® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide To Robert Mann, Who Opened My Musical Mind and Heart… And for Little Aramis, Whose Eyes Truly Are a Musical Instrument for His Imagination 1 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide Through the universal language of music and the arts, This guide is also dedicated to any and all who perceive value in: Sharing by teaching one another, Experiencing life as a perpetual opportunity to learn and grow, Seeking collaboration to sustain the wonder of our cultural development, Cultivating a common quest to find beauty within classical music, Nature, humanity, and our planet… 2 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide TABLE OF CONTENTS SUBJECT PAGE Introduction 4 - 11 Brief Synopses of Each Tropical Sweets® Segment 11 - 19 Daybreak - Delius 20 - 32 Florida Daybreak: A Poem, Narration, and Writing Model 33 - 37 The Swan - Saint-Saëns 38 - 48 The Swan...A Read-Aloud Fairy Tale and Writing Model 49 - 52 The Swan - Play-along Arrangement (Rhythmic) 53 The Swan - Play-along Arrangement (Melodic) 54 Calm Sea - Mendelssohn 55 - 64 Calm Sea - Play-along Arrangement (Melodic) 65 Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov 66 - 75 Flight of the Bumblebee Play-along Arrangement (Rhythmic) 76 - 77 Flight of the Bumblebee Play-along Arrangement (Melodic) 78 The Dove - Respighi 79 - 88 Aquarium - Saint-Saëns 88 - 95 Aquarium Play-along Arrangement (Rhythmic) 96 Aquarium Play-along Arrangement (Melodic) 97 Sunset - Delius 98 - 108 Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven 108 - 127 Moonlight Sonata Play-along Arrangement (Melodic) 128 - 129 A Personal Note 130 © 2015 Taste of the Classics, Inc. 3 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide INTRODUCTION As the flagship of the Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure series, the Tropical Sweets® Adventure is an immersive, variety-driven listening experience. Every visual image has been carefully sequenced in order to keep the music in the foreground, and this artistic process enables the music to inspire its own themes of the imagination as it generates all of the visual action. By anchoring one’s eyes on beautifully flowing Nature and space imagery while perpetually keeping the art of listening in the foreground, Tropical Sweets® ensures that each individual listener will experience infinitely repeatable, deeply relaxing, and educationally inspiring musical adventures. In “a visual world” (Naisbitt, Mindset!), the listening-based Tropical Sweets® Adventure places the ears in a unique leadership role where they can provide sorely needed relief for the eyes. Essentially, the eyes become a musical instrument for one’s imagination by enabling the music and imagery to transform each listener into a unique “listening artist.” Each listening artist is empowered through “anchored listening” to explore and interweave the wonders of timeless classical music and Nature. One’s eyes, while fully engaged, will never quite experience the same thing twice as the ears enable the music to take charge and inspire fresh moments of deep relaxation, stress relief, peacefulness, learning, creativity, and rejuvenation. When I first launched Tropical Sweets® twenty-five years ago, videocassette recorders (VCRs) were relatively new. Back then I knew that my musical vision could only come fully to life if each VCR were connected to a stereo system or headphones. However, since most of us didn’t even set the clocks on our VCRs back then, (which often meant that “12:00 A.M.” perpetually flashed), elaborate connections between VCRs and stereo systems were rare. Fortunately, times have certainly changed and due in no small part to the 4 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide genius of innovators like the late Dr. Amar Gopal Bose and Steve Jobs, today’s audio-based technologies enable Tropical Sweets® to enrich each listener’s experiences virtually anywhere. A noisy aircraft can become a fully engaged listening environment (FELE) where Tropical Sweets®, combined with noise-cancelling headphones, can flow through a mobile device, a larger portable computer, or a portable DVD player enabling anyone to experience a fully-engaged listening environment that fills their world with amazingly intense, inspired, and immersive relaxation (“FELE the AIR”). On the ground, the same technologies can make any room or office into a Tropical Sweets® launch pad, and the DVD edition is equally at home in the classroom, the living room, or the media room. (Rooted in the age-old saying that “classical music puts me to sleep,” the Tropical Sweets® DVD also features a special Relaxation Loop for anyone seeking a more effective way to drift off to sleep in the bedroom; a great way to use your TV’s sleep timer.) By drawing one’s eyes into the listening process, Tropical Sweets® provides more immersive access to the wonders inside classical music and Nature. As Joseph Campbell once stated in a radio interview, “People are not seeking the meaning of life, they are looking for