Allen Bruce Ray: News

Well, it's been a lo-o-o-o-ong while, hasn't it? So sorry that my blogging has been so depressingly infrequent, but it's something I'm now aiming to do weekly, so don't abandon me just yet! Let me do my best to bring everything up-to-date by bringing you this multi-part blog.

The biggest bit of news is that I did my *first live show* on December 17, 2011 at a small cafe in the city of Wonju, S. Korea where I've been living since early February 2011. It was a fun & informative experience, to be sure! I'll explain the details of the show itself in part 2, but first, here's a little background about the venue. It's called Cafe Namu ("tree" in Korean), and it's at the entrance of a mountain hiking trail for Baek-eun-san, or Mt. Baek-eun. The charming Korean couple who own the cafe are very interested in old-growth trees, so they regularly host weekend expeditions to seek out & photograph choice specimens in the area. The resulting shots are then posted on a wall inside the cafe. As anyone with a knowledge of mid-to-late 20th-century events would know, old growth trees are a rarity in this part of Korea in which nearly all foliage was completely obliterated during the terrible 1950-53 war. To their well-deserved credit, subsequent generations of Koreans have worked tirelessly to reforest the affected areas, and the results are nothing short of stunning. Still, a few lucky trees managed to escape the ceaseless onslaught of mortars, grenade explosions, gun blasts, aerial bombardments, direct hits from heavy artillery, or deliberate clearing by the armed forces, and those are indeed a sight to behold when they are encountered. Needless to say, the display on the cafe wall represents a sincere & passionate love & respect for these ancient survivors.

Interestingly, the cafe itself was constructed of straw bales covered with adobe by a Korea couple and a team of friends back in 2006. They maintain a photo scrapbook of the whole process that visitors can thumb through to get a sense of what was involved. No doubt this project was highly labor-intensive; the owners both emphasize that they would be most happy NOT to repeat it! 

The wife, Seo-yeon Son, is the manager of the cafe's day-to-day affairs, and the husband, Sung-hwan Kim, makes documentary films for a living. Both are supporters of Free Trade goods and live music, so to bolster the latter they have endeavored to host regular concerts there. Usually they book acoustic guitarists / singer-songwriter-type musicians, but a capella groups and rap artists have recently performed there as well, and all to very enthusiastic public response. It's a small place that holds 35 people at most, but regardless of musical styles, the atmosphere is always very warm, friendly, & receptive.

I started venturing out to Cafe Namu in the late spring of 2011 via bicycle after hearing about it from one of my colleagues at Yonsei University. After a couple of visits, I began bringing a backpack full of Native American flutes with me to show the manager and any interested parties who happened to be in the cafe at the time. Yes, I'm forever proselytizing the NAF! She received copies of both of my CD's, too, which she greatly appreciated. Incidentally, the cover of my 2nd CD, Elegant Simplicity, is in fact from a photo taken in front of this cafe in summer 2011. You can make out the adobe tree image there.

It was Seo-yeon who suggested I hold a concert there. We later settled on my doing an hour-long show, with mid-December emerging as the best time slot. I readily agreed to this offer even though I had absolutely no idea how to proceed! Frankly, this was quite a scary & daunting prospect to one who previously had only played solo at any length to audiences of trees, tunnels, insects, birds, and the occasional source of running water but seldom directly to groups of homo sapiens larger than, say, 10 individuals. I wasn't at all sure just how I would go about doing this: what songs to perform, how to perform them (solo or with accompaniment), what I would say to an audience sure to be comprised almost entirely of Korean-only speakers, how many flutes I'd bring, what kind of visual media I'd use, etc. I nearly backed out of it, to tell the truth, but then I thought to myself, "I need to take up this challenge because people need to know about the Native American flute & what it can do for their spirit". With that thought driving me, the preparations began...  

Yes, a box of CD's arrived at my apartment door on 9/26... and there was much rejoicing! To remind:Elegant Simplicity is 2 CD's... 42 tracks.... 2 hours 15 minutes of 100% solo Native American-style flute music played on 32 different flutes. It's now available for purchase at Bandcamp as well as CD Baby. Purchase a copy at Bandcamp, & you'll immediately have access to the mp3 files while you await delivery of the CD. Buyers from the CD Baby site will receive a link to download the mp3 version of it as well. Get your copy today!

That's right folks, my 2nd album is now available at both my bandcamp site http://allenbruceray.bandcamp.com/ and at CD Baby http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/allenbruceray2. Right now, this will be a download-only release, but fear not, you die-hard CD lovers: the full 2-CD version will be ready before the end of September. And what a whopper it is, too: 42 tracks of 100% solo Native American-style flute played on a total of 32 different instruments for a grand total of 2 hours 15 minutes of listening pleasure! If you go to my music page here or to the bandcamp site, you can even listen to the entire thing via streaming audio (assuming, of course, that you have 2 hours 15 minutes of time you simply don't know what else to do with... he-he) Seriously, check out some of the tracks and let me know what you think! I'd greatly appreciate it, and I'll be looking forward to what you have to say. In the meantime, please navigate over to the music page for more detailed information, and stay tuned...

