NOTE: Video links are provided via PDF in the compressed download folder.

Insight Unsought is about the cracks in consciousness——the twilight world between sleep and waking, between real and unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Through music, projection, lighting, and live painting, Insight Unsought seeks to transport the audience into the liminal state where observable reality sublimates into the inner world, where control and oversight of their thoughts and emotions must be ceded to the unconscious.

The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi once had a dream in which he was a butterfly. This dream was so real and so tangible that upon waking he was not sure whether he was truly a person who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or if he was in fact a butterfly now dreaming of being human. The power that dreams have over our waking thoughts and feelings has been a source of constant interest for me; I have dealt in the past with a number of sleep issues, and with a conflation of lucid dreams and waking reality. While this has sometimes been challenging, I have gained a deep appreciation for our mind’s ability to mold the reality we experience into something that is completely personal. Whether it transcends or debases the objective world is almost beside the point—the critical part is that moment of transformation when our perceptions seem to transubstantiate into something otherworldly.

Musically, I had a fun challenge to surmount in writing for what is essentially a standard jazz quintet, plus wind quartet, plus vocals, plus some electronic elements. The instrumentation was new for me, for Lushh, and in fact for all of the musicians involved; luckily the personnel are all incredibly capable and open-minded musicians who welcomed this project with open arms. They made this a joyful process for me, but the instrumentation was only a portion of the challenge involved. While I’ve written for mixed new music/chamber jazz ensembles of other types before, this is the most extensive such work I’ve done. Writing forty-five minutes of music is not exactly easy or simple, but writing a cohesive suite of music that evokes the desired atmosphere in a natural and unassuming way is another matter altogether. If the concept itself was more foreign I likely would have found the writing a laborious process, but sleep and the associated states of mind are something I have brooded over quite a bit, and consequently this project has occupied my thoughts for quite a while as well. All of that mental drafting led the writing itself to be nearly an easy process, both for the music and the poetry; almost a sort of “releasing” rather than a “creating”. I’m proud of the work involved in this, and deeply grateful to everybody who came together to realize this project. I hope you enjoy it!