Jazz violinist, educator, and coach Christian Howes reveals how music and yoga intersect as tools for emotional resilience, deep presence, and transformation.
We explore the power of limiting choices to unlock creativity, how fear can be reframed through form and clarity, and why playing for trees or strangers can be as meaningful as performing on stage.
Christian also shares his powerful personal story—and how nature, trust, and improvisation are at the heart of his practice today.
✔ In This Episode:
How “not knowing harmony” doesn’t mean you lack creativity
Why too much freedom can paralyze us—and how to bring structure to improvisation
Using yoga poses as metaphors for emotional self-awareness in music
Christian’s transformative experience playing violin in dehumanizing enviroments
What it means to “play for the trees” and build trust with nature
How music can serve as a spiritual and psychological practice
Creating community through Creative Strings Academy
🎻 About Christian Howes:
Christian Howes is an acclaimed jazz violinist, educator, and founder of Creative Strings Academy—a practice and coaching community for musicians seeking artistic growth and creative alignment. His work spans improvisation, pedagogy, and entrepreneurial coaching for musicians around the globe.
📌 https://www.christianhowes.com
📸 IG: @christianhowesviolin
🕐 Time Stamps
00:00 Introduction to Christian Howes
01:05 Influence of Lewis Howes
01:32 Transition to Jazz and Rock
04:06 Becoming an Educator
05:13 Mindfulness in Music
06:21 Infinite Note Exercise
07:07 Improvisation Techniques
12:37 Balancing Learning and Creating
19:11 Challenges in Jazz Pedagogy
22:02 Addressing Fear in Learning and Creativity
23:34 The Importance of Clear Forms in Practice
24:54 Psychological Aspects of Overcoming Fear
25:43 Correlation Between Yoga, Music, and Breathing
26:08 Nature and Music: A Personal Backstory
26:57 Playing Music in Dehumanizing Environments
31:32 The Threat of AI and Digital Takeover
36:08 Aligning Vision with Strategy
38:00 Building Resilience and Emotional Intelligence
38:16 Passion and Persistence in Music
38:58 Creative Strings Academy: A Community for Musicians
📝 Transcript
Opening Questions & Guest Introduction
[00:00:00]
Can you do yoga while you're playing the violin? Can we teach passion? Do you love every note that you play? Join me on the next Music Un-Tuxed where my guest is Christian Howes, world-renowned jazz violinist, educator, and life coach.
🎻 Chris Howes’ Journey Into Music
Welcome Chris to Music Un-Tuxed. We have Chris Howes, the foremost jazz violinist, educator, clinician, performing all over, has the Creative Strings Academy.
Thank you for joining us today, and it's great to have you. I would just love to hear just a little bit of a capsule about how things have come to be where you are now.
I [00:01:00] know you started young, I know a little bit about your journey.
People could learn about me on my brother too. My little brother Lewis Howes has one of the top podcasts in the world, actually. It's called The School of Greatness. It's consistently been ranked in the top 100 of downloaded podcasts.
Probably a lot of listeners might have heard of him. That's my little brother, Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness. We have a two-part interview that I do with him about my backstory, kind of some of my personal journey in my twenties and stuff like that, which we don't need to go into today, people are welcome to hear it.
Yeah, I'd love, thanks for having me, Michael. And I'd love to speak to, you know, briefly, like I was trained as a classical violinist from the age of five, probably like many of our friends and colleagues and perhaps like yourself as well, you know, through the Suzuki method.
And then part of that intensive musical journey for families that embrace music education in this most super intense way, right? Is like, start really young, have a private lesson every week, go to Playins, go to rehearsals, go to camps, go [00:02:00] to recitals, do youth orchestra, do all the things.
We did all the things. That was just something my parents wanted to do.
🎸 Early Exposure to Other Music Styles
And when I got into high school, my friends were playing in a rock band and I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be relatable to the guys and to the girls in my high school. And so I joined the rock band and I was amazed. I was playing electric bass and guitar in the rock bands, but I was amazed by how much I didn't know about playing rock music and how much my friends did, even though we had this completely inverse educational background in the sense that I had started really young and they had only maybe taken like one lesson.
So that was one of my first jarring experiences being introduced to, let's say, a different culture of music education or a culture of musical participation.
And I would say that there were then many more of those experiences where you've been in this one community, this one way of learning things, and all of a sudden you're just jarringly, but in this other community where like up is down and down is up and the way people do [00:03:00] things is completely different.
Mm-hmm.
