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World Premiere of “OAK” by Terry Guest, dir by Mikael Burke @ Urbanite Theatre (Sarasota, FL) | Composer & Sound Designer’s Notes on Original Horror Score by Brian Grimm

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New Play “Oak” by Terry Guest, directed by Mikael Burke runs May 31st through June 30th at Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, Florida! [ Get Tickets ]

It’s 7pm. Do you know where your children are? It’s snatching season, and town-wide curfew regulations have fostered a culture of fear in the community along Odella Creek. Too many have fallen victim to the freedoms promised by the red-eyed monster…Will cousins Suga, Big Man, and Pickle resist temptation, or become the next names in the morning news? Step into the darkness and experience the terror firsthand in the new Southern Gothic horror, OAK. (from Urbanite Theatre‘s site)

Oak’s Cast
Suga – Jaeda LaVonne
Pickle – Trezure B. Coles
Big Man – William Rose II
Peaches – DeAnna Wright*

Headshots and bios here
*Member of Actors Equity Association 

Creative Team
Playwright – Terry Guest
Director & Video Designer – Mikael Burke
Production Stage Manager/ Prop Designer – Tori Heikenfeld
Production Manager/Technical Director/Light Designer – Alex Pinchin
Assistant Stage Manager – Fiona Coffey
Composer and Sound Designer – Brian Grimm
Sound Engineer – Rew Tippin
Costume Designer – Adrienne Pitts
Scenic Designer – Frank Chavez
Master Carpenter – Eugene Alcorn
Scenic Charge – Anna Baldwin Lack
Graffiti Artist – Kaitlin Kelly
Production Photos – Sorcha Augustine

special thank yous section at the bottom of the post

“Oak” Urbanite Theatre production photos by Sorcha Augustine (c) 2024

Composer and Sound Designer’s Notes

First off, let me say that I’m a huge fan of both Terry Guest’s scripts and Mikael Burke’s directing.  As a lover of horror films and scary sounds, I was thrilled to be brought on board for this project. In preparation for Oak, I carefully selected a variety of modern horror classics that resonate with the themes of this play. You can expect to hear hints of iconic elements from recent horror hits such as the ‘IT’ and ‘Candyman’ series (both original and new), along with films like ‘Get Out,’ ‘Suspiria,’ ‘La Llorona’, and Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ woven into the fabric of the sound design & score.

Looking for old ghost story traditions and songs with roots in Africa, I was drawn to the haunting legend of La Tunda.  This tale shares an eerie resemblance to the chilling swamp ghost featured in Oak. This living legend of the shape-shifting spectre La Tunda, who comes out from the woods after 7pm to snatch your children comes from within the African descendant communities in Ecuador and Colombia.  It’s also a direct parallel to the Mexican and Central American ghost story of La Llorona. All of the original music in this production, including the main themes for Odella, derive directly from the melodic motifs, chord progressions, and rhythms used in the folklore songs and dances which spin tales and warnings of La Tunda. 

Another unique feature of my design is that the immersive swamp sounds accompanying the ghost’s presence are all crafted from vocalizations by the cast.  I have manipulated their vocal noises and run them through custom made “animal filters” of frogs, snakes, alligators, cicadas, rain, thunder, and more! This technique aims to blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, offering a glimpse into the eerie auditory landscape experienced by the characters.

*warning, some plot and production spoilers below*

Odella’s Whistle Themes

La Tunda / Odella themes sketch board

Since this entire process was completely remote for me, I decided to record some guided audio walkthroughs of my ideas for the Whistle Themes to send to the director, Mikael Burke. It was my first time doing something like this and it unintentionally created little podcast episodes, explaining and documenting the Whistle Theme process. I thought I’d share a version of episodes 2, 3 and 4 stitched together, for those who like that medium. Everything in the score for Oak comes out of these whistle themes:

Throughout the play, we hear Odella’s ghost whistling her entrancing lullaby from the swamp. These whistles serve as a constant reminder that she lurks in the distance, deep within the trees, waiting and ready to snatch you! During my initial research for similar ghost stories and lullabies within African descendant communities of the diaspora, I happened to be visiting my older brother and his family. As I described the story of Oak to them, my brother remarked how similar Terry’s swamp ghost Odella was to the Hispanic ghost story of La Llorona. Then my sister-in-law, who is from Ecuador, shared the parallel ghost story from where she grew up, called La Tunda. La Tunda is essentially the African counterpart of La Llorona. In the La Llorona ghost story, a mother drowns herself in the creek after her children accidentally drown there. In the La Tunda version, the mother loses her daughter deep in the woods of the mountain. After the tragedy, the mother returns as a ghost, emerging from the waters (La Llorona) or mountains (La Tunda), and shapeshifts to appear to children as their mother or close relative, enticing them to come to the waters/mountains so she can take the children away with her. Both La Llorona and La Tunda put the children in a trance, promising that everything will be alright in the water/mountain if they come with her. The ghost haunts on, perpetually searching for her lost children.

