not what a Volti singer is, which was that music major. And then in many cases, more formal study, and then in many cases, years of additional private study and application, you know, and that's just a different amount or, you know, and focus, I guess, of life force, the, the, the issues are very much of this moment, but they are new issues. I mean, ableism, ism, ism. Yeah. We passed the persons with disabilities act or whatever that was called, you know, 20 years ago really important, really changed things a lot, but did it become part of my consciousness to a great, to a significant degree, not nearly what just being around Joel and this piece has done.
So there is a, you know, awareness factor that, that is coming up now that I welcome and is challenging in its way of that. And and access the, the concept of access. It's not just a ramp on the sidewalk, you know, I mean, and, and it's different things to whole bunch of different people. Joel has so much of a physical access issue, but his, and he's so bright that he immediately sees, Oh, my particular thing is physical access, but access for hearing access for site access for socioeconomic yeah. Mental disease, mental ability, disability, you know strength, et cetera. So it really, when you take it to its fullest, it's like, it's kind of, the idea of access is kind of putting your arms around all of humanity and saying, yes, we are all in this, you know, and we are, we are interconnected, you know, we're all in the embrace of this, this thing.
And, and probably that, I haven't thought, thought this through at all, but probably that if we all look at ourselves, we're going to find places where we are not, w we don't have the best access for whatever our particular reasons are. You know, like most of us what happened in our childhood, you know, what do we have to unwrap to, to, to come to terms with that, to create greater access to our own hearts or in our relationships with others, where we carry that stuff forward, you know, how do we, I mean, that's access to, right. How do you have access to whole probably overplaying my hand a little bit, but, you know, COVID, and COVID in the Trump years have been quite, were quite a stress for me and my wife. And now we are kind of on the other side of a lot of that. And it was pretty hard but it was also pretty good to have to suffer a bit through that stuff. And yeah. Anyway, well, we have, we now have more access to a, a calm, a, an accepting and loving relationship.
Zane (01:09:56):
Yeah, that's a great, I agree. I feel like the piece was about interdependence, but it was also about inclusivity and interconnectedness. There was so much going on besides the idea that, you know, we're dependent and we should be embracing the fact that we're dependent on each other, but there's also the, the, the interconnectivity of everybody and the inclusivity of the performance in the way that he addressed access. I just thought it was, I thought it was a great show. I really did enjoy it for sure.
Bob (01:10:30):
And that's another thing, right? I mean, we, we, we, we have the, you know, the Polk and meso they're celebrating where that the one that celebrated Nelson's victory at the Nile, or, you know, you've got, you've got various great pieces that were in honor of events through time, but now, you know, we've got composers, it's certainly not limited to Joel, but we've got composers who are finding their looking for ways to communicate some of these really important human themes by using music as the medium, you know. and anyway. You guys are doing great. I'll look forward to next time.
Zane
Awesome. Thanks Bob. Okay, ciao.
Bob
Have a good rest of your day. You too.
Zane
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the In Unison Podcast. If you've got ideas for our podcast, please send us a message at ideas at inunisonpodcast.com and who knows, maybe Chorus Dolores will ask us to talk about it. During announcements In unison is sustained nourished and fostered by you are loyal and loving listeners, and don't forget to subscribe to in unison on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at, in unison pod. And Hey, if you liked what you heard, tell a friend or a section, mate, thanks again for tuning in. See you soon. Snack signups for break coordinated by Chorus Dolores, who'd like to remind you: if you don't contribute, you don't snack.
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