David Kraus is a Vermont-based musician whose career as a professional guitarist dates back almost four decades. Early on, he made his mark as a blues and jazz guitarist, but as time went on, he took an increasing interest in Western classical music, and also in music from outside of the United States and Europe. Like any good jazz musician, improvisation played a strong role in his early creative work, but with his increasing interest in classical music came a deeper interest in more formal composition. Today, he is one of those rare birds: a composer who performs his own compositions—in several genres. He also has composed music for documentary films and continues working with a world fusion ensemble called Some Sort of Angel. And, as a musician who values the mentors he worked with during his formative years, today Kraus has become an enthusiastic teacher in his own right, guiding young talents at colleges, camps, and music schools, but mostly in his own studio. In late 2010, Between Silence, his latest CD, was released. Its arrival was the driving force for my interview with Kraus, whom I found to be as approachable and as well balanced as his music.
Ray Tuttle - Fanfare Magazine © July 2011
(Reprinted with permission)
(Reprinted with permission)
Q: Who do you count among your influences as a performer and composer?
A: I am an American musician, born and raised in Philadelphia during the 1950s and 60s. My entire family is still there. Although I have lived in Vermont since 1980, I do not live out in the country on a dirt road. There are sidewalks outside my door, and the urban mindscape will never leave me—nor would I want it to.
An artist is influenced more by certain cultural aspects of his environment than by specific people. Philadelphia is steeped in world culture of all kinds. I heard and saw so much of this while growing up—on the radio, on television, in concert halls, in the papers, and on the streets. My musical upbringing reads like a Who’s Who in music: the Philadelphia Orchestra with Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy; the Curtis Institute of Music, and so many people associated with it; the Academy of Music; and so on. Also, Philadelphia was a creative hotbed of jazz, R&B, and pop. It was the home of John Coltrane, Billy Holiday, Ethel Waters, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Pat Martino, Christian McBride, the Heath Brothers, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Clifford Brown, Charlie Biddle, Jimmy Smith, Christian McBride, Stanley Clarke, Sun Ra, Joey DeFrancesco … the list goes on. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was founded here, and introduced the world to American R&B and pop for decades.
In terms of composers, I would mention Bach, Sor, Tárrega, Villa-Lobos, Debussy, Chopin, Philip Glass, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Pat Metheny, Jim Hall, Chick Corea, John Abercrombie, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Paco de Lucia, Anouar Brahem, Ravi Shankar, Jan Garbarek, John McLaughlin, and many more, as my influences. Also, I listen to, study, and explore music from outside Eurocentric idioms, such as music from Brazil (to which I am strongly drawn, and now am studying in more depth), India (where I lived in 1999), Spain, Japan, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Scotland … the list keeps growing.
My physical, mental, and emotional approach to playing—how I work with my instrument, how I attack the guitar when I play—is much more influenced by flamenco guitarists such as Paco Peña and Paco de Lucia; jazz players such as Kenny Burrell, Emily Remler, and Jim Hall; oud players from North Africa and the Middle East such as Anouar Brahem and Rahim Alhaj; and Brazilian players such as Baden Powell and João Gilberto, than it is by classical guitarists like Andrés Segovia and Elliot Fisk. Julian Bream is definitely present in my music, though, probably because his education and early career were connected to jazz, and he plays with such immediacy from a deep place.
Q: Do you work with a particular audience in mind?
A: I write and play what feels right and honest to me. Of course composing for a film, doing studio work, or playing a professional engagement where I have been hired for a specific purpose are slightly different situations. This kind of work is directed at a specific audience. When it comes to my personal work and art, though, I have no particular audience in mind. I hope that anyone can, and will, enjoy it. Many will and do. But for those who do not … well, it’s counterproductive to work toward everyone liking you. You have to present who you are with grace, honesty, and with as much feeling as you can. In the end, it is the feeling that listeners are left with, no matter what the music may be.
Q: How closely are Kraus the guitarist and Kraus the composer intertwined?