I couldn’t believe it; this was exactly like Odella’s ghost story in Oak, you just had to swap the woods or waters for the creek in the swamp. The similarities didn’t end there! My sister-in-law shared that growing up, they were all afraid to be outside after 7 pm. Once it got dark, they would rush home, fearing that La Tunda was real and would come to get them! Similarly, in the world of Oak, there is a siren alarm that goes off at 7pm every day to remind parents of the curfew and ensure their children make it home safely. It turns out there are several different La Tunda songs that recount her ghostly tale and issue warnings to the listener—so I wanted to start with those songs to see what sort of material could work for Odella’s whistle theme.

There are two parts of Odella’s main Whistle Theme. The first part of the phrase | C D— | C E— | (in solfege: do re—, do mi —) come from the background vocals in this song. You can hear them singing “La Tunda—- (do re, re—) La Tunda—- (do mi, mi—-)”. Which I simplified to the phrase you see above. I love the main vocalist and story teller in this rendition of the La Tunda song:

Here is the 1st tune where I sourced Odella Whistle Theme notes from in the background vocals

Chord Progression: from this first tune I utilized the spooky and fun diminished to minor chord progression. This chord progression can be seen in two ways, G# diminished to A minor which gives us more of a ghostly flavor. Or if you add an E in the bass of the first G# diminished chord, it turns it into an E7 chord. This stabilizes the progression by both chords sharing the E in the bass note, becoming an E7 to A- chord progression. I mostly leaned into the dissonance of the G# diminished flavor throughout the production.

The second part of Odella’s main Whistle Theme comes from this video of a La Tunda dance. We hear again in the background vocals some lyrics about La Tunda; the musical phrase is ||: – EEEE | F D – :|| (mi mi mi mi fa re – in the first tune’s key). In this lively dance, we see the ghost entrances the kids on stage, then ventures out to the audience and scares the kids so bad they start running away!

Here is the 2nd tune I sourced Odella Whistle Theme notes from, also in the backing vocals. A dance where La Tunda chasing after children and scaring them!

When combined together the themes go as such:
| C D— | C E— | EEEE | F D —- |
When transformed to be a little more melodic, it goes like this:
| C D — | C E — | C E F D —- |
Here is another melodic variation in a 3 count:
| C D – | C E – | D E E | F D – |

Bass Line: There is also an amazing 1/2 step bass line in this second tune which sometimes leads from G# up to A on the last beat of a measure to the down beat, and sometimes leads from Bb down to A. I use both motions quite extensively throughout the score of Oak for tension. Sometimes in series | Bb A—-| G# A—-| and sometimes in parallel with a double stop of Bb and G# together, resolving in a pure A octave!

Olélé Moliba Makasi – a Congolese lullaby.
I also searched for some West African lullabies that could complement these La Tunda whistle themes. After delving into various lullabies, I stumbled upon one from the Congo, coming from slightly further south than my initial search area. However, it resonated so well with the existing La Tunda themes that it became the perfect way to begin the original version of Odella’s theme. In the opening of the play, we hear the origin story of Odella. She was an enslaved person in America during the 17 or 18 hundreds who became impregnated by her master, and subsequently punished for it. Determined to escape the plantation, she faces the toughest decision of her life: to remain a slave and care for her baby, or to make a run for freedom, albeit leaving her child behind. She ultimately chooses freedom, soothing the child with this lullaby as she flees, whistling it from a distance.

The main melody we hear fits exactly with the existing La Tunda phrases:
||: C—D E – | C—D E, DE | D—, CD | C—- :||

~ and how perfect that it has water sounds in the music and is on the water!

The entire score for Oak, including all chords, scales, rhythms, and melodic material, is derived directly from the main elements of these La Tunda and Olélé Lullaby tunes. Of course, I am breaking them down into basic music elements and then recombining or twisting them to fit the needs of the production, but everything originates from the wellspring of this source material. In my notebook pages above, you can see that I created some scary hybrid scales, combining all the various note combinations of La Tunda themes, Olélé themes, and some other whistle intervals I had independently been developing. The La Tunda material is used when Odella (or the Wolf) is more threatening or “snatching” a child, while the Olélé lullaby themes are utilized when Odella is attempting to hypnotize the children to come with her.

Odella’s Music

Accompanying Odella, Oak’s swamp ghost, you will hear scary vocalizations from the cast, along with Odella’s Snatching Theme. This theme is based on the E F D note motif from the 2nd La Tunda tune discussed above, played here on the guzheng zither. These snatching themes are sometimes played with dulcimer hammers to create an eerie piano sound, while other times they are plucked with steady rhythm during Odella’s “trances”. Throughout the production, variations of these trances are used when Odella is attempting to charm the children. In the later trance portion of this cue, you can especially hear the sweetness of the Olélé Lullaby themes, as Odella tries to persuade the main character that everything will be just right down in the swamp waters if she but comes with her.