And every one of those was like really formative for me. So first with the rock band, then playing with the blues band in high school, then playing in jazz bands, playing with Latin musicians, playing in Black churches for four years. I played in church.
And then ultimately going to New York and playing with lots of every kind of fringe thing you could think of. I was kind of the guy in New York City that was like, he's the violinist that can play in tune, and read, but also he can improvise more or less in whatever you need.
And so people would call me for every possible fringe project, and that included like playing with Les Paul for 13 years, but it also included playing with avant-garde composers, collectives, playing bebop, playing with Latin musicians, Appalachian music, whatever it might be.
So I had a big touring career, made a lot of records, did a lot of different things as an entrepreneur in the music industry before what has happened now, which is this crazy [00:04:00] transition for everybody, not only in the music industry, but in the world, right? In terms of the economics of things and where they're all going.
Over a couple decades I've kind of become a teacher in addition to still identifying as an artist, as a creator. So I've started to do a lot of things with teaching. I have a thousand videos on my YouTube channel that are free.
🎼 Introducing Teaching Tools for Improvisation
Let's talk about you as a teacher then, because I love all the materials that you put out there, and a person like me, I'm rooted strongly in classical music and I'm tied up in the classical music world.
When I see you at these conventions leading these groups and everyone is improvising and you're giving these tools and they're improving us all as players and it's also expanding our minds. So can you elaborate on those tools and maybe demonstrate some of the things?
Yeah. Absolutely love to and thanks for saying that. I think this idea of what you're talking about in your experience being [00:05:00] tied—I encourage even non-musicians to think about this 'cause I think it's really interesting parallel for all of us.
I'm guessing we're both roughly in our fifties or something, right? You might be in your twenties, you might be in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, or whatever.
I like to say that I'm actually a life coach for musicians, which might sound woo-wooy to a lot of people, but it's not, and it's about this idea of feeling tied, feeling stuck.
It's like we're stuck in a paradigm that we've been in, maybe a community, maybe a language, a framework, a worldview that, you know, a way of being and we're like, well, there's this thing that I see that, wow, wouldn't it be cool if I could do that?
But it can bring so many mix of emotions.
So, like, for example, for me, the last couple years I've been trying to get more active again, and I've noticed like that evolution. Specifically, in yoga, is one area where that was challenging to me.
And it was like part of my brain was like, I would love to be able to do yoga. And then the other part of me was like, well, but there's all these things that feel hard about it. There's all these things that are stopping me, that are [00:06:00] confronting me about it right now.
This happens to us also in our marriages, with parenting, with our health, with money and career. Like we think, I wish it could be this way, but the fact is we're tied, to use your word.
So breaking apart from that, I'm really interested in that.
🧘♂️ Demonstrating the Infinite Note Exercise
And I will share some exercises since you asked about it. This is one that I've developed based on what I've learned in yoga.
And so I have this loop that I made here. I make all my loops just with my violin and my pedals. So I'm gonna play it now.
So this loop is like just a little background, right? It has a couple chords that are floating, and if we just grab any note from G major, we can play that note.
And what I'll do as a teacher is I'll give very specific instructions. I'll tell the students when to play the note and what notes to draw from. So I might say like, let's ground ourself and let's find a G major scale, which [00:07:00] most musicians know, which is do re mi fa la ti do, if anybody's counting, right?
And so I'll say, okay, we've got that in our fingers.
And for violinists I would say, you know, don't just play it there. Play it in some sequences, you know,
You know, or maybe
Some simple sequences just to get kind of grounded in the scale. And I'll say, okay, so now you, you've got these seven notes available to you, these seven notes. Now in your mind, just grab one of them and let's say you're thinking, okay, E, I'm gonna think E and on my cue, I just want you to hold that note, an infinite note.
So we're gonna try that. So 1, 2, 3, hold the note.
And as you're holding this note, notice your breath. Let your bow [00:08:00] flow. Notice your body, notice your shoulders, and then move your attention to notice your intonation.
I'll kind of take them through this mindfulness exercise, which is very similar to yoga, which is all about having the ability to move our awareness.
So like you're doing a body scan while you're playing and you're teaching yourself how to be relaxed.
🎶 Mindfulness, Improvisation & Self-Compassion
And it's multifaceted and it's so simple.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's fantastic.
And so you can see how on this, with this infinite note exercise, which is just literally one note. And by the way, obviously we don't need a backing track, right? But the backing track kind of just provides a little something for us.
Mm-hmm.
A container to be held in if you—a container. Yes.
