Lauren Passarelli ~ 2004 Interview part 8

College days with Melissa Etheridge, close tour with Pat Metheny, Two Tru

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lauren
• Passarelli
• two
• tru

[torstendewinkel]

Thanks. Is the Berklee email address still good?

[laurenpass]

yeeees! 

[BIMBACHEopenART]

For more than 15 years now, I have been an activist for the creation of multicultural and interdisciplinary platforms (such as the UNESCO endorsed bimbache.info) seeking to promote non-hierarchic intercultural communication and collaboration, and certainly motivated by a strong wish to spare others the experience I had.

Hope all is going great for you in Boston,

a big hug from far away!

Torsten

[laurenpass]

'Ello Torsten,

Lovely of you to write. It's actually very sad to me that the tour wasn't a great experience for you; after all that, because it was hurry up & wait, for me, for 3 semesters. I had always thought, well at least it had worked out great for you. Berklee is a mecca for intercultural understanding & supporting diversity. I'd like to hear more. There may be something I can impart to my international students that will help them & certainly give me more understanding of how they think

[laurenpass]

& act. That's absolutely terrible & shocking to hear. My heart goes to you. I thought it was completely the opposite: A wonderful experience & playing all the big places, the tonight show etc. I'm sorry it turned out this way for you. I'm happy that you wrote me & wish you the best.

L Pass

[torstendewinkel]

As to "the other guy", t's easy in a pathological culture to come to confuse self-esteem with arrogance and authenticity with ego...

That experience completely broke my spirit and taught me what learned helpessness is: I was culturally different. Accordingly, I was close friends with the Brazilian percussionist and the African American multiinstrumentalist, but in general, either you knew how to conform or you didn't. You were judged no questiions asked. And Pat was my big hero.

[torstendewinkel]

No. Don't believe everything people say (and careful when passing it on as fact).

Everybody played. For part of the show - and only part -, we played along with the sampled orchestra (from the ADATS which had by then replaced the Synclavier, a device of myth, an early HD recorder).

It was in fact the hardest thing in the world because for that half of the show, we all had to perfectly blend with those orchestral samples, much harder than to play a part with your own time feel and interpretation.

[laurenpass]

actually many of the players on the tour told me they weren't playing live, just Pat.

[fendweller]

That is a bit of a bombshell. Not so much the artificial strings, which I noticed and disliked, but the no one's playing except for Pat bit. Not quite tru, of course - Rodby, Wertico, Beard and the singers 'played' but I know what she means. The show had that suspiciously synthetic feel.

[laurenpass]

He just wanted to preserve the intensity & authenticty since that recorded live orchestra was out of this world. Synths wouldn't have even been in the same galaxy. The music must have been too complex & technology too young to just fly in the orchestra tracks.