WGBH Station; WGBH Forum Network; Henry Butler: Inclusive By Design Concert (Part 1)

Far be it from me to in any sense in any way do anything other than to thank my good friend John VASI and Charlie Washburn for this opportunity. I do need to say that there is in fact contrary to what you would like to believe. Nothing historic about tonight's performance. There is nothing new about it. And in fact there is nothing special about it. It's brilliant. You're going to have the time of your life. But how many of you have been to a concert in your lives. Raise your hands. Right of course. And maybe in the last few years you've been to a concert say you went to the Zeppelin concert or something you whipped out your cell phone and you know you didn't turn it off right. And you texted a friend and you said they're playing Stairway to Heaven. You know we have a name for that captioning. OK. Maybe the next day you called up a friend and you said oh it was I mean the lights were incredible. They had this this totally awesome awesome front band OK. We have a name for this audio description. OK. Maybe you

were watching the concert. OK and you noticed that in fact if it was the Clapton concert you noticed a little sort of strange kind of body language the body with. Yeah I don't know I don't know. I don't know if he's in a good mood tonight. Maybe he didn't sleep well last night or maybe something with the groupies. I don't know. You know what do we call that. Sign language OK body language. A set of symbols delivering a multiple channel an alternative channel of the concert in a different language. Well. Close your eyes during that concert. What do you see. We call it visual art. The colors the forms the dreamy Rijk combinations of shapes and colors and memories and experiences visual art and say you're looking at a painting that was the Museum of Fine Art. And you suddenly hear the sounds of what that painting evokes we have a name for that.

Music. So tonight we're doing nothing new. We're doing nothing special but people with disabilities are leading the reunification of the performing arts into what we know to be a multi channel multi-platform experience involving all the senses at all times and we have the most incredible creative team to deliver the concert of your life tonight. First of all let's just applaud. You. Know. Details introductions and bios of all of the creative presenters are in your program and I urge you to take a look at those. But captioning for us tonight. Janet on the. Audio description comes from and I will give the floor over to her for a moment. Seelie use. The phrase. Find her studio is approximately 30 by 50 feet for 40 foot ceiling. The ceiling is covered with beige styrofoam squares of various

sizes inset among recessed lighting and standard theater lights. Two walls of the studio have four foot by ten foot wouldn't panels of a blonde color inserted into sections that alternate with gray acoustic panels and circling the room at a height of about 30 feet are rectangular stainless steel wall fixtures three small windows on the right wall cut through to the lobby. The recording room window juts into the room on the left wall with a large clock and digital timer above it. The floor is 2 foot by 4 foot sections of plywood with two red patterned drugs in front of the panel. The performers are arranged along the front wall facing the audience in the center of the wall has a forge a ceiling gray acoustic screen was a bright blue WGBH logo projected on it in front of the screen as a black grand piano with an open lid. A piano bench is on the left side

of the piano to microphone's face the piano and one microphone bends in toward the bench to the left of the benches a raised platform where the S L interpretor stand to the left a 10 foot by 12 foot black canvas stands with a black cloth covering the floor in front of the canvas is a three foot flat wooden box on wheels that holds they are just tools acrylic and fabric paints. One foot wouldn't slats with red handles a window washing squeegee on a pole. Various artist brushes attached to a long round wooden sticks a paint scraper and small car and dash paint markers to the left of the canvas. The caption is sets and a monitor for real time captioning on the far right of the performance area. The describer sits in a straight backed chair and the MC sits in a wheelchair on her right behind

them in the right corner. Another monitor to display his captioning underneath the sign says Recording WGBH. That work Henry is wearing black sunglasses a red and black stripes jacket a black open collared shirt and red pants. Artist Nancy wears a blackish suit that is a wash with paint smears and splashes and glitter and Spackles she wears a black Japanese slippers and her head is wrapped in a large black cloth. While her hair sits atop her head and a five inch poofy bun a team of interpreters is comprised of two females one alley and one male mikee. They wear dark clothing. NLE work as a team and Joe works. Although Ali sits in the audience at a music stand describer takes notes and reads a black no description of tonight's performance will be provided at several times during the evening instead of the

usual practice. When a description is offered via headsets exclusively for people who are blind or have low vision. Thank you Celia. All right let's recognize the rest of the creative team formally here are ASL interpreters are Mikey Cranach. And. Ollie here. Jeanette. Well. Our visual artist for this evening. We have an incredible treat. Nancy Ostrofsky whose global vision you will see in real time realized on that. Finally. Our musician tonight. But the word barely describes him. His life is the definition of the word vision in my book.