Yes, it's back to Korea & academic life teaching English as a foreign language at Yonsei University in Wonju city. I'm excited! 

I'm also very happy to announce that CD #2 is progressing very nicely; the recording process itself is complete. Furthermore, owing to the abundance of melodies that I had accumulated over the past four years, I've committed myself to making it a 2-CD set of music for solo Native American flute, tentatively titled Elegant Simplicity. Early on in the recording process, I'd decided to go with a bare-bones approach and avoid adding accompaniment of any kind. Even though many of the tracks would sound great with some sort of rhythmic or instrumental backing, I've resisted that temptation simply because experience has shown that the process of arrangement can take an exceedingly long time. The point here is to make these tunes available sooner rather than later, hence the simple format. Most important, though, is that I feel sufficiently confident that these melodies can stand on their own. A wide range of flute keys are represented here over the course of 2+ hours from a "contrabass" low F# up to a high G pocket flute and with a couple of drones & EZ-Anasazi instruments to boot. At this point, I'm deeply involved in editing, after which I will be addressing the cover artwork. More information is forthcoming. 

Finally, I've been receiving a steady flow of e-mail asking when I'm going to make more flu-torial videos. I haven't added to my series in well over a year now - a situation that, sadly, was unavoidable but which will soon be rectified! Rest assured, those are planned & will commence once I'm back in Korea. Topics already sketched out are drone flutes, how to improvise, & tips for getting "unstuck" as well as further demonstrations of different flute keys in my collection, EZ-Anasazi flutes, & how to play a number of often-requested songs. With luck, I'll have a few of these out before the new semester begins in March. Stay tuned! 

Whew - it was a quick but productive trip back to Korea. How so, you may ask? For starters, within 24 hours of my arrival I had actually dragged my bleary-eyed self out to my favorite tunnel spots and made a number of videos, which I then dutifully posted on YouTube. (Ha! Am I sick, or what?) This was not merely a one-time event: I ended up doing this on five different days, which yielded around 43 serviceable videos. Not bad, says I. It was so GREAT to be back in those wonderful spaces!

The main reason I went there, though, was to look for work. You see, I'd stopped teaching English as a foreign language at Hallym University in Chuncheon at the end of 2009 because I'd been there for over 6 years... and in Korea continuously for over 9. At that point, I *really* needed a break & seriously considered not teaching anymore. The time off was spent making my CD, house-sitting, painting my mom's house, etc. However, after 6 months away from the classroom, I discovered that the teaching bug was still very much alive in me. Long story short: the great news is that after a very successful interview, I accepted a job offer from none other than Yonsei University, which is one of the top three academic institutions in Korea! Beginning in March 2011, I'll be teaching at their beautiful rural campus in the city of Wonju, which is 1 hour east of my previous home in Chuncheon and just under 2 hours from Seoul. One nagging question remains, however: Are there any tunnels nearby? I don't know yet, but I'm anxious to find out. For now, though, I'm back in Ohio because there are documents that need processing... bureaucratic stuff, you know. Rest assured that more tunnel videos will appear in due course!

Near the end of September, I got asked by a talented young independent film writer/director named Stephen Gibson if I would be interested in contributing my flute playing to his upcoming film called Fall of the Hunter's Moon. It seems he'd been watching my YouTube videos for quite some time, and apparently he was sufficiently persuaded by their style & mood. Of course, I said "Yes" to this proposition immediately! Most of the music will be by intention rather sparsely orchestrated with just flutes, rattles, shakers, and frame drums. As for the film itself, it's an intriguing & original story that ties events in a modern-day small town in southwestern North Carolina with Native American myths & legends from the distant past; it's part Hitchcock thriller, epic fantasy, and horror film all intricately intertwined. That's as much as I want to divulge; you'll just have to see it for yourselves when it is released sometime in early 2011... As I write this, filming has begun and is proceeding well & on schedule. I was flown down to the location of the film set - which just happens to also be Stephen's family home - and worked a bit with him to get a sense of what he wanted in the music department. I found him to be highly creative, hard-working, totally dedicated to his vision... and delightfully free of ego or pretension. What's more, his loving parents are 110% supportive and were the most friendly and welcoming bunch one could imagine. (Ah... good ol' Southern hospitality!) I wish Stephen and his exceptionally talented & equally hard-working cast & crew the best of success in this very involved & fascinating project!

You know, I've encountered that some people think I edited that photo to add in a large eye. That is most definitely NOT the case; what you see is an actual unadulterated sky photo that was cropped from a larger image of a section of the evening sky in northern New Mexico. The title of the CD was inspired by this photo and not the other way around. Pretty darn amazing, eh? Just so you know...

As of October 12, I'll be heading back to Korea for a 2-month visit. It's a safe bet that more tunnel videos will be popping up on YouTube as a direct result... Stay tuned!

At long last! After 2,000 years of work... the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulat -, ah... oops, sorry...

Under Watchful Skies is nowavailable! Click on "Buy" to take you to your purchasing options. C'mon... you KNOW you want it!