And this mindfulness [00:09:00] exercise, though, I think, is difficult to achieve with prescribed parts. In other words, well, of course, if you're playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto or you're practicing excerpts for an orchestral piece, I guess theoretically you can be mindful of many things as well, right?
And we do this, we say, okay, well practice this passage, but bring your awareness to supporting the violin while you play, or being mindful of the mechanics of a shift, right?
I believe that having the improvisation format kind of opens up something else because, for number one, just the aspect of like, we're choosing what to play. I think it's completely different.
I've made the choice, I'm gonna play this note, and it was my choice. And second of all, there's not a standard that's out there that we're comparing ourselves to.
Like if you're thinking about the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, depending what generation, if you're our generation, you're thinking about Itzhak Perlman's version.
Right.
But if you're a younger generation, you might be thinking Hilary Hahn, or, you know, Ray Chen or whoever.
Yeah.
It's really hard to not compare ourselves to that [00:10:00] standard and be like, it's either right or wrong.
So when we're improvising, we can begin this process of saying, you know, like, this note that I'm playing right now.
Mm-hmm.
It's like a breath and every breath is—we don't judge it. Is it right or is it wrong? It might be a short breath, it might be a long breath, it might be full.
But we start to create this self-talk that is based around: I accept myself, I forgive myself, I cheerlead for myself, I love myself.
Every note that we draw, every note that we play is an opportunity to love ourselves.
Here is the continuation of your transcript formatting, starting from where we left off:
💓 Self-Acceptance Through Music Practice
It sounds very cliché, but actually it's true in our marriages, in our parenting, in money, in health, in exercise, and I just find that it's such a common human struggle for all of us.
And I say that as someone from a vantage point who has received multiple acclaims, right?
So I'm saying like we all can be in this unfavorable comparison mode, this imposter syndrome mode, this striving for—what?
I just need to get to this. I just need to get to that level. I just need my partner to be more like this.
Trying to control the world rather than bringing it into our internal and changing our nervous system, right?
Really it's changing our nervous system. Changing our self-talk. Changing how we express ourselves.
🎯 Resistance and Shifting Perspective
And so a lot of people, when they first hear this, they might say like, oh, well, that's fine, but—but—but that doesn't teach me.
I thought you were gonna teach me how to improvise.
Which is already their assumptions, their desire to control, their baggage, their resistance getting in the way.
And so, like, let's say you, Michael—which you didn't—but let's say that you followed up earlier when you said like, I'm just tied up in what I'm doing and I want to get to something different, right?
Then I might say, okay, go through these exercises with me, and I might say, let's do the infinite note, but then we're gonna do more than just the infinite note, right? I'll show you those exercises in a second.
And then you would come and the first time you would experience it, you would do it perfectly.
First of all, you know, there's no question. Like, 'cause you can play a note.
Right?
Breathe.
Exactly. It's my breath.
And that's literally all—like that participation is a hundred percent success under my rubric, right?
Yes.
🧘 The Yoga Analogy & Practicing Acceptance
And this is very much like yoga class.
Yes.
But the first yoga class that I went to, and the same thing with a lot of people that might experience this for the first time, I'd be like, well, I didn't really get it. I didn't—I thought it was gonna be something else.
And it's like the yoga people will just tell you, well, you just keep coming to class, like stay in the room.
But if you come to 10 yoga classes, like you'll be a changed person.
Right.
And if you do this every day, if you embody these mindful practices—it doesn't have to be with the violin, by the way.
It could be meditation, it could be running, it could be active practicing, active listening with your partner, or conscious breathing.
Yes.
There's so many ways that we can start to actually do the practice to change the practice.
🎵 Music as an Expansive Practice
I love that.
Any expansive practice—and music, I believe, is an expansive practice—is ultimately about us.
It's not about refining your chops.
It's a practice.
It's a practice.
Yeah. Beautiful.
Ultimately, the practice is a vehicle for becoming a better friend to yourself.
And everybody's gonna protest and say, but no, teach me.
🎻 Applying Mindfulness to Beginning Students
But I wanna ask you a follow-up a little bit on this because I love this. I play for a lot of yoga classes, a lot of Shavasana.
Yeah.
And I really appreciate that. Now you mentioned you started the Suzuki method, and I don't mean to backtrack a little bit, but for all those teachers out there—I didn't do Suzuki, but I did the traditional, the grind—
How can we incorporate this? What would you say for beginner violin students?
Because of the monks, they teach breathing.
Right.
Early in their curriculum.
