Ep59. ArtsWave “Truth & Innovation” Part 3

[00:00:00] Jori: So my truth is just having fun, being playful, even though sometimes truth sounds like it has to be so serious, but just healing in play, there’s healing in fun. There’s healing in not taking yourself so serious.

[00:00:21] Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in the space.

[00:00:39] Helen: The intention of these conversations is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity, to envision a world where artists thrive.

[00:00:55] Helen: For the second year in a row, Creativity Squared is proud to partner with ArtsWave to amplify the phenomenal artists and grant recipients selected for this year’s ArtsWave Black and Brown Artist Program. Today, enjoy part three of a three part special series of interviews with the artists featured in the program’s Truth and Innovation Artist Showcase.

[00:01:20] Helen: You’ll hear about their work, the world they want to live in, and their truth, expressed through their art.

[00:01:27] KA Simpson: My name is K.A. Simpson.

[00:01:28] Anupa: My name is Anupa Mirle.

[00:01:30] TT Stern-Enzi: My name is T.T. Stern-Enzi.

[00:01:33] Helen: The showcase’s Visual Arts Exhibition is open through August 8th at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center. Center. The “Be Still” Citywide Augmented Reality Portrait Exhibition is available to experience through September 22nd.

[00:01:49] Helen: For more information and the full video versions of these conversations, visit CreativitySquared.com. From episode 9 on the show, Janice Liebenberg, who served as the Vice President of Equitable Arts Advancement, at ArtsWave shared:

[00:02:05] Janice: And so a blueprint for collective action includes that the arts bridge cultural divides.

[00:02:12] Janice: And that is, you know, so key for us as we, we invest in the arts and how we schedule our programming and how we just feel that the arts can bring people together, no matter what divides us outside of the arts, the arts can bring us together.

[00:02:31] Helen: Creativity Squared is a proud partner of ArtsWave, and because it’s important to support artists, 10 percent of all revenue Creativity Squared generates goes to ArtsWave, which is a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations,

[00:02:48] Helen: projects and independent artists. This year’s theme is truth and innovation. And I had the great honor of interviewing the artists on what the theme means to them. I’m inspired, humbled, and grateful to share their stories with you. The intention of these interviews is to give these talented artists another platform to share their art and the truth expressed through it, as you never know what ripples will turn into waves. If you’re interested in working with, featuring, or supporting these artists, please don’t be shy about it. With that, here are the vignettes of our conversations. Enjoy.

[00:03:34] Jori: I am Jori An Cotton from Cincinnati, Ohio, founder of Voices of Healing: Workshops and Consulting. I just come to earth to just bring some warmth and some kindness, but I’m also a licensed social worker, spoken word poet. And I facilitate creative wellness workshops and do consulting. And I am a proud recipient of the 2024 Black And Brown grant with ArtsWave.

[00:04:02] Jori: And I am so grateful for this opportunity. It was really a creative personal journey. So, I’m so grateful. My project was black women connecting to our inner child and finding our joy and freedom. So the project ended with a guided spoken word meditation, connecting to our inner child and finding our joy and freedom.

[00:04:28] Jori: So rediscovering our joy and freedom. So the piece I put together, it’s a guided meditation. So it took you through relaxing yourself, getting your breathing together, just getting into a comfortable position. And then just taking the listeners on a ride of just recalling how they felt when they were a child, some memories from when they were a child.

[00:04:50] Jori: And then I didn’t want to spend too much time on like any darkness or trauma that may have taken place, but just having the audience recall enjoyable moments from their childhood things that they wanted to be things that they enjoyed doing and then it also just included just forgiving themselves and just others.

[00:05:11] Jori: So it was a lot of fun to do to put together. It was great to just get some feedback right afterwards from people in the audience saying that they really enjoyed it and it really touched them. So that’s kind of how that went. I’ve provided workshops for a group. It was called the Transitional Healing Journey.

