Chris Woodyard joined our team this Fall from the great New Door Ventures internship program. Every once in a while someone really gifted and special steps into our doors and we get a gift well beyond the day to day needs of an office. We’re thrilled to introduce Chris’ first post for us, moving and original, just like Chris.
Enjoy!
Kimberly Charles
The beautiful sound of music can be heard anywhere and everywhere. Music can be heard by musicians playing in the subways in concrete jungles to the whistle of the trees far out in the country. One thing that brings most of humanity together is a love for music and I am one of those people.
Music has always been an enormous part in my life. Since I was young, I was attracted to sounds from various artists. Coming to America when I was four from Pordenone, Italy was an exhilarating time for me. When I was young, I had trouble making friends due to my shy nature and received support, confidence and reassurance from the soundscapes I heard while traveling with my family in the U.S and later through out my life. While living with my family and moving from state to state and doing my own personal traveling later in life, I got to listen and envelop myself in many different artists. Everything from the classical works of Bach and Chopin to Motown to Jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, to more ambient sounds from Brian Eno and Nils Frahm, to sixties pop to the more experimental music like Can’s Tago Mago album and Harry Partch.
When I got older, I started my own personal travel journey to different cities and became very inspired by all of the sights and sounds I experienced. I became so inspired through travel that I started creating my own personal music with the artist name, ‘Indigo People’. I draw inspiration from all the people, places and things I encountered and wrote “musical journal entries” of the cities I’ve been to.
After my first two albums that I wrote while living in Melbourne, Florida I created a jazzy ambient album called “Introspective” that was inspired from last year’s trip to Boston, MA. While I was in Boston I met many different people and was able to “sneak ” into the Berklee College of Music where I jammed with a lot of great musicians and met inspiring teachers. Back in Florida, I was (and still am) interested in all the artistic and creative endeavors happening in Brooklyn, NY that I wrote another album called ‘Green Machine’ that was about my mental trip to Brooklyn.
‘Green Machine was also my first collaborative album in which other people “played” in my “band”; Sylvia Plath played bass, Carl Sagan on guitar and orchestral instruments and Jackson Pollock on drums while I was on piano and Wurlitzer keyboard. What a band. A few months later I moved to Boulder, CO where I met some of the best people in my life. I got an apartment in the south neighborhood of Table Mesa, Boulder and ended up creating my best album yet, ‘Glasshouse’. The album was inspired by all the beautiful people I met as well as my camping trips, bicycling and taking part in a #BlackLivesMatter protest in the streets of downtown Boulder. I currently live and work in San Francisco and love every moment of it! I plan on writing a new album sometime next year and plan on visiting other great music cities like Portland, Seattle and hopefully Europe later in life (during which I will continue to make my musical discography until I finally complete my nomadic story).
Eventually, I hope to go back to school and study Music Therapy and work in a local hospital where I can take care of patients with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease once I get my degree. Being a Music Therapist will give me great pride as I will be able to put my favorite two things into practice: helping people and creating memorable music.
Photo Courtesy of Fine Art America
One day, I hope to find a way to move to the Netherlands and live in the countryside, where I can continue playing music, write poems on my typewriter, paint, meditate and tend to my future garden. All of these wonderful options wouldn’t be available to me if it wasn’t for all the countless friends and loved ones that have helped me grow into the person and artist I am today. The music I make and the music I will continue to make will always be a gift to those people that have given me the support I needed to grow as an individual both artistically and spiritually. One of my favorite painters, Rene Magritte, said a famous quote that rings true for how I view my creative expression, “life obliges me to do something, so I paint”. In this perspective, life obliges me to create music and so I gladly will.
By Chris Woodyard
A link to Chris's music can be found here: http://christopher321.bandcamp.com/
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