Here is the original sketch of Variations on Odella’s “Snatching Theme”. Some of these sections were utilized as the top of show theme and at the moments of a child being snatched by Odella.

The 7pm Siren

“It is 7pm, do you know where your children are?…”

Heard everyday in Oak across the swamp, this siren cue is made entirely out musical instruments. It includes 12 string guitar played with brass slide and distortion, cello siren wails, and bawu flute manipulated to sound like the buzzing alarm. The siren voice features the haunting vocals talents of Rebecca Rose Mims. I really love how this cue turned out, one-and-done!

˄ Keep an ear out for her, hopefully recorded for a book on tape near you soon, cause her voice is amazing!

The Princess and the Wolf

This cue deals with the trauma of a young survivor of sexual assault. In the show it is narrated by the cast and accompanied by a video projection of a paper puppet show. (Mikael edited it together and it looks incredible!!) The use of a puppet show is mentioned in the script and our production’s vision for it was inspired by the recent Candyman film. In both cases, it serves as a way to present trauma and violence against Black bodies, but with a visual layer of removal, acting as a defensive storytelling barrier. This approach aims to tell the story and spark conversation without completely triggering audience members (or those performing). In Candyman, the subject matter is of public brutality against Black people, whereas in this production, it deals with rape by a family member.

Given the title and the orchestrated storytelling, I couldn’t help but draw inspiration from Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” for narrator and orchestra. This piece has several cartoon adaptations and is in spirit with the puppet show concept. It absolutely influenced the brass chords accompanied by cymbal roll crescendos during moments where the Wolf appears. This storytelling method also resonates with Little Red Riding Hood themes and it parallels the Odella snatching scene at the end of the play.

All the chords and melodies in this cue stem from the Odella (La Tunda) Whistle Themes variations.

As part of the Wolf’s growl sound, you will hear a man’s zipper unzipping.

1st Lady Temple’s Swamp Environment, Cast Vocalizations & Animal Filters

For the scene introducing the enigmatic character 1st Lady Temple, I envisioned a swamp environment built entirely out of pre-recorded vocalized sounds made by the cast. This concept drew inspiration from Terry’s idea of the playful diy theater we create as children. Terry wanted to capture the vast imagination we possess as kids and how immense that world felt. I asked the cast to individually record a set of vocalizations including sirens, vocal tones, grunts, whispers, various animal sounds, and swamp sounds mentioned in the script. I then edited and manipulated these sounds to create the majority of the textures for both Odella and 1st Lady Temple. I wanted emotions like the fear, suspense, and danger that the cast is feeling to be manifested externally from the sounds and voices in her own head, much like the psychological terror in IT. When a character’s imagination takes over, the audience hears the soundscapes that the characters themselves imagined.

This approach, combined with another technique I called “animal filters”, resulted in one of the show’s most distinctive sound profiles. I began by manipulating the cast’s vocalizations to sound as close as possible to the real animal and swamp sounds they imitated. Then, I processed these sounds through “animal filters.” I created these filters by feeding different sounds—snake hisses, alligator growls, cicada calls, frog and toad croaks, and even landscape elements like calm lakes and thunderstorms—into a convolution reverb. Instead of using a traditional reverb impulse-response file, I loaded these natural sounds, allowing the vocalizations to be filtered through these real animal or environmental sounds. Instead of putting the source sound into a hall or room or other space like a normal reverb would, I was putting it inside of a swamp sound or animal noise.

This process not only altered the sounic profile of the original audio but also imprinted a subtle “ghost” of the filter’s own animal sound, creating a more intriguing and layered auditory experience. I used this extensively throughout the show to craft a unique swamp soundscape. Not only were the cast’s vocalizations filtered like this, but I also applied this treatment to all of Odella’s whistles, as well as the music instrument parts for the cello, 12-string guitar, and guzheng zither. This gave everything a cohesive, swampy animal filter reverb effect and really filled out the environment around the individual sounds.

Here are some examples of what that filtering effect sounds like.

Jaeda’s distressed bird sound. First plays the original, then examples are filtered through: warning croak of a frog, baby crocodile sound, barking tree frog, pig frog, two different snake hiss noises, the sound of rain, and sound of a calm lake. You’ll notice that through the filter, not only do you get the bird sound, but it comes with an environment surrounding it, a very powerful sound effect:

Next up is another creative sound from Jaeda! It’s a mosquito sound which became a sort of “mosquito violin” during the 1st Lady Temple and Odella scenes. Again first the original sound that was recorded, and then examples of it being filtered through an alligator roar, pig frogs, fowler toad, two different cicada sounds, a chorus of frogs at night in a swamp, and two different rain and thunder sounds:

The Whispers I had the cast record display very well the effects of these animal/swamp filters. Here are two different whisper environments run through a bunch of these filters. It’s the same chunk of the track and the filter changes about every 20 seconds, so you can skip around to quickly sample some different filter sounds – or if you are freaky like me, put this on while you are working on emails, or doing chores…

Swamp Whispers 1 – 15 filters

Swamp Whispers 2 – 13 filters

Night Terrors (1912 Atlanta)

Here, the 1912 version of the 7pm siren goes off as we transition into Big Man’s nightmare. This time, the siren cue incorporates real siren and police car sounds. To create the night terror texture, I utilized and manipulated a recording of Louis Armstrong and his Hot 7 playing a tune called “You’re Next.” The title perfectly fit the scene’s theme, where Big Man has a nightmare about the “Atlanta Ripper,” and the original track itself has a spooky undertone.