[00:05:31] Jori: And so I provided integral workshops with, black women ranging from the ages of 25, probably to about 65. So they were going through like a 14 week transitional healing, transformational journey. And I did the integral writing series. So just working with those women over the course of the weeks, doing different writing activities and sharing our thoughts and our inner child and healing our inner child.

[00:05:59] Jori: So I would open up the groups with meditations. And so that’s kind of how the project transformed into me writing my own meditation and just opening me up to just write more meditations. And I’m looking forward to putting together an album of like a meditation kind of series for people to just be able to participate in.

[00:06:19] Jori: So I gathered, I put my project together just from working with a group of women in Cincinnati, as we just explored our inner girl and did some inner girl healing. Truth and innovation, for me, it means authenticity. And a lot of times our most authentic person is our inner child before the world got to us and people’s opinions and then school and then parents and then people telling us that we who we should be.

[00:06:47] Jori: So, I think that’s the truth. And then just being innovative and just coming up with different ways, fun ways to connect to our inner child. It’s been the buzz. I’ve been doing inner child work probably for the last 10 years, just been looking at the idea of inner child, but now it’s just really, like a buzz.

[00:07:06] Jori: So I just, wanted to give people a way, a quick way that they can kind of tap into their inner child as they begin their journey or just being intentional about connecting to their inner child throughout the day. Even if they’re working a high powered job, leadership job, they’re on the move, like they can still have fun with it.

[00:07:26] Jori: So, my truth is that I’m just fine that it’s okay to just be playful, warm, funny. It doesn’t have to be serious all the time. So my truth is just having fun, being playful, even though sometimes truth sounds like it has to be so serious, but there’s healing in play, there’s healing in fun. There’s healing in not taking yourself so serious.

[00:07:53] Jori: That’s one of the things I talked about cause healing can get so draining. It’s like, I didn’t heal myself. I feel sicker than I was. So, and sometimes you just have to get out a lot of that and just have some fun, do some things before everything got crazy. So go play Connect 4, go play at the park, just do fun things.

[00:08:12] Jori: It’s okay. It’s okay. So I think that’s my truth. And that’s something, you know, like I’m in my forties, like, okay, I’m a, grown up now, but I’m like, Hey, I like this. I don’t want to grow up. Just like we used to hear growing up with the toys. It was like, you know what? I get it now. I get it. Who said we have to? I would love for people to walk away after hearing my piece is to forgive yourself for betraying yourself. Sometimes we can be so hard on ourself for things that we just didn’t understand, while it was going on, how we process things. So just forgive yourself for betraying yourself and just. Incorporate fun into your day.

[00:08:53] Jori: Just incorporate play and fun, some kind of way into your day. Well, what is it about meditation? Let’s see. I probably started really getting into meditation, 2018 and whatnot. I would listen to, like guided meditations on YouTube, some meditation music without words. And some meditation music with binaural beats and my thoughts were like, I can’t figure it all out. I can’t, I need to get my brain to rest. So I just needed to just let go of my mind and just like go to sleep. Just, I would go to sleep to meditations and let all the things work itself out while I’m sleeping. So it’s just, I just see how it’s changed my life for the better.

[00:09:41] Jori: Just calmer, more relaxed, just getting in touch with myself, really connecting with my soul. I think that’s what meditation, one of the biggest things meditation has done for me is just really connecting with myself, quieting my mind and connecting with myself. And realize like you’re not your thoughts.

[00:09:59] Jori: It’s so hard. They tell you’re not just that’s like, what do you mean? They’re coming in like crazy. They gotta be mine. So I really like the idea like oh, they’re not mine, these crazy ideas? So I really enjoyed that even though it’s an exercise. It’s work just letting go of thoughts, but that’s been really life changing for me and I look forward to just growing more into it, like I said creating my album so that the public and different groups can partake or individuals so I’m excited to continue doing that.

[00:10:34] Jori: I will be posting them on Instagram and then my youtube channel so My Instagram page is @voices_of_healing_by_jori_an. So you can add me there and stay tuned for recorded meditations.