A: I can’t make a distinction between the two. When I am composing, my guitar is always in my hands. In my own writing process, I constantly cycle through a phrase, over and over, to feel what is working and what is not, and to understand what it is that my inner self is trying to say through this nonverbal language of sound. None of this can be accomplished without the tactile experience of having my body wrapped around this beautiful wooden box, and feeling my arm muscles moving, and my fingers pressing and plucking. The idea of sitting at a table with no instrument (which many composers do) and letting myself hear something, and then writing it down, makes no sense to me. Without holding my instrument in my hands, opening myself to the deeper thought processes of pure intuition and feeling, and playing what I am composing in the moment that I compose it, I don’t think I could write an emotionally honest piece of music. In truth, I actually enjoy the process of composing much more than performing. This process of existing in a rich inner world for long periods of time can be quite addictive, in its own way.
In concert, I reexperience the immediacy of the moments when that piece was being written, which, depending on the piece, could have taken one week, or three years—which, by the way, has nothing to do with the length of the piece! Writing short pieces can be much more challenging, in a way, because you have to say a lot in a short time. Such pieces are akin to short poems like a haiku or a sonnet, or a Sufi poem by Rumi or Hafiz. This is why my new CD, "Between Silence", is subtitled “Poems for Solo Guitar.”
A: I am an American musician, born and raised in Philadelphia during the 1950s and 60s. My entire family is still there. Although I have lived in Vermont since 1980, I do not live out in the country on a dirt road. There are sidewalks outside my door, and the urban mindscape will never leave me—nor would I want it to.
An artist is influenced more by certain cultural aspects of his environment than by specific people. Philadelphia is steeped in world culture of all kinds. I heard and saw so much of this while growing up—on the radio, on television, in concert halls, in the papers, and on the streets. My musical upbringing reads like a Who’s Who in music: the Philadelphia Orchestra with Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy; the Curtis Institute of Music, and so many people associated with it; the Academy of Music; and so on. Also, Philadelphia was a creative hotbed of jazz, R&B, and pop. It was the home of John Coltrane, Billy Holiday, Ethel Waters, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Pat Martino, Christian McBride, the Heath Brothers, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Clifford Brown, Charlie Biddle, Jimmy Smith, Christian McBride, Stanley Clarke, Sun Ra, Joey DeFrancesco … the list goes on. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was founded here, and introduced the world to American R&B and pop for decades.
In terms of composers, I would mention Bach, Sor, Tárrega, Villa-Lobos, Debussy, Chopin, Philip Glass, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Pat Metheny, Jim Hall, Chick Corea, John Abercrombie, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Paco de Lucia, Anouar Brahem, Ravi Shankar, Jan Garbarek, John McLaughlin, and many more, as my influences. Also, I listen to, study, and explore music from outside Eurocentric idioms, such as music from Brazil (to which I am strongly drawn, and now am studying in more depth), India (where I lived in 1999), Spain, Japan, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Scotland … the list keeps growing.
My physical, mental, and emotional approach to playing—how I work with my instrument, how I attack the guitar when I play—is much more influenced by flamenco guitarists such as Paco Peña and Paco de Lucia; jazz players such as Kenny Burrell, Emily Remler, and Jim Hall; oud players from North Africa and the Middle East such as Anouar Brahem and Rahim Alhaj; and Brazilian players such as Baden Powell and João Gilberto, than it is by classical guitarists like Andrés Segovia and Elliot Fisk. Julian Bream is definitely present in my music, though, probably because his education and early career were connected to jazz, and he plays with such immediacy from a deep place.
Q: Do you work with a particular audience in mind?
A: I write and play what feels right and honest to me. Of course composing for a film, doing studio work, or playing a professional engagement where I have been hired for a specific purpose are slightly different situations. This kind of work is directed at a specific audience. When it comes to my personal work and art, though, I have no particular audience in mind. I hope that anyone can, and will, enjoy it. Many will and do. But for those who do not … well, it’s counterproductive to work toward everyone liking you. You have to present who you are with grace, honesty, and with as much feeling as you can. In the end, it is the feeling that listeners are left with, no matter what the music may be.
Q: How closely are Kraus the guitarist and Kraus the composer intertwined?