Although I initially believed this track was recorded between 1912 and 1915, I later discovered it was actually recorded in 1926—about a decade and a half later than the 1912 mark. Despite this, it was the closest match to what I envisioned and the first sound that came to mind for this scene.

The soundscape includes Odella’s whistle theme, twisted low bass harmonics, 12-string guitar accents highlighting specific lines, and dramatic horror cellos at the end.

As always, I put a lot of effort, time and care into my work. My scores and sound design go deep and are full of many layers. I do intend to put this out as a soundtrack and along with many other scores from the recent productions over the last 3 years. So please don’t download any of these tracks just yet, kindly wait till I release them officially to buy them! There is a lot going on in my life right now that has delayed these soundtrack releases – so thank you for your patience.

Much more on the way!

❤️ Brian

Special Thank Yous

For the first time on any production, I was remote/virtual for the entire process. It was a tougher room to mix than I had anticipated being that it is an L shaped room with an 11 speaker setup. Plus, it was a room I have never been in before, on a setup I’ve never heard, so there was a limit to how much I could envision the room and rough mix or conceptualize ahead of time. Plus! Zoom did such a fantastic job of cancelling out “noise” (aka my design), so much so that everytime we played back my sound or music cues, I could not hear it… the only thing I could hear was the actor’s voices. On top of that, I couldn’t see any wave forms in the remote control / zoom screen shared view of Qlab…. so it was quite an interesting and difficult experience to neither hear or nor see any of my sounds and still make adjustments. Wild! So an EXTRA SPECIAL THANK YOU goes out to Rew Tippin, who was the onsite sound engineer helping me mix and make adjustments in Qlab. I absolutely could not have done this show without you!!! Thanks for your amazing collaboration, advice, adjustments and perspective on the sounds in the space. It was so easy to communicate and work with you!

Unrelated, it was an extra stressful process due to a tornado rolling through Madison two nights before Tech started. This left me without power for 4 days, which obviously doesn’t work if you are trying to Zoom into work all day long! So another big thank you goes out to my parents, Rick and Bea, who allowed me and Zelda dog to take over their basement in order to have power and internet to complete my tech duties for about 5 days.

Another special thanks to Alex Pinchin, who on top of his duties of Production Manager, Technical Director, and Light Designer, was super responsive to any needs that I had from a distance during Tech. Alex also helped as an on site operator after hours when we worked on the live mic vocal effects for both the Wolf and Odella. Thanks for all that you do! I think we both learned some things on that mixer setup for this show!

Thanks to everyone at Urbanite Theatre on this production, the cast and crew, Mikael and Terry – y’all are amazing and I wish I could have been there in person to work with you all! ~ much love!

*Bonus Material for anyone who made it this far… here are a few other of my favorite La Tunda jams I was listening to >>

“La Tunda ah AAAA!”
great marimba like opening and groove!

9/7-9/24 | Forward Theater’s THE GARBOLOGISTS runs at the Overture Center for the Arts (Madison, WI) w/ Designer’s Notes on Original Score

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Forward Theater Co. Presents:
THE GARBOLOGISTS
Playhouse Theater at the Overture Center for the Arts
TICKETS + dates & info

by Lindsay Joelle
September 7-24, 2023

Wisconsin Premiere

Directed by Jen Uphoff Gray

Featuring Alys Dickerson and Danny Jones

Scenic Designer: Sarah Ross
Lighting Designer: Colin Gawronski
Costume Designer: Karen Brown-Larimore
Sound Designer/Composer: Brian Grimm
Props Master/Asst. Scenic Designer: Pam Miles
Technical Director: Tony Lyons
Stage Manager: Tenley Pitonzo
Asst. Stage Manager: Abbi Hess

~ If you see the show and stay for the Talkback, be sure to ask the actors about their ride-along with the Madison Sanitation Department!!

~ Also, be sure get to the show early to check out the visual art exhibit in the gallery area outside of the Playhouse Theater. It’s hosted by Arts + Lit Laboratory and comprises of art pieces made out of trash and recycling!


Some details on the show from Forward Theater:
This off-beat buddy comedy pairs essential workers from two different worlds in the shared cab of a New York City garbage truck. Danny’s a white, blue-collar mansplainer hiding a heart of gold. Marlowe’s a Black, Ivy League-educated newbie learning the ropes from her old-school partner. When they’re thrown together to pick up what the world has discarded, they discover there’s more that binds them than taking out the trash.