[00:10:52] TT Stern-Enzi: My name is T.T. Stern Enzi and I’m the Artistic Director of the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival and I was one of the recipients of a 2024 ArtsWave Black and Brown Artist Grant. In terms of the genre that I operate in, I’m primarily, I guess, known as a writer and, film critic. I like to expand that to more of a cultural critic as well,

[00:11:15] TT Stern-Enzi: so that gives me the opportunity to not just focus on film, but also kind of dabble into other cultural realms and artistic and creative aspects as well. I operate in some ways as a hip-hop producer. The best way to explain that is to think about the idea of hip-hop production. You are taking samples from a variety of sources, reconfiguring them, slowing them down, speeding them up, putting them together to create a new flow, if you will. And in some ways, as a critic, that is the same thing that I do. I look at the film that is in front of me, whether it’s a film or a TV show, whatever it is, I start with that. And then have the opportunity to sort of soak it all in, see what it reminds me of, what it, what references it will bring up for me, whether that be other films, other TV shows, history, cultural events, music, science, what have you.

[00:12:16] TT Stern-Enzi: And I find ways to sample whatever those elements are as I’m talking about that film or writing about that film. So by the end of, sort of the perfect review, I may have anywhere from four to eight, let’s say, cultural references that I have pulled samples from and incorporated into that piece of criticism that I’ve written and hopefully if again, if I am operating at my best, it means that the reader will have the opportunity to understand what it was that moved me about that particular film.

[00:12:53] TT Stern-Enzi: They can go see it, but then they’ll have the opportunity to go back and think, well, wait a minute, there are all of these other pieces that were in there. Maybe I need to go dig in the crates and find what those references were and go check them out for myself and then figure out how I can then incorporate that additional information into my awareness and understanding of that particular film or again, TV show that was the, you know, sort of the foundation for the piece in the first place.

[00:13:21] TT Stern-Enzi: My pitch for the Truth and Innovation ArtsWave grant that I received this year was, the title of it is “Stepping Into Fatherhood.” And my approach to it was to look at and think about the idea of fatherhood from a very unique and almost unicorn like position that I feel that I kind of operate in. I am the step parent of two kids who don’t look like me and wanted to explore the idea of being able to walk through the world with my kids, both as they were younger and now, and kind of evaluate how people see us as a family unit.

[00:13:56] TT Stern-Enzi: In addition to that, though, I also wanted to explore the notion of fatherhood in a much broader, health based situation I only met my birth father one time. I was in my forties. It was literally about a year before he died and he had prostate cancer. And as a matter of fact, he, his two brothers and my grandfather all had prostate cancer.

[00:14:20] TT Stern-Enzi: It did not actually kill my father, but he died from complications of other cancers that he had at the time. So I spent my late thirties up through my early fifties getting tested. So that I could understand and have an awareness of the real reality of sort of an inevitable sense of knowing that I was probably going to get cancer.

[00:14:42] TT Stern-Enzi: And when I met him, the idea behind meeting him was really more of the idea that I wanted to put a face to this thing that was going on in my body. At the time I was training for marathons, I was watching what I was eating, I was in great shape, but this is something that I knew that was going to happen no matter how well I took care of myself.

[00:15:02] TT Stern-Enzi: So I needed to have a better understanding or at least, like I said, a face that I could kind of put that on. So I met him with that intention and in meeting him and sort of going through that process and kind of building that awareness for myself, my kids also had a similar kind of situation because they have found ways that they had to deal with the idea of their father in much the same way they have mental health issues that they have picked up from him and his father as well. So we shared this kind of connection knowing that there were things that were affecting who we were as people that were not necessarily based on our lived experience. So, I enjoyed, if you can imagine that, the idea of kind of sharing that journey with my kids and us kind of talking through what that meant for each of us as we were trying to define who we were as people and who we were as a family.