🏗️ Elemental Forms & Beginner Improvisation
Yeah. So elemental forms, right?
And this is so—well, I use the word elemental forms, which is, you know, what are the forms that we [00:14:00] encounter in music?
A lot of times they're pieces of music that have been written, and it's like a form, right?
So if you play a piece of music—but even before you play a full piece of music—you learn simpler things like how to play a full bow on an A string, right? That's an elemental form, right?
I mean, playing just a long bow on an A string is an elemental form. We would teach a beginning student how to do that, and the focus is about the bow.
But then they might broaden that and say, now let's play some rhythms of that note, such as:
Right.
Or:
These are forms. And I liken forms to yoga poses, because yoga poses are also forms—stand tall, breathe, and drop your shoulders.
Right. And that's the pose. And another one is down dog—is like, put your hands and, you know, put your butt up in the air.
But all the poses are elemental forms that any human can put their body in.
And then once they're [00:15:00] in that pose, they have the choice to just breathe.
And there's things that they can strive for in the pose, but the point is to do the pose.
And so the same thing applies to improvisation.
🎼 First Improvisation Exercises for Beginners
So if we go back to this idea before where it's like the student is playing the long note on an A string, I'll build on that and I'll say, let's play recurring notes of equal duration, right?
Which is just a fancy way of saying, let's just play more of these notes.
But maybe we'll put them in a group of notes that the student could choose from.
So let's say, for example, four strings on the violin. I would say, okay, I want the student to play a long note and they can choose any one of those four strings and they're gonna play it now.
One, two, play.
My violin's a little out of tune.
And then I'll say, switch the note. Now pick another note. Now, let's just pick another one.
So the student has just improvised.
It could [00:16:00] be their first or maybe third day playing the violin, right?
Because if a 5-year-old's starting on the violin, they may not even have a real violin, they might have to have a Cracker Jack box for a while or whatever.
But let's say once the student is ready to actually draw the bow on the string, that could be an exercise that any teacher could give to the student.
So the very first time that they play, they're choosing what notes they play. They're improvising. It's baked in from the beginning, and that's an example. That's one example.
🎶 Integrating Improvisation from the Start
That's how you can put that right into your teaching from the very start.
Yeah. Beautiful.
And then we can add all these elements of variation to it.
Mm-hmm.
So we could say, let's bring that other rhythm that we had before. You know, like:
A more advanced student who knows the G major scale, I might say play quarter notes—random quarter notes.
And once you're in that structure, that form right there, which was [00:17:00] recurring quarter notes, recurring notes of an equal duration, then you're in that form and you breathe, and you make choices and you feel what's going on with you.
You can bring your attention to technique, you can bring your attention to rhythm, you can bring your attention to intonation, you can bring your attention to composition, to dynamics—all these things.
But the difference is, well, you're improvising.
And I would suggest that we feel a sense of pride and ownership when we're creating.
And in fact, one of the things that makes us human is that we want to make things inherently.
Yeah.
🎵 Creativity Versus Reproduction
I think having that basis there and having the students be within themselves and creating it that way, and not having it on the page looking at something—
Yeah.
Well, it's more holistic.
It teaches them in a different vein what the sound is that should really be first.
Well, usually when a student's playing a book one piece, the first piece, right?
There's gonna be standards that are set. Hey, use more bow, get your second finger higher, hold up the violin.
There's gonna be these things that we are teaching the student how to play it, quote-unquote, correctly.
Right.
Which there's value in that.
But also there's another way to go about when we're improvising, where we can say like, what would happen if you used more bow?
What would happen if you move your left-hand finger up and down to see where the ring occurs?
But it's still part of this—like the student is having some ownership and getting a choice about, well, if I do this, it sounds that way. If I do this, it sounds that way.
But it's not that we're measuring to one standard to try to sound like Dr. Suzuki sounded on the record or whoever played it on the record or whatever.
🎶 Integrating Creativity with Classical Objectives
So I think it can be integrated with traditional objectives for learning, certainly with classical music.
It doesn't have to be this other thing. And a lot of times people, they confuse like nuances of style or even culture with aspects of musical fundamentals.
And they also confuse creativity with learning harmony, rhythm, and arrangement—which are different than the creative process itself.
So the creative process, like I just demonstrated, is just a series of making choices.
And according to my method, every choice you make by virtue of your participation is a hundred percent success. We don't judge it.
People have this resistance around, well, it doesn't sound jazzy, or it doesn't sound like this, or it doesn't sound like that.
And it's like, well, now you're talking about something else.