Ladies and gentlemen award winning recording artist Henry Bach. Good evening. Good to be with you. Good to be with all of you today and I hope that you will enjoy. At least something that we do here. We're going to start off with a piece entitled soon we'll be done with the

troubles of the world. In will be done with the troubles of the world. Troubles troubles in. Spain. Troubles

in a. A good one. And in. A way in. You.

Are. In. Trouble. In. A in a a a.

A.

A. We. Talk about contrast. This next piece was written by you see handy and it was published somewhere around 1912.

It's at Diamond St. Louis Blues. In.

And you. Said.

You need. To. Do. And. Then.

And I do. And.

I'm too old. To. The next piece.

Thank you. We call this. Total commission. First we can. Take the politics. Out.

Of. An. An one.

On. One

on.

And. Then.

And. And. Now we're going to turn it over to see no description in North Africa and living in Asia was influenced for her painting to music. Reflects that throughout the summer I will be done nodding and smiling and at last standing with her face uplifted. She begins with the next

song by placing her paint in her hand and gently placing her hand on the canvas. Tenderly creating a reddish brown circle on the canvas. She then moves her hands and her fingers to leave traces of color. On various. On one side and the other of the canvas. With multiple colors on the wooden slat. She then striped the canvas across the center line with swatches of blue red turquoise yellow green and others embodying the rhythm. She dances on tiptoe as she works with the current dash leaving her impressions Mikey taking his cues from Allie glances over Henry's shoulder. His body sways from side to side moving his head and beat with

pursed lips. He points to the painter. He fingers spells he touches his face places his hand over hand while he mows the flow of the music from the audience and Mikey moves as the roving camera crosses his path. Then the first song Henry's mouth gently touches his microphone as his left foot pounds out the rhythm on his right foot. Works the pedals. The piano strings are reflected in the raised piano cover. My next piece is a piece written by Professor Longhair. All.

Role. In. Two men. In

a in a new. Me. Me. Me.

Me. Me. Me. Oh.

I. Want to. Be. You. No. No. I.

Don't. Know. The. Holding in that piece you know what I mean. Yeah.

Well we we we actually hold held some hands with the piano. So a little professor Longhair baby let me show you this next piece a piece I wrote back in 87 1987 when I was six hundred eighty four years old. Yes. And this piece was supposed supposed to give the guy who was after this girl a little bit of play but not much. You know we call it soft platonic cism probably should have been solved Platonism. But

at this point who cares. So nice nice ballad soft bitternesses. The next piece is a piece that was written by

Chris Kinner. Anyway this piece is entitled song. You got. So. You got. Basically. A break. Do. You see. Me.

Say. You can do. It for You and you

need to. And you need to.

Do and to. Move

and. You need to read. To. This next piece.

It's wonderful. You. Wrote a. Couple of months ago after observing the culture in Colorado living there for Katrina just about since Katrina. And I think I got a little bit of a handle on what Colorado especially Denver is about. So in this piece you're going to hear a little bit of the country and you'll hear some other things perhaps

this piece is entitled The Denver. Hour.

Or. An hour. To. An. Hour

an. Hour an hour. To.

An. This Nancy goes to the intro

and was her right to run get to the left side of the canvas and a body of a woman begins to take shape using the wooden slat reds and yellows purples are added to both side borders. The woman's face is outlined with yellow her right arm extended with a pointing finger and leg. Nancy sits on her knees and then uses her hand to apply faint blue streaks. Her hands are slowly becoming covered with paint and kind ash develops a series of connected lines and dots across the center line underneath. Using pain squeezed from a bottle a figure sits at a piano and the winged figure takes

off Joe. For something you've got sometimes mouth the words bouncing in time to the music. Her fingers lightly playing through the air during the instrumental. She touches her nose it pulls her hand off in a large circle. She struts front to back on the platform swaying her hips as she moves pointing to some of the words. She smiles frowns over her eyes wide her entire body moves in unison with the beach. Henry's arms are closed and his lips are pursed his heel gently taps the floor while his fingers skip across the Keys. Sometimes his jaw works when the music is forte. Is. Right again. Twice in a row she's good. Oh yeah.

You're a good girl. You know I say why aren't all concerts like this. I mean for Nancy I would not have noticed that there is a naked woman dressed in flames on top of a piano. I agree. I would have missed that. Personally I would have missed the reflection of the strings in the piano. I think I got a really good idea because of Joe. What that something is she got. I will talk about the show. It's too

close. To us. S U

S A. G. A I a s this

and it's a gay rights

groups you need a place to go. I had a case for. A vis a vis a vis a vis. Me.