[00:16:00] TT Stern-Enzi: My final essay was one that involved sitting down and interviewing both my kids and my two brothers, which gave me the chance to have very intimate conversations with them, not just about fatherhood and potentially my role in their lives, but just fatherhood on a broader sense. My kids, my son and my daughter talked about, yes, my relationship with them, but they also talked about their relationship with their own father and the differences between the two of us and how we’ve all been able to move forward together.

[00:16:32] TT Stern-Enzi: In the case of my brothers, we all have very different relationships with our father. My father, my “pops,” as I used to call him, was my step parent. He came into my life, when I was 20, when in essence, I didn’t really need a father at all. My youngest brother is adopted and pops was in his life, you know, his entire life so there’s this interesting range in terms of how we all connected with him and our relationships with him and somewhere in there, I think in all of those interviews and the conversations that came out of it, there is a sense of a particular truth that we all kind of expressed about what fatherhood meant to us, what ideas of masculinity meant to us, and in some ways, the idea of love and the notion that we don’t always share and express our pride in the people around us. So for me, that kind of summed up a lot of what I bought or didn’t even know that I was thinking about when I pitched this project in the first place. I also feel like that’s part of the innovation as well, because I was able to create a situation and a dynamic where we could have those conversations in a very interesting and unique kind of way.

[00:17:53] TT Stern-Enzi: And over the course of the five essays, I use very different styles in terms of writing and the approach to each one. You could argue that the second one based on the films I saw at Sundance is more of a review of films with, again, some of these elements put into place. Some of the other essays are, again, much more straightforward, like I said, almost nonfiction novel chapters.

[00:18:18] TT Stern-Enzi: So I wanted to kind of play around and explore with how, you tell your stories and how they become more meaningful as you tell them in different ways. Pride is something that I feel that we need to be very intentional about. My, my middle brother mentioned the fact that when during his interview that he asked our father if he was proud of him.

[00:18:41] TT Stern-Enzi: And I was amazed and kind of surprised by the idea of doing that. I had never thought to ask pops if he was proud of me. I kind of just assumed and knew that he was but I love the fact that my brother asked that and he did it because he’s a parent now as well and he wants to make sure that his kids don’t have to question or wonder if he’s proud of them and I have taken that to heart.

[00:19:07] TT Stern-Enzi: As a matter of fact, getting ready for the presentations and the exhibitions, for this latest round of the Black and Brown Artist Grants, I reached out to my kids at the very start of it and told them, even though I knew they wouldn’t be able to be here and participate and to hear me and see me talking about this project, I wanted to let them know, A, that I love them, which I tell them all the time that I love them, but more importantly, I let them know how proud I was of them. And I’m not sure that I do that all of the time, but this project has made sure that will be a much more intentional thing that I try to do moving forward with my kids and pretty much with everyone in my life.

[00:19:46] TT Stern-Enzi: So I feel I’ve gotten a much greater reward out of doing this than just the idea of creating these essays. It is hopefully something that will impact my life as I move forward as well. What is the one thing that I would want people to remember? I’m not sure that I can narrow it down to one thing, but again, I probably came closest to it in the last response about intentionality.

[00:20:12] TT Stern-Enzi: I am much more intentional about everyone in my life and everything in my life. And that is in part because of, you know, being diagnosed with cancer. And I, even though I haven’t started treatment yet, but just knowing that I, in some ways I feel like I have a bit of a ticking clock and it’s. If that’s the case, if I embrace that notion, then I, it leads me to make sure that I do everything that I can to enjoy and appreciate every single moment.

[00:20:41] TT Stern-Enzi: And in doing so letting the people that are with me in those moments know that I’m thoroughly glad and excited to bear with me as well.

[00:20:53] Anupa: My name is Anuap Mirle. I live in Butler County, Liberty Township, and I worked at P& G, quit many years ago. I’m an Indian classical dancer and choreographer, and I guess I’m technically an immigrant from India who settled down here, came to study here, and met my husband here and settled down here. And the style that I do is traditional and folk art.

