Dear Guests, Welcome to my blog which I treat like a creative garden where I regularly plant and change this and that be it poetry, philosophy, an Oboe Brilliance lesson, an essay of some kind, or a journal about composing. Visit every Monday for oboe coaching which is also helpful for many melodic instrumentalists. Musically yours, Kathryn

"How do you compose?" That is the most commonly asked question I hear.
This blog is a window into my creative process and philosophies as a composer and instrumentalist. At times it may contain music, photos, and poetry as well. May you enjoy, return, and benefit!

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2

Black Rose Blooming Under Full Moon

Dear Guests,

The piece "A Rose for Freya" was originally titled as I was working on it, "Black Rose Blooming Under Full Moon".

I decided today to put up the whole thing, not just an excerpt, up for guests to hear because I feel it is an important piece of 21st century art as it is in response artistically to the utter horror of the gushing oil - as if the bowls of the earth were releasing - into our planet.

From my perspective, it takes our out of harmony, out of balance with nature culture to a whole newer, more horrific level.

Four generations ago, indigenous people could hunt and live a nomadic life. Four generations ago children learned how to hunt, if not nomadic - grow crops, make clothing, cook, and raise children communally, and live as a culture via earth rhythms and natural light. This is not even possible now. The farmland in the U.S. is corporate and out of balance for the most part. The air and water is polluted and now in addition to all the sludge, pollution - sonic and chemical, and garbage dumped into our oceans, we have this outpouring of oil tipping the scales to unbelievable devastation. I dread the negative domino effect.

I must HOPE that through awareness, not forgetting, and learning from this multi level grievous error, we as a species will learn to turn things around so that hopefully, 4 or 7 generations from now, our descendants can live in harmony and in balance - if that is indeed possible.

Born in 1965, I look back, shocked. It appears that since the 1950's, the U.S. has been taken over by corporations of the world. Corporations have more control over the people than the people now in the U.S. government. We are an industrialized military complex on a fast track to extinction (listen to Rat Race to Extinction). Corporations govern the health, finances, and government more than common sense which is no longer taught.

From my perspective our entire culture is totally insane. Even art - especially art - has gone corporate, main stream, and edifies corporations more than it edifies the human need to heal and explore emotionally.

I'm utterly horrified and I'm revolting as an artist.

My music is influenced by my profound love of our planet, rhythms of nature, and deep emotional/psychological questing.

Is there hope? Of course. There is still hope, there is still time to change the tides of our collective destruction. Those of us who are U.S. citizens can use the existing system to make drastic change - if we choose to - via peaceful means. The ONLY effective change has come about via courage, intelligence, peace and defiance. Ghandi is my hero. Martin Luther King.... only love, courage, and hope can make a lasting difference. Only embracing harmony and beauty of one another, and our shared life on earth with compassion can lead us back toward a peaceful and harmonious existence.

The May 31st blog issues a message of hope. This I believe is imperative.

Musically yours,
Kathryn