“A surprisingly humane and honest play that’s filled with as much laughter as it is drama…and reminds us that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We learn that if given a tattered, grimy old volume of text and illustrations, and you take the time to examine it carefully, its value can exceed your imagination.”
– Chicago Theatre Review

 ASL-Interpreted Performance: Saturday, Sept. 23 at 2pm – Reserve here for special pricing and unobstructed view of the interpreters.

 Audio Described Performance: Sunday, Sept. 24 at 2pm – Please email ssafarik@forwardtheater.com us to let us know you’re coming, so we can make sure you have the correct device and a great experience.

🤩 Playwright Lindsay Joelle to attend Wednesday, September 13th talkback!!

Notes on Sound Design and Original Score by Brian Grimm

** Please do not download these files, I’m streaming them here as a preview – if you want a copy of the album, wait for the official soundtrack to come out for purchase on GrimmusiK Records bandcamp. ** Thanks!!! ❤️ Brian

The Music is Trash…

That’s right! You heard me! You didn’t even have to hear it from a critic or local theater review – this is comin’ straight from the source! The original music in this production is entirely made from trash, garbage, and recycling that I recorded. It was an absolute blast to record all of these fascinating sounds to see what sort of grooves naturally presented themselves and then build music cues from there. These garbage grooves feature aluminum cans, milk cartons, yogurt containers, a broken margarita glass, cardboard boxes, paper and plastic cups, paper and plastic bags, velcro, olive oil and wine bottles, an old beat up carbon steel wok and more!

Stage Prop Sounds
I also had a very fun recording session at the Overture Center, where I recorded a bunch of the props that are featured as garbage on stage throughout the production. In the music, you’ll hear a ton of percussion created from a mannequin, cat crate, birdcage, campfire pot, bamboo steamer, suitcase, along with some plastic and metal fans that were in the dressing room!

Kalimba Theme
The one exception in this landscape of trash music is the kalimba thumb piano; which was a delightful Christmas gift from my parents this year! The kalimba theme that I recorded is tied to one character specifically and appears four times throughout the show. That’s all I’ll say to avoid any spoilers. But if you see the show, see if you can catch all of the times this theme appears!

Special Sound Design Moments from Trash
I utilized the trash, recycling and prop sounds a few times in the show that became a mix of sound design, field recording and musical elements. One example is a panic attack moment of anxiety that one of the characters suddenly finds themselves in. To heighten this uncomfortable feeling, I added a crescendo and accelerando of a heart beat sound, which was actually made by striking a cardboard box with my thumb (the sound turned out great!). The feeling grows as the city soundscape also crescendos, accompanied by unsettling birdcage sounds and a distorted and slowed down version of the kalimba theme in the background.

Another example is the lovely quiet Interlude that we get in the middle of the show. A winter storm comes rolling over New York City. To create the atmosphere of blowing winter wind between the buildings I blew on a wine bottle to get a few breathy pitches and I used the ringing sustained sound I got from the birdcage after I would strike it with one end down on the ground and one end up and slowly lower it all the way down as it rang out. It was one of the most fascinating sounds I captured. This is all set in the backdrop of actual sounds of snow falling. Eventually the truck starts moving and the city sounds take over again as we start the next scene and carry on with the play.

The way that the city sounds, and musical sounds interact are very similar to a piece I composed back in 2018 called “They’re Still Here”, a 30 minute long Musique Concrète élégie honoring loved ones who’d passed that year. This unique piece of music dealt with how we handle (or don’t handle) the grieving process our modern society – which actually ties back into one of the themes of this play.


Sound Design
Obviously, there are a lot of garbage truck sounds and city soundscapes throughout the play. It’s about a 50/50 mix of sounds that I recorded and sounds that I collected from archives elsewhere. I did spend an entire morning waiting in my driveway for the recycling and garbage trucks to come by so I could record them. One big mistake I made; I forgot to charge my field recorder the night before. So I had it plugged into the side of the garage to get some charge and then every time I heard a garbage truck making a turn down a nearby street in the neighborhood I quickly yanked my recorder out of the outlet and ran over to our fire hydrant (right next to the trash cans) and hurriedly whispered which take and what type of truck was coming by. Then tried to play it cool by hanging out with my dog in the front yard as Anne did some weeding in the garden. We would celebrate (silently) with big fist pumps everytime a big, loud, fun garbage truck sound was captured.