[00:21:19] Anupa: I am a 2024 Black and Brown Artist Grant recipient and I felt very fortunate because I felt I had a very strong message that I wanted to share with the community and this allowed me the opportunity to do so thanks to ArtsWave. I think the last few years we have had a lot of excitement in this country regarding women’s rights and I come from a country which had the first women prime minister when I was a child.

[00:21:51] Anupa: So I was looking at this country, I’m looking at this country from a very different lens. And some things amazed me because [in] 2020 we celebrated a hundred years of women’s suffrage, while in India, we had the right to vote from the day that India got independence. So some things I just thought were very interesting considering I’m coming from a third world country into a first world country I would have expected things to be a little different.

[00:22:18] Anupa: So it was a learning process for me. The other thing that also kind of interested me was even though we come from that country that has a first woman prime minister and all that we still have a lot of dowry related deaths. The differential of baby boys and baby girls is still a point that needs to be addressed in our country, my country, India.

[00:22:45] Anupa: So this project, in a sense, allowed me to bring some of those points across. Initially, it was going to be a multimedia piece because we were going to do it on a actual stage with a powerpoint and everything, but I think on Sunday we are doing it at the Carnegie at the gallery. So we stripped out the, informational part of it at this point, and we are using prop to showcase the concept of the string.

[00:23:17] Anupa: It is an, Indian word. It is called “doree.” It means string. So this whole project is looking at relationships as strings. Some strings that bring us together, some that tear us apart, and some that can even strangulate you. It is a live performance and I have a lot of choreographers who are friends in this community and I decided that the message was universal enough that I reached out to them and even though I had the overall vision and the choreography in mind, I wanted them to be part of it.

[00:23:56] Anupa: So in a way, this is presenting from a woman’s perspective across different dance styles. We even have one who is non-Indian. I was born in India. So this is what I learned as a child. And as I grew older, I realized that this is a vocabulary that I could use to basically showcase my thoughts. And that is what I have found as the freedom in this style.

[00:24:27] Anupa: And that’s why I like it. And I do experiment with it. Sometimes I’m probably more on the outside fringe than people are comfortable with, but it’s something that I like to just dabble with every once in a while, even though I [also] do heavily classical pieces. We are pushing the boundary because I have done this very traditional, keeping only Bharatanatyam.

[00:24:52] Anupa: And then we, I did it again where we used slightly different styles from Pan Asian because Indian art actually went to different parts of the world. So then I pulled in all that and you did it again. This time I was motivated to do it because of so many things that were happening worldwide that I felt this was a very good way for me to share that information. So yet again, I did it in a different way. I think the truth part of it is, what we see in front is very rarely what it is and specifically, it relates to abuse where we may actually be seeing a person perfectly fine in society, but we don’t know what is going on behind closed doors. So, how do you bring that person to get motivated, to reach out to a helping hand, to feel safe, to want to live? So that I think for me is the truth part. The innovative part is, it’s a work in progress. This is probably one way that I thought is to reach out. What we would like to do is, if the group is available, we want to be able to perform it.

[00:26:11] Anupa: Senior centers, different places. So people get the message and if they are on that brink, where should I, should I not? Hopefully art can make them push towards, Hey, you know what? Maybe somebody in this group itself, I can reach out to. It is a heavy subject, but we do aim to entertain. So I’m hoping that the production itself will be fun to watch.

[00:26:39] Anupa: My truth is a student of mine. She’s, she became a friend, a mentor, almost like a second mother. She is now in her mid 70s. And she’s a member of our community and she was my closest interaction with the issues that many women in rural India and probably other parts of the world face. And, that is what motivated me to tell this story.

[00:27:05] Anupa: So I spoke to her and I asked her, is it okay if we Use your story as the base. And I reached out to Dave. He’s one of the storytellers who works for Cincinnati Fringe. I got the contact from Memorial Hall, I think, and had him interview her and then picked a few things that I would like to highlight through this production.

[00:27:30] Anupa: First and foremost, that art heals; the creation, the participation, and just watching. Either by performing or by watching. Participation either way can be a healing cathartic process. So, I want to be able to use this in that way. So that is the first thing. The second is [that art] has no boundaries. It can be used to tell a story.

