Audience Participation vs. Performer Protection: A Snapshot

Posted on by megandejarnett

I am sitting onstage with the Nash Composers Coalition—either at our inaugural concert or second; I can’t remember which—and we are almost through our set. The adrenaline is pumping, and despite the weight of carrying my gender on my back on that stage, I’m smiling. We’ve been riding the performance high all night, and spirits are high. As we round the bend into the last couple tunes, we call a free improvisation, with the title to be determined by the audience.

The first few suggestions are fine, harmless; they prompt thoughtful nods or friendly chuckles from me and my colleagues. They’re what we expect. Then someone—a guy, and by the self-satisfied tone of voice, it was probably a young or young-ish guy, though to my knowledge not one of my peers—shouted out something super sexual. I can’t remember if it was “seductive” or “foreplay” or something else entirely, but I remember the discomfort it brought to me immediately.

Hang on; I have to go look through those recordings now and see if I can find it. I want to get this right, and it’s a story I try not to remember.

Continue reading Audience Participation vs. Performer Protection: A Snapshot

Advertisements

Fuck the Maestro Mentality

Posted on by megandejarnett

Since I started studying music in college, I’ve only rarely had the opportunity to work with a female conductor or ensemble director. (In fact, I think it’s happened . . . twice? Three times? Really rarely.) Before that, though, I was a product entirely of woman-run programs, and while middle and high school band were a long time ago, that education set me up with the expectation that my accomplishments were first and foremost my own, and while my teachers could be proud of me and talk about me, they could only claim so much credit.

This idea extended from my academic classes into my creative work in large part due to the guidance of the female and nonbinary professors and TAs I’ve had lessons and influential classes with over the past six years. These folks are supportive to no end, so eternally giving of their time and resources, but their support and praise is far less performative than some of their male colleagues’. It’s genuine, frequently private, and usually keeps an eye toward the future and what else I might accomplish. A good chunk of my male teachers, mentors, and colleagues also follow this model, but we’ve always got the handful of teachers who wait in the background, either refraining from genuine praise or being quietly unsupportive unless we jump through a little-communicated, preordained set of hoops (of which they are frequently gatekeepers).

Continue reading Fuck the Maestro Mentality

WICKED and Misogyny: “The Wizard And I”

Posted on by megandejarnett

Anyone who’s ever gotten past my academic, Western-art-music exterior knows I have a not-so-secret love for musicals. As my parents can tell you, I’ve been learning soundtracks since I was six and memorized Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat despite not knowing what half the colors on the coat were (because, really, ochre?). I follow a lot of the trends most musical theatergoers do: I was among the first people in my friend group to get into Hamilton, I think Aaron Tveit was fantastic in Next to Normal, I’m considering shelling out for the expensive seats to get a couple friends to see The Lion King next year (because theater is a thing I share with the people I love), and as a high schooler, I fell in love with Wicked. As a fourteen-year-old, it was awesome from the stage design and the flying down to the music. From that perspective, it read as a story of women kicking ass and taking names and kinda-sorta making it work when the rest of the world didn’t agree. The ending probably didn’t make as much sense to me back then, but hey, I was struck dumb by the music and the staging. That didn’t matter.

This past Christmas, among my favorite presents was a pair of tickets to see Wicked’s national tour at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles. My partner and I made a night of it: we got good food at a cute café across the street, we saw Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new star on the Walk of Fame, and we arrived not long after the doors opened to snag a souvenir and marvel at the inside of the theater. It was easily one of the best nights of my year so far. Eventually, we took our seats, and the performance was stellar. The entire cast was excellent, and I couldn’t. stop. fangirling. because Kara Lindsay, who you might know from the original Broadway cast recording of Newsies, was on as Glinda. (I only put two and two together that she’d be performing the night before, and as my partner can tell you, I was ridiculously excited.)

That said, I cried a lot during the performance. I’m not usually a crier—not for live shows. (Books are another story and I will make no apologies.) When I do cry at a musical, it’s usually tears of joy, like when I heard the opening notes of Hamilton or every single time I see The Lion King. But that night at Wicked, I cried when Elphaba made her first entrance. I cried during “The Wizard And I” at a surprise high note. I cried through a lot of “Defying Gravity.” I sniffled a little during both versions of “I’m Not That Girl” (though those admittedly hit harder in high school when I still felt ugly-duckling-ish). I cried in “No Good Deed” and probably through the entirety of “For Good.” And I didn’t understand why.

Continue reading WICKED and Misogyny: “The Wizard And I”

A CalArts Degree in Review: Part Two (The… Troubling Things)

Posted on by megandejarnett

Last week on the blog, I gave you guys a runthrough of some of my favorite parts of CalArts. In short, the high points are the students, the faculty, and the general willingness to try new things and push back against tradition in ways that are useful and necessary. That said, as much as I’m proud of the work I’ve done during my degree, as glad as I am that I’ve gotten to collaborate with folks who are like me, I can’t pretend this is a perfect collegiate experience, even for a grad student. Am I glad I went to CalArts? Yes. It was the creative reach I needed at a time when I didn’t have many similar options. Would the decision to attend be a significantly harder one to make today? Absolutely. Though the reasons behind this are at times nuanced and difficult to articulate, I’m going to do my best to break down the most significant among them here.

Wish me luck.