Similarly, the city street sounds & construction sounds were about a 50/50 mix of recorded and found. But in the bar scene, Anne and I went on an undercover field recording mission at a local bar! I won’t name the establishment, but I will say that for a 7pm on a Monday night, it was a lot more crowded and way more drunk than I anticipated…

One of the main issues we faced with all of the garbage truck sounds I recorded and collected is that they were the type of trash collection where the truck grabs the garbage can with an mechanical arm and dumps the trash into the hopper – whereas the NYC sanitation workers are manually loading bags into the hopper. This made it difficult to use the longer stretches of garbage trucks driving, because they all had frequent stops with mechanic arm and dumping/crushing sounds. It made for a lot of stitching, layering, and editing together individual pieces of many different sound clips to create the one fluid sound that you hear in the show from one garbage truck sound to the next.

A Nod to Inspirations from Recycled Music Makers Around the Globe

One of my starting points of inspiration for the music, knowing that it would be heavily percussive and utilizing trash was the famous percussion show on broadway called “Stomp!”. I thought of that vibe as a good launching off point. Something percussive, from NY, with a lot of energy that can move us forward from scene to scene. However, the true main inspiration for taking all of the trash and recycling and creating music exclusively from those items came from various ensembles around the world that have done just that. For instance the “Landfill Harmonic” in Cateura, Paraguay; which is a youth orchestra who built their instruments from trash in their local landfill. Making beautiful music from the ugly and discarded junk that finds its way to their home. In the play, the character Danny explains that you throw something away and it might be shipped to a landfill in India, etc, your discarded trash may see more of the world than you ever do in your whole life. And who knows how it affects the people where it ends up.


I had remembered this orchestra in the back of my head when we started this project and thought of them and how they use the trash of their landfill in such a positive way as a major point of inspiration. I also was thinking of the Eco-Afro-Futuristic punk ensemble Fulu Miziki @fulumusic (roughly translates to “music from garbage”) that I started following in recent years on instagram who also hand makes their instruments and performance outfits out of trash and recycling.

About the band:
Fulu Miziki is a collective of artists who comes straight from a future where humans have reconciled with mother earth and with themselves. This multidisciplinary collective of artists is based in the heart of the Congolese capital city Kinshasa and was founded by Pisko Crane. For several years now, it’s founder Pisko has spent an amount of time conceptualizing an orchestra made from objects found in the trash, constantly changing instruments, always in search of new sounds.

Making our own performance costumes, masks and instruments is essential to their approach of Fulu Miziki’s musical ideology. Their unique sound supports a pan-African message of artistic liberation, peace and a severe look at the ecological situation of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the whole world. For Fulu everything can be recovered and re-enchanted.


There’s also a singer who goes by Mc-Deive @mc.deive_ that I started following on instagram. I don’t know much about him other than he seems to sing about Brazil a lot and is maybe in Angola, Africa? Maybe someone can help me out here. All I know is that he sings super catchy songs while accompanying himself on an empty plastic water bottle with his camera man/hype man and that you should follow him!

As a follow up I’ll say that I wasn’t specifically trying to emulate the genre of music after any of these groups, it was purely the concept of trash music that I was taking as inspiration. All of the music genres I created for the show I let occur naturally. I let the trash tell me what grooves it wanted to play and went from there. There are some similarities to Fulu Miziki’s style, but that is more the nature of both projects exclusively using trash as it sounds, and being primarily percussive in nature – which will lead to some similarities. However, it was not my intention to copy their music style nor did I listen to them or any other groups when I was recording and composing this music.

5/12 – 5/28 | “I Carry Your Heart With Me” Opens at Third Avenue Playworks (Sturgeon Bay, WI) as part of the World Premiere Wisconsin Festival!

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I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME
a new one woman show
at Third Avenue Playworks (Sturgeon Bay, WI)

BY JENNIFER BLACKMER
feat. Karen Estrada as ‘Esther’
directed by Jacob Janssen

MAY 10 – 28, 2023

Wednesday, May 10: Pay-What-You-Will Preview
Thursday, May 11: Final Preview
Friday, May 12: Opening Night

Wednesday – Saturday evenings at 7:30pm
Friday matinee May 19th at 2:00pm
Sunday matinees at 2:00pm

A world premiere!

Esther Shannon (*Karen Estrada) is a government stenographer working for the US Air Force during the tempestuous Vietnam War. Lonely, conflicted, and haunted by voices from her past, Esther finds herself smack dab in the middle of a troubling investigation.

With plenty of twists and turns along the way, Jennifer Blackmer’s taut, suspenseful mystery packs a real emotional wallop at the end. This new play will be presented as part of World Premiere Wisconsin, an inaugural and ambitious statewide festival celebrating original works.

I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME is part of World Premiere Wisconsin, a statewide festival celebrating new plays and musicals from March 1 – June 30, 2023, presented by the Ten Chimneys Foundation. To learn more visit www.worldpremierewisconsin.com.