Mm-hmm.
🔑 The Difference Between Learning & Creating
You know, and that's more of a learning process.
So they're building blocks that you can add afterwards.
Well, yeah. And I would say that there's a difference between learning and creating. And this is one of the things that we really get wrong.
So for example, if someone—and this is again, a great [00:20:00] analog with yoga—so if I go to a yoga class, they will say like, you know, stand in tree pose. But if you can't stand in tree pose, just put your weight in your right foot, because you're still getting the same benefit. And eventually you might be able to stand in tree pose.
And so there's always a way to participate in the form based on the knowledge or the ability that you currently have.
Now, the mistake we make—and this often happens in jazz pedagogy—is people will come in and they'll say, okay, improvise over this blues or improvise over this jazz standard. Just use your ears. You can do it.
Well, no, we can't do it. We haven't learned it any more than I could if my teacher in yoga was to say, just pick up your left foot and just do it.
Mm-hmm.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
We want to have a respect for where is the level of knowledge where the student is at.
And what happens though is teachers and people that might identify like yourself, Michael, who would say, well, I'm an 85% classical, but I've just dibbled and dabbled in this or that, they'll have this false assumption. They'll think, well, if I just try harder, I can do it.
Mm-hmm.
And they'll just bang their head against the wall and think there's something wrong with me.
Yeah.
🔐 The Myth of Natural Creativity & Limits
Mm-hmm. If I was more imaginative, I should be able to cue some switch and just be magical. So I guess I'm not a great musician.
Well, no, it has nothing to do with that. You just haven't had the chance to learn harmony. Right. You haven't had the chance to learn this particular rhythmic language or this particular stylistic nuance.
So we need to separate that. And when we exercise creativity, we need to know our limits. We need to know where we are. And then that's a really critical failure that happens for a lot of people and it causes a lot of people to beat up on themselves.
🏋️ Confronting Fear with Clarity
Well, let's talk, can we talk about another yoga pose?
So like the Virabhadra, the warrior. Well, maybe Warrior Two. And I'm alluding to the fear. What are we scared of? What are we warring against? What do we need to see through? I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.
No, I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Well, from a teaching standpoint, the way that we eliminate that fear is by limiting choices.
So if we go back to this example that I gave, right? And I said, okay, to the student, you have these four open strings. My tuning's a little sharp.
There are four choices there. Can you take your thumb and choose one of them and just put your thumb on it and choose it? Now a 3-year-old, first time they ever saw a violin, will be able to understand that.
And they might say, great. Now pick two of them. Perfect. I'm giving the student so much specificity and their knowledge, ability, and success is 100% defined by participation.
This is very different. The opposite of this would be to put a violin in a student's hand and say, "Hey, just play something for me."
Mm-hmm.
Do that to anybody and they will freeze up. They will freeze up 'cause it's too many choices. Having so much freedom is like the enemy of creativity.
But if I say, choose this or this note—either a D or an A—and pick one and play it for me on my cue: one, two, ready, go. A student will succeed at that every time. And because it's a clear task given to them at their ability level.
🧹 Student & Practitioner Approaches to Fear
Okay, so this is from a teaching standpoint, how we address fear.
Now from a student standpoint or from a practitioner, an adult, whatever it might be, how we address our fear, I think similarly to what I just showed, is that we engage in forms that we understand that are very, very clear.
Again, yoga pose: standing warrior, Warrior Two, or whatever. It's a pose and it's more or less intelligible to anybody.
We can relate to it.
We can relate to it. And so we wanna make sure as a practitioner that we have these clear forms when we're improvising in music that we understand just as well as we understand standing, mountain, tree pose, or warrior.
If somebody was teaching me how to dance class and they were like, do this move and then do this move, and then do this move, I'd be like, ah, I quit. Because there's no way I can do that.
But it's a perfect analogy actually for dance classes, you know, learning 'cause learning language, that's a learning process.
It is.
You know, it's really a learning process. And so we want to give people these elemental forms that they can exist with and still be improvisational. And if we're practicing it, then we wanna do that.
🌱 The Psychological Practice of Self-Compassion
Now, beyond that, there's another level, which is the psychological level.
Yes.
And the psychological level, I believe, again, we get this in yoga class because we have someone that's telling us, reminding us constantly, wherever you are right now is perfect.
You're perfect right where you are, just the way you are. You're soulful, intelligent, attractive, powerful.
Breathe. Notice your breath. Notice your body. Notice your intention. Set your intention for why you want to be here today. Why is this important to you?
