Sam, with his absurd and wonderful networking prowess, formed a convoluted scheme a few months ago to meet the Art and Seek reporter, Hady Mawajdeh, while on a “casual” tour through the KERA studios with another contact. His plan worked, and Hady was at our dress rehearsal a few weeks later taking pictures, recording audio, and interviewing Sam, Jonathan, and Lauren for a five minute KERA piece that you can listen to here: http://artandseek.org/spotlight/verdigris-ensemble-is-a-choir-with-stars-in-their-eyes/
One of Sam’s consistent artistic impulses is collaboration, and it features strongly in the upcoming season and helps give life to Verdigris’ mission of unique choral programming. This collaborative spirit has also helped build a small and growing community of artists, poets, musicians, and other creatives who support and care about the mission of Verdigris.
A few nights after Hady visited rehearsal, Sam and I grabbed drinks with him in Deep Ellum after work to brainstorm marketing and media approaches for Verdigris. Feeling inspired, Sam whipped out his iPhone and recorded a great clip of Hady excitedly listing various ideas and tactics over the ambient din of surrounding conversations and bar clatter. With the disclaimer to avoid doing more than we can do well (advice that Sam has now heard from several caring sources, and - to his credit - is learning to heed), he said that our first priority should be starting a newsletter. One that not only highlighted the updates and advances in the life of Verdigris, but that unified the calendars and news of the Dallas (and beyond) community of choral organizations.
Sam’s collaborative spidey sense immediately picked up on an opportunity not to be missed. The next day, he was at his laptop feverishly formatting, planning, and aggregating events and news to include in the new and improved Verdigris newsletter.
The first one hit inboxes at the beginning of last week. Every Monday, you can look forward to an email that shares Verdigris updates, the buzz around local small arts organizations, things to listen to, and performances to attend. It goes beyond the choral medium, mostly because we are a group that wants choral music to leave the vacuum and exist in a larger context of artistic beauty and creation.
The small arts community is not a zero sum game; we are stronger together as each group gains a larger audience and louder platform. Dallas has excellent large art institutions in the opera, art museum, and symphony, but there is so much smaller scale excellence to be explored. People just need to know about it. Subscribe here: http://verdigrismusic.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=1d5bfe43d0475e7a14569620a&id=84a764e669.
If you’re already subscribed, tell your friends.
P.S. The updated newsletter needs a cool name. Send ideas to info@verdigrismusic.org. Extra points for avoiding any punny low hanging fruit like beat, rhythm, pulse, notes, etc. If you win, I’ll see to it that Sam buys you a drink and that you get free tickets to our April 14 Consolation of Apollo concert.