For More info on Jennifer Blackmer and Karen Estrada, please visit TAP’s website: https://thirdavenueplayworks.org/i-carry-your-heart-with-me/

ARTIST TEAM

Director: Jacob Janssen
Production Stage Manager: Kelsey York*
Set Design: Alex Polzin
Costume Design: Kärin Kopischke**
Lighting Design: Colin Gawronski
Sound Design: Brian Grimm

** denotes union members

Community Partner Program – Door County Farm for Vets

TAP has founded a wonderful tradition of partnering with local community organizations on each show of their season. All of the ticket sales from the pay-what-you-will preview show goes directly to the community partner. In this case it is Door County Farm for Vets, and truly needed and amazing organization whose mission is to eradicate veteran suicides through farming. I love this so much. What a needed cause and what a fantastic approach.

Since 9/11 we’ve lost roughly 5 times as many veterans to suicide than we have in combat. It is massive problem that needs to be tackled and supported!

From DC Farm for Vets website:

DC Farm for Vets is a rehabilitation farm that provides education and services to Veterans entering into agriculture. This service includes several different programs.  We have an available community gardening program along with scheduled training tailored to the specific time of the growing season. Our training program entails regenerative agriculture, sustainable chemical free produce production, livestock, and cherry and apple orchards.  We believe in Growing while Healing. 

The specific objectives and purpose of this organization is to work towards the elimination of veteran suicide.  We accomplish this through teaching skills of sustainability and consumption of nutrient dense produce and livestock.  Being able to grow your own food gives you a sense of control over your life and it is incredibly rewarding. Every dollar that gets donated to DC farm for Vets we donate back to our veterans or the community giving our veterans the opportunity to serve something bigger than themselves once again.  

Here’s how you can support:
→ https://www.dcfarmforvets.org/visit
→ https://www.dcfarmforvets.org/get-involved

Notes on the Sound Design and Score

“I Carry Your Heart With Me” Poem Cue (Curtain Bow) by Brian Grimm (feat. Emma Cifrino)

As always, there is the potential for some spoilers when talking about my design for the show, so reader beware! I’ll be honest, this was maybe the most difficult play and stressful Tech process that I’ve been through. Most of the time I show up to Tech with all of my cues composed, recorded and mixed – already arranged in my Qlab session with best guesses at timings and fades. But this show was a tough nut to crack. I spent 3 weeks working on melodic themes for the different characters and emotional moments. I would compose a theme and develop it into a cue, only to listen back to the recording while reading the script and thinking… hmmm – that’s not quite right. I think this is the most material I’ve ever developed and then immediately scrapped during the rehearsal and design process for a show.

It took me 3 weeks to realize that the reason all of my melodic material did not feel right, is that the character Esther is the melody! Because it is a one woman show, I needed to sink further into the background; purely be the accompaniment support and let Esther drive the show, let her be the melody. It was soooo different than doing even a two actor show. That is something I did not anticipate.

So the weekend before Tech, I made a HUGE design pivot and developed the idea of recording many variations of long tones. It was a tricky assignment – the director Jacob made it clear that we’d probably want sound under most of the show, but it couldn’t be melodic, and it couldn’t be rhythmic… hence the tones. But it made sense because we had the concept of there being fluorescent light tones for half of the play’s design – and these musical tones could be the color of the storytelling world outside of those fluorescent and cold deposition spaces.

On that Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before Tech (starting Wednesday) – I recorded Emma Cifrino on viola, Greg Smith on clarinet and bass clarinet, and myself on cello and guqin zither (individually) running through “the gauntlet” of tones. I’ve done this before on my own, it’s intense, so I definitely understood the process and what I was asking of these fine instrumentalists. I’m so glad Emma and Greg were down to complete this process. It wasn’t random notes, I created a scale built out of all of the notes needed for each chord progression and melody that I had developed throughout the whole process (even if I thought we were scrapping it). We went one note at a time, recording 5 styles of that note. Long straight tone, no vibrato. Long tone with vibrato. Crescendo to a sting. Sforzando to diminuendo. And my favorite, wobbly oscillating pressure dynamic pulsing long tones! Greg was a total champ, because we ran through the whole process on Clarinet, and then picked up the Bass Clarinet and said… ok here we go again. And then he went on to perform Carmina Burana with the Madison Symphony Orchestra later that evening … WOW!!

I made sure to have every player record every melodic theme as well, just so I had my bases covered for Tech. Even just my melodic and tones libraries were quite extensive for this show – because I knew I’d just have to build most of the cues on the spot. Jacob and I really couldn’t judge what would feel right until we were in the room and tried things out. So it was a slow, brutal process to build cues on the spot, and not at all my ideal scenario. Let’s just say there were a number of all nighters that needed to happen. This is something I try to avoid at all costs these days (by being over prepared), but that just shows you how different this show was and how much needed to be built, created or refined even outside of tech hours.

Besides the melodic and chord tone libraries, I had built up an even deeper library of Military Sounds from the Vietnam war including AK-47s, Air Bombers, Rocket Launchers, and very importantly the Huey Combat Helicopter. I also recorded the forced air heat sound from my vents at home, and the intensely loud buzzing of each fluorescent light in my basement. From these fluorescents and vent sounds I created many variations of tone clusters and chords that created a framework for the sonic tonal texture of the show (which I then replicated with the acoustic instruments).