Continue reading A CalArts Degree in Review: Part Two (The… Troubling Things)

Critique Doesn’t Land Without a Lot of Background Reading (so here’s a list)

Posted on by megandejarnett

As I sat down to draft this week’s blog post, I found myself at a bit of a loss. What could I possibly write, I wondered, that could follow what I’ve put out in the last two weeks? See, I never plan for my writing to reach very far beyond my own circle of friends, family, and fellow artists. When it does, that’s exceptional, but I’m always left with the same question: what do I write about now? Because as much as I love drum corps, this isn’t about to turn into an all-DCI blog. I’m still going to write about every genre of music and performance as it intersects with my creative practice and my identity. But what do I write to follow something so big?

The answer, I think, is something small. This week, friends, we’re not challenging major institutions and their power structures. We aren’t talking about Title IX or Phantom Regiment or schools who turn a blind eye to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of students by their private teachers. This week, we’re looking inward at ourselves. And a lot of times, that’s scarier, because we are inherently imperfect humans. We’ve all hurt people to extents we may not fully realize. But we don’t grow as a community unless every single one of us is doing this work, so it’s time to be brave.

Continue reading Critique Doesn’t Land Without a Lot of Background Reading (so here’s a list)

The International Women’s Brass Conference and the Price of Sisterhood

Posted on by megandejarnett

Have you ever gone to something expecting to have a reasonably good time and come out of it with your life forever changed? I’m not talking about I-went-and-got-another-degree; no, I mean the kind of thing where you come out with unexpected new inspirations, role models, and routes of exploration, the kind of thing that makes you get out of bed at a reasonable (or maybe even unreasonably early) time because you can’t just stay still when there’s so much to do, the kind of thing that stays with you in ways you don’t expect.

It’s been awhile since I had one of those experiences (I think the last thing that even comes close was when I premiered He Probably Just Likes You with the Nash Composers Coalition), but I spent this past week at the International Women’s Brass Conference, where I presented two of my own works and a solo set. After just six days, I’m a different person. Like, my hair is still (blissfully) purple and I still need to practice for approximately forever, but I’ve got new paths dangling in front of me that I desperately want to explore. But first, I wanted to talk a little bit about what it took to get here.

Continue reading The International Women’s Brass Conference and the Price of Sisterhood

Dancing Saves My Life

Posted on by megandejarnett

I’m a musician, but before I started on my first instrument, I was a dancer.

Admittedly, I was (and sometimes still am) a clumsy one. I move across the floor slowly and imperfectly. My body aches more than it did when I was three or seven or thirteen or eighteen. I can’t touch my toes to the back of my head like I used to. I spend more of my time in a practice room or in front of a computer than I can afford to spend in a studio.

I’m a musician, but dancing saves my life.

Continue reading Dancing Saves My Life

I’m Launching a Patreon!

Posted on by megandejarnett

Hello, friends!

I’ve been sitting on these plans for months now, and I’m so excited to finally share them with you. Over the past year, I’ve been floored by the willingness of friends, family, peers, colleagues, and near-strangers to support my art in all its different forms. That support, whether emotional, financial, or professional, has enabled me to reach new heights and produce work I couldn’t even have conceptualized not so long ago. In just two years, I’ve put out a significant amount of work about sexual assault and rape culture. My understanding and use of extended techniques has grown, but I still enjoy mixing them in with more “normal” sounds for a new blend of timbres. I’m braver and more authentic as a performer and artist. I’m so proud of how far I’ve come during my MFA, and even though I know this is just the beginning, it’s a little crazy to believe it’s even real.

As I leave academia (at least, the student side of things) and start bringing my artmaking practices fully into the professional sphere, I’m looking for ways to not only ensure I keep creating new work but get it into the hands and headphones of people who might not always be able to see it performed live. I’ll be rolling these out as they wink into existence, and the first platform I’m adding to my creative portfolio is my Patreon page.

Continue reading I’m Launching a Patreon!

Clinging to my Femininity

Posted on by megandejarnett

I spent a lot of my early life wanting to be a tomboy. Though I didn’t always understand what exactly that meant from a presentation standpoint, I associated it with the results it got in the books I read—being sporty, popular, and seemingly effortlessly gorgeous. For awhile, the label really didn’t stick, but I spent fourth through sixth grade playing soccer with a bunch of boys, and by the time I hit middle school, I felt like I belonged more with them than with my own gender.

I navigated this in-between fairly well in middle and high school—I did largely male-dominant things, but I had enough female friends to keep me going. It worked out. But college arrived, and with it came an entirely new set of problems. I didn’t just happen to be around women anymore. Most of my friends were guys. Most of my teachers were guys. And in a matter of months, I went from a well-adjusted girl who liked everything from basketball shorts to ballgowns to a young woman who didn’t understand why her image suddenly conflicted with how the world around her expected her to act.

Continue reading Clinging to my Femininity

The Men in the Gray Area

Posted on by megandejarnett

For this second weekend of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I wanted to highlight some of the behaviors that women are exposed to that can create a slippery slope down to assault and rape. They’re the things people do to us that make us feel unsafe, even though there’s very little we can do about them (if we even realize what’s happening at the time). Societal standards have told us that it’s important to give people what they want, sometimes at the expense of our own wellbeing. I considered writing more clinically about this, like last week’s piece about mandated reporting, but in the end, I decided it might make more sense just to show you.

So, below are four examples of things that happened to me that made me more wary of the people walking through my world. (If I were going to rewrite He Probably Just Likes You, I might consider drawing from some of these stories. However, that piece is perfect the way it is.) I’ve done my best to highlight why they made me deeply uncomfortable or afraid or slightly traumatized or whatever the case may be, but talking about grooming and other insidious behaviors can be very difficult for me, especially with these memories I don’t spend as much time rooting around in normally. If you have questions, please drop me a line and I’ll be happy to clarify anything.

Continue reading The Men in the Gray Area