Twisted Spruce, a covid project turned global, has arrived in the rural communities of Indiana. A collection of musicians celebrating “no artist left behind”, the 2021 World Ensemble underscores a message of global community, diversity, and #BuildingTogether. Intersecting with both high school and elementary students, project director and guitarist Nathan Fischer is collecting audio samples from older students and drawings from the younger kids. These audio clips will be compiled with samples from musical artists around the world and set to an animation created from the students’ drawings.
Fischer, a career specialist at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, said the initial project began in 2020 when his plans for establishing a new guitar festival were foiled by the pandemic shut-down. Witnessing the online creative boom of musicians worldwide posting split screen collaborative performances, Fischer wanted to create something new. He asked himself, “how can we have a global community event that takes place with the alone together movement, that’s not about the split screen and not about everybody sitting in their bedrooms alone?” The civil rights movement in the summer of 2020 also brought attention to the lack of diversity in classical guitar, prioritizing for Fischer the creation of a more welcoming environment for guitarists from non-traditional guitar backgrounds.
Featuring the work of Taiwanese animator Chia-Hsin Lee and Perth-based composer Azariah Felton, the 2020 project, Parts, Together, featured 100 guitarists from twenty-four different countries. The resulting video was selected for the Waterford Film Festival (Ireland) and won best Experimental Short at the 2022 World Music and Independent Film Festival (Washington DC).
For Fischer, the next logical step following the global isolation of covid was to bring the project to isolated communities: “They don’t often have the resources to have an art teacher or a band teacher. To be able to give students who are unable to go to museums on a regular basis, students who are unable to participate in high level art type things, an opportunity to be a part of a project that’s global…you create awareness that these other places exist and these other people are out there.”
Twisted Spruce’s second project, A Falling Loop, has also invited students from Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and L.A..
A Falling Loop features a composition by IU alumni Miles Jefferson Friday; audio engineer Jamie Tagg will be compiling and editing submitted audio clips for his second project with the group.
Nathan Fischer continues to extend an invite to join the global community for this year’s project, #BuildingTogether. “If you’re reading this and you have a classroom of kids who want to draw pictures and have their pictures come to life, or you run a music program and you want your students to have audio included in this four-minute piece, definitely reach out.”
This project is sponsored in-part by the Indiana Arts Commission, the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement, and the Twisted Spruce Music Foundation.
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