Throughout the show, you’ll hear the Huey Helicopter as an intense heartbeat. You’ll hear Air Bomb drops and Rocket Launchers as a forced air vent rattling in the corner. You’ll hear Bass Clarinet as the persistent buzzing of the deposition room fluorescent lights. You’ll hear musical themes for the Military, and each individual character in the show. You’ll hear the USA’s actual Military Jazz Band playing dance party music. You’ll even hear clapping from a 1960’s video of people applauding for the IBM Selectric II World Champion Typist who could type 180 words per minute (deep cut!)!! You’ll also hear the iconic music sounds of the 1960’s! My absolute favorite era for popular music! This was one of the huge discoveries that Jacob and I made late at night trying to crack the code of this play. It’s been so much fun to revisit the music of that era, the music I grew up on. If you like this music of the late 60’s, you’ll enjoy the preshow!

Honestly, I felt like I came prepared for 4 different versions of this play, and none of those versions was the show we ended up doing!! So this one was a big learning process for me and I’m glad I had everyone record those melodic themes, because we ended up using most of them! Thank you to the whole production team, Karen, and Jacob for your patience with me on this tech. I know it was stressful for you too, and I appreciate your grace to let me figure out each cue on the spot.

The final two music cues in the show are two of the best cues I think I’ve ever composed and produced. I’m really happy with how those turned out (you can hear the “Poem Cue” above).

Special Shout Outs

In the end, the true star of this show is Karen Estrada who is absolutely fabulous in this piece of 1,000 transitions and micro-moments. I think audiences will love the performance she gives in this show. What a feat to memorize and perform and hour long show alone, all by yourself. So many lines!!! I could never, ever, ever do that. This performance really highlights Karen’s wide range as an actress. Not only that but she kept us all laughing deep belly laughs throughout tech, which I absolutely needed to keep me going! I hope you can come see the amazing work that Karen has put into this show!!

The other star of this show is Colin Gawronski‘s light design and how it interplays with the beautiful scrim paint job by Alex Polzin. The combo of those two elements is GORGEOUS. It’s like a watercolor painting and I love it. It’s worth coming to this show just to see the different worlds that Colin and Alex have created together with their designs.

Congratulation on the World Premiere to playwright Jennifer Blackmer and for building such a dynamic world for us to play in. It is a whirlwind of a play, and there is just so much contrast and emotion to dive into. I want to know more about her mother, who is the inspiration for the stenographer character Esther who is transcribing all of the Vietnam non-com depositions. I’m glad I could be a part of your premiere!

Thank you Thank you Thank you to Emma Cifrino (viola) and Greg Smith (clarinets) for performing and recording on this score!!! I love how both of your instruments support the story and add color to this world. The recordings turned out great and you both killed it in the studio sessions!

Closing Weekend for “The Wanderers” at The Overture Center!

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Presented by Forward Theater Company
Thursday, September 8th through Sunday, September 25th (TICKETS)
@ The Overture Center for the Arts Playhouse Theater (Madison, WI)

a play by Anna Ziegler
Directed by Mikael Burke (Chicago)
Wisconsin Premiere!

Esther and Schmuli are young Orthodox Jews whose future is written in scripture. Abe and Sophie believe they can write their own destiny. On the surface, these two couples couldn’t seem more different. But when a Hollywood actress upends Abe’s world, the hidden connections between all of them start to appear. This funny and mysterious drama explores the question of whether happiness lies in what we have, or on the road not taken.


“As perfect a piece of theater as I’ve seen in many years. The script by Anna Ziegler is a revelation, touching on family truths, marriage, and personal histories…Go see this show. It’s magnificent.”
– DC Theatre Scene

Buy Tickets here

With Cassandra Bissell, Elyse Edelman, Alanna Lovely, Paris Hunter Paul, Greg Pragel

Featuring Special Local Guest Musicians YID VICIOUS Klezmer Ensemble!

Scenic Designer: Sarah Ross
Lighting Designer: Brad Toberman
Costume Designer: Karen Brown-Larimore
Sound Designer/Composer: Brian Grimm
Props Master: Pam Miles
Technical Director: Kevin Zimmer
Stage Manager: Kira Neighbors
Asst. Stage Manager: Abbi Hess

I had such a blast recording music with Madison’s own Yid Vicious Klezmer Ensemble for the score of “The Wanderers” by Anna Ziegler! I’m so honored to have collaborated with such fine musicians & friends and can’t wait for you to hear their beautiful playing in this production!

Pictured members of Yid Vicious:
Matt Appleby – guitar
Kia Karlen – accordion & horn
Geoff Brady – vibraphone
Greg Smith – flutes & clarinets

Also pictured:
Brian Grimm – composer, cello at the playhouse theater
Zelda Brethauer – sleeping studio assistant