A: I can’t make a distinction between the two. When I am composing, my guitar is always in my hands. In my own writing process, I constantly cycle through a phrase, over and over, to feel what is working and what is not, and to understand what it is that my inner self is trying to say through this nonverbal language of sound. None of this can be accomplished without the tactile experience of having my body wrapped around this beautiful wooden box, and feeling my arm muscles moving, and my fingers pressing and plucking. The idea of sitting at a table with no instrument (which many composers do) and letting myself hear something, and then writing it down, makes no sense to me. Without holding my instrument in my hands, opening myself to the deeper thought processes of pure intuition and feeling, and playing what I am composing in the moment that I compose it, I don’t think I could write an emotionally honest piece of music. In truth, I actually enjoy the process of composing much more than performing. This process of existing in a rich inner world for long periods of time can be quite addictive, in its own way.
In concert, I reexperience the immediacy of the moments when that piece was being written, which, depending on the piece, could have taken one week, or three years—which, by the way, has nothing to do with the length of the piece! Writing short pieces can be much more challenging, in a way, because you have to say a lot in a short time. Such pieces are akin to short poems like a haiku or a sonnet, or a Sufi poem by Rumi or Hafiz. This is why my new CD, "Between Silence", is subtitled “Poems for Solo Guitar.”
Q: At 30 minutes, Between Silence is a quick listen.
A: Yes, this happened for a couple of reasons. I had 14 pieces written. I narrowed them down to what I thought were the best eight. I wanted no repetition of sounds from piece to piece; each one had to be different. Also, I wanted them, as a group, to communicate a story, like parts of a longer poem, and therefore I didn’t want them to be too long. Another practical reason for the CD’s length is that, being unknown to most listeners, I didn’t want to tax their ears with music they hadn’t heard before. I’m not an extrovert who needs attention or adulation. Quite the opposite, in fact. I don’t believe in getting in people’s faces. I hope to get their attention, say my piece, and get out. If they like it, I hope they will be interested in hearing more later.
Q: How do you know when a new project—a CD, a film score, etc.—is working?
A: I ask myself this all of the time. Sometimes I actually don’t know if it’s working until I’m deeply into the project. I can abandon a piece of music if I realize it isn’t coming together. Sometimes I’ll write a piece and like it a lot, but then, a long while later, it suddenly doesn’t feel right to me. If that happens, I’ll take what I like from it and begin rewriting and making changes. At other times, an idea that initially seemed rather benign becomes something more than I expected; suddenly I feel it really is working. Some of my best music has come about in this way. When what I am listening for inside melds with what is coming out through my guitar, then the music is working. If the emotion and feeling are there, and it makes musical sense as well, and if I can’t stop hearing it no matter where I am or what I’m doing, then I know I’m onto something real. This brings me a kind of joy and satisfaction, because somehow I’ve gotten to know myself a little more, and I’m happy I can share this with others.
Q: When you compose for yourself, is there a danger that you will become “stuck”—that is to say, that you will limit your creativity in order to match your technique or personality?
A: The problem (and uneasy feeling) of becoming stuck or self-limiting due to technical constraints is always a consideration for musicians who compose for their own instrument. It happens unconsciously. A time must come, however, when the music asks for more than you’ve got. As Pablo Casals remarked, “You must follow the line of the music.” So the decision becomes, “Do I work to develop my own technique in order to play what I just wrote, and what the music demands, or do I alter the idea to make it comfortable?” I always opt to follow the music. If it means hours and weeks of practice to play a particular eight-bar phrase, then that is what I do. It can be frustrating and challenging, but in the end it is very rewarding, and I am left feeling that I did my best and, most importantly, that I was as honest with the music as I could be. Are some ideas technically impossible to play? Absolutely. In the world of the physical, all of humanity is limited, no matter how much we may be impressed and dazzled by the next technically proficient player. If you know yourself, have a rich inner life, and are aware of your technical limitations and insecurities, then you are freed up to explore just how much you can say through a piece of music, in spite of those limitations.
Also, you have to keep in mind that a lot of the most profound and influential music ever composed was created by people whose technique would be considered novice-like, compared to what a typical college freshman’s is today. Technique and art are not the same. Technique, physical and mental, is a tool. Art is about the human spirit, human connectedness, human feelings, the making of human culture, and knowing one’s self. Technique is included in the making of art, but is not art unto itself. At its worst, technique for its own sake becomes mere entertainment.
Q: Why do you do what you do?
A: Simply speaking, I play and write music because I am a serious working artist who has the need to create. I would do this whether I reached two people, 200, or two million. In addition to being an artist in the purer sense, music is also my profession, which means I’ve been lucky enough (with a lot of work) to be able to pay my bills by making music for the last 30-some years.