And on and on. It's these kinds of, you know, and, but that itself is a practice.
Mm-hmm.
The practice of breathing, the practice of saying things to ourselves that are supportive and not tearing us down.
Right. Does that answer your question?
It does. It's beautiful. So yoga and how we can correlate it to music and breathing.
🌿 Music, Nature, and Personal Transformation
There's also a lot of what you do outside. So I wanna hear about nature and music and how that is a little bit more...
How, what? Tell me.
Tell, because I have that inspiration too. And I see what you do and I'd love to hear.
I'll tell you a little bit about my backstory that inspired my thoughts. And actually, it's this backstory that has inspired a lot of my teaching and what I do as a musician.
So when I was 20, I spent four years in Ohio prisons on a drug-related charge. It was drug trafficking. I was a college student. I was a small-time weed smoker and, you know, I would sell small bags.
And then I got set up by an undercover cop who asked me to go to the dealer that I knew by virtue of my participation in the bands on the bar scene. And could I get him a large amount of LSD.
And I was like, sure. And I got it, and I paid a huge price for it. I spent four years in Ohio prisons. And so this was a big part of my formative development.
We're talking about horrible stuff. So this is kind of the spark for what made me think of playing in nature because I would play—there was nowhere to play my violin except for on the prison yard.
Mm.
You know, and so on the prison yard, you've got all these convicts that are walking around, you know, a loop on the track, or they're stationed at different points at picnic tables.
Or they might be on the baseball field, or they might be on the weight yard or whatever. And I would be sitting on the yard playing my violin sometimes, and sometimes I would be playing my violin with other prisoners.
And there were different congregations of prisoners that played music on the yard.
And so what I noticed is that playing music in that environment, which is by definition and in reality dehumanized, alienating.
And when I use those words, I have a very specific meaning in mind, which is that there's an absence of trust. There's an absence of intimacy. There's an absence of freedom.
Mm-hmm.
So that to me is what, how I think of a dehumanizing environment. It's one where you don't feel trust. You're constantly scared, you're constantly uncertain.
Now, it's not to say that it's a spectrum because you might have friends in prison, you might feel some elements of safety sometimes and less other times. But basically that's the vibe, right?
Yeah.
So in that environment, on the yard playing music, you can feel how it brings lightness, love, trust, intimacy, connection.
People cry. You know, people talk to each other.
Right.
And so this was a really kind of an aha moment for me. And I was like, wait, what is the purpose of music?
Like, we lose it. Like when we're in classical music, like you gotta have an air-conditioned practice room, you gotta have a conductor and you gotta sheet music and music stands and a publicist and a librarian.
And you gotta have union contracts. It's like all these artifices that we have grown up with around music.
And we think that's what it is, but it's not music. You see what it is at its most primitive element on a prison yard or in a hospital, in hospice, in a war zone. I'm imagining; I've never been in a war zone.
And so that kind of, I was like, oh, this is it. Like I'm just playing my violin and every type of convict is walking around this yard.
And they appreciated it. Like, I'm practicing Mendelssohn or whatever, or scales or working on Coltrane, it didn't matter. People like those convicts, they appreciated it.
In fact, it was something that helped me survive on many levels.
🌿 Playing for Nature & Rebuilding Trust
Not to belabor the point, but to access your specific point. So whenever we can connect with that, I say to people all the time, well, find a street corner or just go outside or just go in a different environment and just play.
It is a powerful exercise in letting go, in letting your voice, your expression, and/or your vibration reach out into the world and to feel whatever's coming in that environment back to you, rather than just in your bathroom or in your living room.
So is that, does that answer your question?
Yes it does. And it makes me feel like it. So really we're breaking down walls in so many different ways with the music between each other, like what was happening with you and the people in that prison yard.
And also, like when I go out—I was recently in California doing a residency in the redwoods. I went out into the redwood forest and there was a lot of burnt trees, burnt, like at the bottom you could see all the harm.
And so I was just thinking, and I was playing there and I was playing for the trees and feeling something. I was feeling like almost the trees weeping with my music.
And I'm thinking, yes, there's a distrust, I'm sure, with nature for us humanoids, what we're doing to it. And I think music is a real barrier that can help convey.
I might be totally out of line right now, but that can speak to the trees and build the trust through the trees and the animals that are thinking, "You guys are messing it up here."
You know it.
Well, whether it is or not, right? Like just the fact that it presents itself to you that way.
That's true.
Is meaningful for you.
Mm-hmm.