[00:27:56] Anupa: And we can choose what the story is. And how we want the narrative to be. And I think the third is that there are many issues, especially in the Asian community, we do not even talk about it because it’s considered to be social stigma. And even if somebody needs help, they don’t know where to reach out to help.

[00:28:17] Anupa: And there are lots of groups within the US, in the Asian community that are creating a network, almost like an underground network, but more work needs to be done towards this. And this is just to bring awareness of that.

[00:28:37] KA Simpson: My name is KA Simpson. I’m a creative, I’m an author here in [the] Greater Cincinnati area. I live in Northern Kentucky, born and raised. I received a grant through Arts Wave through their Black and Brown Artist Initiative to write the book “Flipped,” which talks about the special places in Greater Cincinnati and those black narratives in those spaces.

[00:29:02] KA Simpson: So, I am born and raised Northern Kentuckian. My great grandmother came here with her family when she was five, when she, back in 1905 and pretty much, was born, raised and died in the same house on Saratoga in Newport, Kentucky. So what that means is that every time I walk out the door, it’s a family reunion with somebody.

[00:29:24] KA Simpson: It’s like, Hey, Karim, how’s mom doing? It’s like our, entire family has grown up in and around this area. So, my love of history actually came from my mom, because when we would go driving around as a child, middle school or elementary school age, she would tell me about the spaces that we would pass, just to past time, the spaces, buildings, areas of the city.

[00:29:46] KA Simpson: She talked more about those black and brown faces that made those spaces great. So she put that love, of that in me and then kind of, growing up, you go to school and you get the more quote unquote traditional, education. And I didn’t see the same stories that I heard growing up. I didn’t see them coming, being manifested in like my history books or what I learned at school.

[00:30:11] KA Simpson: And so when I started to write, I started to, I wanted to make sure that those black and brown faces were the center narratives. So, I started my, kind of my artistic journey by writing a book called “Chronicles of a Boy Misunderstood,” which is fiction, but it’s historical fiction and it takes place here in Greater Cincinnati.

[00:30:32] KA Simpson: And so I used those stories that my mom told me or kind of fictionalized them and put a gay black male at the center of each of the four stories in the book. So that’s where it started and then it kind of manifested into a little bit more of a historical context, because as I grew up, I still didn’t hear those stories that I heard about growing up and I wanted everybody to know about them and it wasn’t necessarily about my family.

[00:31:00] KA Simpson: It’s just the stories that were passed down from my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. And I just wanted to make sure that they were memorialized in some way. So the title of my book is, like you said, it’s the same title of the podcast and it’s called “Flipped.” And I named it that because I wanted to flip the narrative.

[00:31:20] KA Simpson: I wanted to flip the kind of, when we think of history or the traditional context of history, at least in Northern Kentucky has been kind of, History that kind of left out the black and brown faces that made that history or was part of that history. So I wanted to flip the narrative and make sure that to incorporate, and not to downplay anything that we’ve already learned, but to incorporate and add that historical context that was experienced by the black and brown people of Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

[00:31:51] KA Simpson: The theme this year with ArtsWave was Truth and Innovation. It’s had a couple of different names over the last few years, and it always kind of transcends to moving forward. So when we think about innovation, this is kind of looking forward, making sure like, what are we going to do? We’ve kind of had some time to think about a lot of things to reflect, and now we need to take that reflection, what have we learned from that reflection, and move forward.

[00:32:17] KA Simpson: And in the piece, “Flipped,” in my book, I tell these stories, of black and brown people in northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, not to criticize anyone, not to blame anyone, but to show that there’s a context. And as we move forward, each of the chapters kind of have a piece about moving forward.

[00:32:37] KA Simpson: And as we move forward to make, this region a better place for everyone, we want to make sure that we keep these stories in the back of our mind, so we don’t repeat the past. And so again, these stories aren’t, again, to blame anyone, to, ridicule, but just to show a little bit more of the truth of the story, so that we have a clearer way to move forward. Making sure that, not only I have a space to create and a space at the table to weigh in on major decisions or major outcomes of things moving forward.