The public has a naive view of the music world. Most people think of it as composed of either part-time musicians—pounding out R&B at a local bar on the weekends, strumming chords and singing in a coffee house, a classical piano concert at a local church, a jazz group at a nice restaurant—or as the work of music teachers at local schools. Of course the public also knows about the world-famous musicians—the household names on big concert stages—who make recording after recording, and do very well financially. Being a successful musician, creatively and financially, beyond these images doesn’t really compute to most people; if you are a “real” artist, then you must be of the starving kind. “Everyone knows” it’s impossible to make a decent living through any sort of artistic endeavor. The reality is that most of the world’s professional musicians are totally unknown to the public. Many produce very good creative work, and are able to feed their families. This is me. My interests are wide-ranging, and my skills are developed beyond playing and writing for guitar, and reach into writing for groups of various kinds, documentary film music, playing in a wide array of different genres, and teaching. In order to make a living you have to wear many hats. My insatiable thirst to learn more music, no matter what culture created it, keeps me alive and fresh.
A: Yes, this happened for a couple of reasons. I had 14 pieces written. I narrowed them down to what I thought were the best eight. I wanted no repetition of sounds from piece to piece; each one had to be different. Also, I wanted them, as a group, to communicate a story, like parts of a longer poem, and therefore I didn’t want them to be too long. Another practical reason for the CD’s length is that, being unknown to most listeners, I didn’t want to tax their ears with music they hadn’t heard before. I’m not an extrovert who needs attention or adulation. Quite the opposite, in fact. I don’t believe in getting in people’s faces. I hope to get their attention, say my piece, and get out. If they like it, I hope they will be interested in hearing more later.
Q: How do you know when a new project—a CD, a film score, etc.—is working?
A: I ask myself this all of the time. Sometimes I actually don’t know if it’s working until I’m deeply into the project. I can abandon a piece of music if I realize it isn’t coming together. Sometimes I’ll write a piece and like it a lot, but then, a long while later, it suddenly doesn’t feel right to me. If that happens, I’ll take what I like from it and begin rewriting and making changes. At other times, an idea that initially seemed rather benign becomes something more than I expected; suddenly I feel it really is working. Some of my best music has come about in this way. When what I am listening for inside melds with what is coming out through my guitar, then the music is working. If the emotion and feeling are there, and it makes musical sense as well, and if I can’t stop hearing it no matter where I am or what I’m doing, then I know I’m onto something real. This brings me a kind of joy and satisfaction, because somehow I’ve gotten to know myself a little more, and I’m happy I can share this with others.
Q: When you compose for yourself, is there a danger that you will become “stuck”—that is to say, that you will limit your creativity in order to match your technique or personality?
A: The problem (and uneasy feeling) of becoming stuck or self-limiting due to technical constraints is always a consideration for musicians who compose for their own instrument. It happens unconsciously. A time must come, however, when the music asks for more than you’ve got. As Pablo Casals remarked, “You must follow the line of the music.” So the decision becomes, “Do I work to develop my own technique in order to play what I just wrote, and what the music demands, or do I alter the idea to make it comfortable?” I always opt to follow the music. If it means hours and weeks of practice to play a particular eight-bar phrase, then that is what I do. It can be frustrating and challenging, but in the end it is very rewarding, and I am left feeling that I did my best and, most importantly, that I was as honest with the music as I could be. Are some ideas technically impossible to play? Absolutely. In the world of the physical, all of humanity is limited, no matter how much we may be impressed and dazzled by the next technically proficient player. If you know yourself, have a rich inner life, and are aware of your technical limitations and insecurities, then you are freed up to explore just how much you can say through a piece of music, in spite of those limitations.
Also, you have to keep in mind that a lot of the most profound and influential music ever composed was created by people whose technique would be considered novice-like, compared to what a typical college freshman’s is today. Technique and art are not the same. Technique, physical and mental, is a tool. Art is about the human spirit, human connectedness, human feelings, the making of human culture, and knowing one’s self. Technique is included in the making of art, but is not art unto itself. At its worst, technique for its own sake becomes mere entertainment.
Q: Why do you do what you do?