an experience of life,” and it is in that ineffable spirit that Tropical Sweets® offers uniquely individualized access to the rich experiences deep inside a world filled with the timeless beauty of music and Nature. The eight Tropical Sweets® videos visually reflect prominent structural and architectural elements of the music, setting the stage for ongoing exploration, discovery, and learning. My intent was not to define or limit the experience of the music through the use of imagery, but simply to suggest compelling connections and relationships between what is heard and what is seen. Each listening artist will interweave the music and imagery into unique listening art creations as 5 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide he/she discovers a unique sense of aesthetic balance within an anchored listening experience. Anchoring the eyes with the beauty of Nature, while the ears keep the music in the pilot’s seat, serves to silence the outside world and may open significant creative storehouses within each listening artist. (The eminent Harvard psychologist, John Weir Perry, coined the term “affect image” to describe these prospectively empowering human interactions with art.) Once the aesthetic bloodstream is open to personal creativity, writing prose or poetry, painting or drawing, dancing or moving, and a wealth of interdisciplinary insights should naturally flow from the hearts and spirits of listening artists of all ages. About Me As a native of Michigan, amidst the snow and ice of my childhood winters our family would drive to Daytona Beach, Florida, for what seemed to be miraculous “summer” vacations. I think the essence of Flight of the Sandpipers, which was shot exclusively at Daytona Beach, may have originated when I first saw those tiny birds running amidst the surf. In the fourth grade, I began studying the violin at McKinley Elementary School in Battle Creek, Michigan, “The Cereal City.” As a child I sang in several marvelous choirs, (Miss Dooley’s all-city elementary chorus was by far my favorite), and I played a variety of instruments, including the trombone, clarinet, drums, cornet, and euphonium. I had the great privilege of finishing high school (junior and senior years) at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan, and I also completed my violin performance degrees at the University of Michigan, where I served as concertmaster of the University Symphony and Associate Concertmaster of the Toledo Symphony. After serving as a founding member of the DeVos String Quartet and concertmaster of the Grand Rapids Symphony, I enjoyed over a decade as a concert and recording artist while serving as a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New World String Quartet. Our quartet was 6 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide granted to great privilege of serving as artists-in-residence at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and I still enjoy my role as a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which gives me the opportunity to vote for the Grammy Awards every year. Several years ago, I wrote the interdisciplinary Microsoft Composer Collection Companion Guide for Microsoft Press, and I have been honored to receive numerous awards for video production including “Best of Florida”, Telly, and Intercom Awards. Diverse educational interests naturally drew me into the dynamic field of higher education instructional digital media production and faculty enrichment, where I spent the past twenty years in a progression of leadership roles at both the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando and the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa. In my most recent role as USF’s Senior Director for eLearning Innovations and Entrepreneurial Partnerships, I led my Media Innovation Team in a successful quest for over forty international design awards. In January of 2013, I resigned from USF in order to fully dedicate myself to launching the first-ever digital editions of the Tropical Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure, and then to finally developing and launching the entire Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure series. My goal is to create and release the Alpine Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure by October of 2016, and then to release at least two new Sweets® Adventures in every subsequent year. Wish me luck! Daily Experiences Very early every morning I play my violin and explore the world of Johann Sebastian Bach through the lens of his Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas. As a concert artist, I often started the day in a similar fashion followed by the intensive study of an array of musical scores. I would search for insights 7 ® TROPICAL SWEETS CLASSICAL MUSIC VIDEO ADVENTURE | Lifelong Listening & Learning Guide into every nuance of each composition, constantly experimenting by singing phrases and playing musical sections with a deep desire to integrate my discoveries into the New World Quartet’s collaborative rehearsal process.