[00:33:12] KA Simpson: That’s my truth. I guess I haven’t been that way so much in the past. I’ve always, I mean, I’ve always been hard headed. I’ve always been outspoken. I think this book, and this project actually over the last two years has helped me to become kind of more strategic in that path forward. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

[00:33:34] KA Simpson: No, I really think it’s just the, it’s the books. It’s the books and the projects is making me think to actually take a look at the past and to help move forward and to become more strategic. and to tell my truth and not to be scared to tell my truth. I think growing up in northern Kentucky, it’s very different than growing up in Cincinnati.

[00:33:56] KA Simpson: And you might not think so just because we’re right across the river. But the population of northern Kentucky, african american population is considerably less than the African American population in Cincinnati. So northern Kentucky Average. It’s about 7 percent and that’s being generous. Cincinnati African American population is about 35, 37% so finding your space as a black man that lives, that identifies as, queer here in Northern Kentucky, it ain’t easy. This book and this project kind of helps me tell my truth in that way and empowers me to hold and create space that’s conducive of the region moving forward. Over the course of me writing this book, it’s kind of impacted me in the same way.
[00:34:45] KA Simpson: I guess it’s watching people read the stories or learn about the stories and kind of be fascinated that this happened or that happened. Telling people about the connection between Northern Kentucky’s Devou Park and, the West End of Cincinnati, who would have known that there was a connection there or talking about how, the first internationally acclaimed African American artist was here in Cincinnati, and we have originals of his artwork, hanging up at the Taft Museum of Art, and that’s still, even though the museum has been there for 80 some odd years, people are still discovering that space now, and so, I guess the second largest impact is kind of watching people learn about these stories and then move forward to tell other people.

[00:35:31] KA Simpson: One thing that I would like, this community to take away from this conversation is that history is not one sided. There’s at least three sides of every story. And want them to take away that we need to be critical of not only the information that we receive, but just being skeptical that what we’re hearing is the only side of the story. Question history, question it in a very qualifiable way.

[00:35:59] KA Simpson: Throughout this process, writing the book, we kind of wanted to make sure, I usually self publish my books, but we had some interest by History Press to publish the book, so we are working, so actually, this will be my first actual traditionally published book. And if you’re not familiar with History Press, they’re the books that you see a lot of, smaller books.

[00:36:26] KA Simpson: They do local histories around the United States, so those kind of old timey, book covers with, History Press Cincinnati, History Press Ludlow, Kentucky History Press. So, so they’ll be picking this up and so we’re in the editing process right now, so look for it in early 2025.

[00:36:50] Margaret: I’m Margaret Tung. and I teach and play the horn for a living. I am the horn professor at University of Cincinnati, the College Conservatory of Music, and I am a proud ArtsWave Black and Brown recipient grant winner. So most of what I do is classical music, and my project is recording an album. And so there’s many, many pieces that have been recorded and will be released on an album or a CD.

[00:37:21] Margaret: And so there’s several pieces. One of the very special pieces that I had commissioned through this project is by Jeff Scott, who is a composer, and he wrote a piece called “Ondas” for solo horn, which means just horn, no piano part or anything like that. And Ondas means waves, and it depicts the waves that he remembers in Brazil.

[00:37:50] Margaret: And there’s many wave like gestures in this piece that really add to the beauty and the sereneness of the piece. It has a lot of fun techniques, such as like a muted stopped horn multifonics, which is when I play the horn and also sing into the horn at the same time. Another piece that was commissioned through this project, “The View From My Window.”

[00:38:15] Margaret: And that piece is written for horn, trombone, and piano, and I’ll be recording those pieces with my husband, who’s also the second and assistant principal trombonist in the Cincinnati Symphony, and the pianist is Jacob Coleman. Who teaches at University of Kentucky. Oh, and my husband’s name is Joseph Rodriguez.