As. A bit of a reunion for me and Henry Butler. Yes. The first time we were together we were tromped around by the Brooklyn Bridge and you were carrying a piano. He had a camera. That's right. We are doing a radio piece back in the early 90s 80s late 80s early and I can't remember exactly what. It's getting on to be you know 20 years yes. When you're six hundred eighty seven probably. And I was only 300 years old or something like that. But we were exploring in a radio documentary The idea of what it's like to be a blind photographer and of course radio seeming to be the least intuitive medium to explore that in fact was the best medium

for that because I've never heard a better description of what it's like to pull the trigger on a camera than listening to that radio piece as you describe it. What is it like what goes on in your mind when you when you hit the shutter. Well all right. All I'm interested in doing is capturing an image images based on what I get from the person who who's giving me the description. Give me an audio description of the piece. That I think should capture and I have to say that you are great at it with you. Wonderful. And also I don't know if you remember this but it was your idea for you to be my eyes and I sort of pushed you around as well you were moving about you know taking the pictures.

That's right I mean we became this like single object you're holding the chair. I became a sort of Cayne descriptor unit and I guess I was sort of experiencing what Henry was experiencing me experience. I mean this was back before digital photography when you could see the pictures right away instantaneously producing the pictures. It was wonderful because I got into this. Joe Richman the really talented producer who I worked with a little bit this is the first really extensive documentary that we did together. I was thinking OK. Wow. All right. So blind theater prickish you're right. But the moment really meant something to me when when I was looking at you were shots and you captured this picture of a seagull sort flying through with this beautiful shot of the bridge and all of. The architecture the cabling and everything of the bridge.

And I mentioned this you got the Sego. You got to see and you tell me again. Tell me that again. So I just told the story again of you capturing the seagull with all the cabling in the background. So you just took a breath away. That's Or if I thought to myself that is a capturing of a moment for for quite a while. I used to think that I was getting a lot of these great shots accidentally and it just kept happening just kept happening and I thought well hey that's really more to it than just getting a picture. There's more to it. And actually I got into it because I was trying to find a different way to develop my intuitive faculties. I really thought that well I had already embarked on a way of studying the development of not only your intuition but yourself and all of that but I figured that.

Outside of my musical. Development that there had to be other ways for me to try to do this. And I was going to a lot of visual arts exhibits at the time at the time I was dating a woman who was really a closet artist. You know she didn't want to get involved in doing all the exhibitions you know spending all the money on that but she liked helping me to get my pictures together. So I felt that it was such a great way to help me with intuition. I knew at that point in time not only was I doing photography but I started playing all improvised concerts and I thought wow.

Sort of like what it sounds like when you're somebody chariot concerts really really had a lot of fun with that. You know there's a certain amount of you know chauvinism that comes with this notion of being normal and somehow the accidental quality of photography you know becomes for the traditional art of photography kind of like well I chose to do that and it was an accident somehow that diminishes the form in some way. So when you say you know I was getting these shots by accident there's an accidental quality to all photography. You just underscore it and give it reference in a way that I don't think I could've understood without meaning you are quite frank. Well I I. Photography like any other art is an art form where you can stumble upon things and not only and then

as you do it as you so-called stumble on things a certain amount of times you know the feeling and you know how to get back to that place. You know how to make that thing happen again and again and then. So I was doing analog photography for a while and then I met Herman litter who said oh yeah go digital. And that's that. And and what I started doing digital I realized how much easier it was because you could see the picture right away and if I didn't see you the person who was helping me could see the shop that I had that I've just taken and it was almost like having that Instamatic camera again you know bringing back the good old days.

Yeah. There you go. But we're going to hear more music in a second but I've got a couple of really goofy Conan O'Brien questions for you. Are you the kind of photographer that has a bunch of know zillion lenses. Well what's the best lens for a lifetime. I think they are all about the same. Yeah. Well sure but they would be. But but I mean you know I think it's one of those deals where you will yourself to overcome the obstacles and you will yourself to make it happen regardless. And but and in saying that they have stuck with Canon over the years because I find that all the letters that I used to use with my analog camera I can use with my digital and I think a lot of the people that's what they do. They stick with either Nikon or camera canon or have you checked with Canon for an endorsement maybe.

You know I really haven't yet. Be hard to design the slogan. Well you know I got the slogan it's a slogan I've got a slogan. If a blind person can do it. Anybody can go can it. Yeah. One last thing I learned thanks to Janet that thing you do I mean one of the songs like I can't remember the title of it now. No no no I won't. It's actually spelled and R W H O K. I did not know that until tonight. I don't know what song. I tell you something you were doing when you were going to scat in there. Yeah yeah I know. Well I. I had to take it away. You're quite