Da Capo Conversations with Valerie Liu and Sea Novaa

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 84: Da Capo Conversations with Valerie Liu and Sea Novaa

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

Today we revisit Valerie Liu’s and Sea Novaa’s perspectives on music and healing. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Valerie Liu and  Sea Novaa, check them out here and here. Parts of this episode originally premiered on April 18, 2022, click here and July 19, 2021, click here.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
With assistance from Hannah Chen, Sam Mason, Renata Volchinskaya

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Nanette McGuinness, artistic executive director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our Da Capo Conversations, a mini-series where we'll be giving familiar segments a topical twist. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] Today, we revisit Valerie Liu's and Sea Novaa's perspectives on music and healing. Here's what Valerie Liu had to say:

Valerie Liu  00:39
Yes, your inner self is who you really are on the inside. Your outer self is your physical body and how you relate to others. Like you can have many roles: teacher, student, parent, child, husband, wife, friend, etc. But that is just an aspect of you. Your inner self deals with feelings, emotions, intuition, spirituality, beliefs, fantasies, desire and purpose. I like composing because music can help me express my inner self. If I work on music for a particular subject, I notice I will need to sort out my own feelings towards the subject. So journeying through working through music is like therapy, for me, it is healing, I often find peace at the end. I'll use Cassandra's piece as an example: in the closing section, music is reflecting, living alone with your gift like Cassandra. After going through all the drama, each section, I experience a closure here. A closure tells me that it is okay to be alone like her. Just me and my voice. So I find that very healing.

Nanette McGuinness  02:13
[Laughs] Yeah! Healing for the composer, and then healing for the people who take the journey listening to your music.

Valerie Liu  02:23
Yes, my hope for that, too, is others can I can provide healing towards others through music somehow? Yeah, different than nursing, where you're very hands-on? Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  02:38
That's interesting how it's the flip sides of the same coin. So you were healing the body. And now you're healing the mind and the spirit.

Valerie Liu  02:46
[laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  02:47
Here's what Sea Novaa had to say:

Sea Novaa  02:50
Let's start with the premise that I'm a meditation practitioner. And I discovered that 1015 and Chelsea in New York. And by way of like, I think it was the seventh person that told me I should go to meditation.

Nanette McGuinness  03:06
[Laughs]

Sea Novaa  03:07
I finally relented. And, and so it brought an immense amount of clarity and kind of just like, the sense that the stars aligned. And kind of like how ripeness comes to a fruit. I don't know how it happened, but it did happen. And so this clarity and this, this idea of being present, particularly my practice is as in Buddhism. And I wanted to bring that into my music practice. So I would say I have two, two separate practices. One is more of a composer-performer, more classical or avant garde classical type music to be enjoyed, for entertainment purposes. And to me the other aspect is to be as present with music, as present with yourself as possible when listening. So after someone kind of saw what I was doing with the music as far as being still and I would have these rooms in Berlin, where I would invite people to come and listen, actively listen, they would find a space on the ground, most of the time lie down and just tell him to be with the music in a way that we're not when we're listening to Spotify or on YouTube, over either judging a sound, "Oh, is it good is it not does it remind me of this time, can I see myself driving a Ferrari and listening to this?" All these places except for the here and now. So when I do instruct the participants to, to be as present with the sound and to acknowledge whatever makes you feel, until always kind of reintroduce yourself to the rhythm of the breath and kind of like that, it really changes the, their interaction with sound. And it honestly, it could be a Frank Sinatra song that you do this to. But it's...it's really how you do it and why that really affects the people I work with in this regard. And it also I use this practice myself when I'm listening to music, and so activism to the point of helping people be as present as they can while listening to sound appreciating, even when you're walking down the street, and you pay attention to the various sounds coming: word sounds, car tires on the streets. Being incredibly present, allowing for clarity to come and finding peace. You know, it's really about just finding peace with yourself and with your surroundings. So yeah, so to me, this is this is I don't see this practice going anywhere. It's, it's something I want to expand and invite people to do. And also what I love about this particular practice of kind of active listening or sound healing, is that it can be done anywhere, any place. At anytime, honestly, by anyone, the way that people focus on the sensations of the breath, while they're meditating to me, you can do that with with sound. And it can be from, you know, from music to just a sound coming from the room or outside outside of the space outside of a building or something. I don't know how I'm helping people, but I've done these sound healing sessions, but these listening sessions, and people come up to me afterwards and just tell me what incredible experience they've had. And after the first time, the very first time I did it, and I had people come up to me and even security guard said, "Oh, yeah, I heard people saying this was life changing." I was just completely bewildered. Because here I am. I mean, I'm going through my own...my own process of creating the music live. So I've recently performed live sets of electronic music. And just that people come with this awareness. So I don't know how I help others, but I'm happy to create these sessions, where people do feel that they're connecting with some type of higher power or connecting with themselves.

Nanette McGuinness  08:14
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure's Da Capo Conversations, and a special thank you to our guests for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and designed by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts in tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]