[00:38:36] Margaret: And this piece is about, basically Jeff grew up in New York and saw a lot of drug use. And there is a lot of family issues growing up and he used to daydream out his window, daydream about music and music is what really pulled him through. And so that piece is called “A View From My Window.” And another really interesting piece that I am recording is “La Calavera” by Alice Gomez and this is another piece for just solo horn. La Calavera means skulls and it’s depicted in the movie Coco with the day of the dead and all the skeletons and I think of that, the celebration of life, the morning of death and the party of life, really. And so that’s La Calavera.

[00:39:27] Margaret: This project has probably been the span of over a decade where I started collecting new music for the horn, innovative music for the horns. And there’s a piece by James Wilding. It’s for horn and piano, Ursa. First movement is Ursa Major, second movement is Ursa Minor. And I remember talking to Jamie about it and he wrote it for me and he wanted to be a serious composition, but he said, you know, when he thought about it, he just thought about it as like a mama bear, first movement, baby bear, second movement.

[00:40:02] Margaret: Then there’s one last, it’s a three movement work. It’s a sonata by John Cheatham, who has written a lot of brass music, and I discovered up until that point there hadn’t been any horn solo written by this composer, and I asked him, would you be willing to write a horn solo, and he said yes, and so it’s a three movement sonata work for horn and piano.

[00:40:24] Margaret: It will be released this spring or summer, is the plan. And so going through all of that. So right now I’ve recorded everything and it’s been a real learning process for me. And so you record all the music and they might be in smaller chunks. And so the recording engineer puts them all together and you go through several rounds of edits to make sure that it’s seamless and that we’re not missing any details to the music. And so right now it’s in the editing process and then it should be released this spring or summer. And I’m still really trying to creatively think of a title for the album. It hasn’t come to me yet, but I think it will. When I started learning the horn and, you know, most of our repertoire, most of what we play is, I would say largely all by male composers, white deceased male composers.

[00:41:20] Margaret: And I think even mostly up through all my schooling, that’s basically what I played. And so the idea for this, to bring new music to light was to highlight diverse composers. And so people of color, female composers, and that was a big inspiration for this project and for this CD, so that we’re playing music by composers of all genders and by as much diversity as possible.

[00:41:52] Margaret: In brass, it’s still in general, male dominated. And so you’re not going to see as many female brass players. And so for me, it’s been important to represent some more diversity in this area. I’m hoping to give the audience new music to listen to and to possibly play if they’re horn players. And some of it is quite challenging and some of it is really accessible.

[00:42:23] Margaret: And so different levels of horn music that can be played by varying composers, and some of them are completely new pieces, world premieres, and some of them are, have been around for a little bit, and it’s just I really enjoyed the music and wanted to record it as well. Classical music is fun. And it can be accessible by all, and it’s not something that needs to have a barrier, and that it is a great art form that is accessible.

[00:42:57] Margaret: Since this was an ArtsWave grant, I wanted to use as many Cincinnati people as possible, and so the recording engineer, Joel Crawford, he works for the Cincinnati Public Radio. And through that, he works with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and he’s been amazing to work with, has done such a great job.

[00:43:16] Margaret: And then also, the trombonist in the recording is Joseph Rodriguez, and he plays in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. A lot of Ohio highlights. Jeff Scott at the time was teaching horn at Oberlin Conservatory, which is in Ohio. And also Jamie Wilding is on composition faculty at the University of Akron.

[00:43:49] Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today, we’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared of your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback. What topics are you thinking about and want to dive into more? I invite you to visit CreativitySquared.com to let me know. And while you’re there, be sure to sign up for our free weekly newsletter, so you can easily stay on top of all the latest news at the intersection of AI and creativity. Because it’s so important to support artists,

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[00:44:34] Helen: to say thank you for helping bring my dream to life. And a big, big thank you to everyone who’s offered their time, energy, and encouragement and support so far. I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. This show is produced and made possible by the team at Play Audio Agency. Until next week, keep creating.