A: Simply speaking, I play and write music because I am a serious working artist who has the need to create. I would do this whether I reached two people, 200, or two million. In addition to being an artist in the purer sense, music is also my profession, which means I’ve been lucky enough (with a lot of work) to be able to pay my bills by making music for the last 30-some years.
The public has a naive view of the music world. Most people think of it as composed of either part-time musicians—pounding out R&B at a local bar on the weekends, strumming chords and singing in a coffee house, a classical piano concert at a local church, a jazz group at a nice restaurant—or as the work of music teachers at local schools. Of course the public also knows about the world-famous musicians—the household names on big concert stages—who make recording after recording, and do very well financially. Being a successful musician, creatively and financially, beyond these images doesn’t really compute to most people; if you are a “real” artist, then you must be of the starving kind. “Everyone knows” it’s impossible to make a decent living through any sort of artistic endeavor. The reality is that most of the world’s professional musicians are totally unknown to the public. Many produce very good creative work, and are able to feed their families. This is me. My interests are wide-ranging, and my skills are developed beyond playing and writing for guitar, and reach into writing for groups of various kinds, documentary film music, playing in a wide array of different genres, and teaching. In order to make a living you have to wear many hats. My insatiable thirst to learn more music, no matter what culture created it, keeps me alive and fresh.
Q: Could you discuss the background to Between Silence?
A: I first considered this project as a set of guitar studies geared toward jazz players who lack a background in classical guitar. Inevitably, the music moved beyond this and took on a life of its own, especially as the technical demands of some of these pieces go beyond the technical skill sets that most jazz players have developed in their idiom. I am not saying that classical players are better than jazz players, or vice versa. The techniques merely are different, and meant to do different things.
Zarabanda, the first piece on this CD, is not jazz. It comes from the Spanish zarabanda, which the Portuguese brought to Brazil and melded with the rhythms that African slaves brought there, and with the music of the indigenous people. The zarabanda thus became something else altogether, more akin to what we typically think of Brazilian music today, in genres such as samba and choro. The tune is in ¾ time, with the quick motion of rolling 16th notes never letting up. The feeling of Brazilian rhythm comes from subtle accents plucked on certain 16th notes. This is not something I need to write out. It is instinctual with me because of my background in jazz and Latin music, and their complex syncopations. I wrote out the harmonies and left-hand fingerings, but the rhythmic accents just happen naturally when I play. This particular piece is a tribute to Heitor Villa-Lobos, who, as a Brazilian, played his own brilliant guitar works very differently from how most players perform them today. The specific Villa-Lobos piece that influenced me inZarabanda was his Etude No.1 for guitar. He wrote it in 4/4 time, with a complex right-hand pattern across the strings, but 16th notes run throughout the piece. His harmonies are easy for me to understand and hear because so much of what he did harmonically is standard in jazz, which he listened to and liked a lot. Most players, even Segovia, play those 16th notes very straight. It wasn’t until I heard Juan Carlos Laguna play Villa-Lobos’s etudes that the Brazilian rhythms implied in this music came alive.
In Nessie’s Dream, I was hearing a Scottish air, and it’s dedicated to my mother, who is an immigrant from the highlands. Jacob’s Ladder is filled with jazz harmonies. In the opening chord phrases, and in the long chord phrases leading back to the intro, I was hearing not the guitar but a Debussy-like string section. I don’t always think “guitaristically” when I compose. In fact, I think less of the guitar than I do of other instruments, or even an orchestra.
The piece Estudio del Jazz was a conscious attempt to use jazz chord voicing in commonly used expanded and altered voicings, and following the basic II-7/V7 chord movement in many guises and secondary dominants all over. It doesn’t sound like a jazz piece, but the jazz harmonies are there. This is the crux of being creatively and artistically honest. I am who I am, with my own history and background, both personally and musically. The challenge is how to use what you know, and to be who you are, not something you are not. You draw from what you learn and how you grow from it, because art is a process, not an end in itself. Honestly, at this point in my life I don’t identify myself with any genre, because to do so is creatively limiting. I didn’t think of this CD as classical when I conceived it and brought it to completion. I subtitled it “Poems for Solo Guitar.” Nowhere do you see the word “classical.” This allows me the space to do other solo guitar projects—to do what I should be doing—without limiting my creativity simply in order to satisfy the art market. The issue is integrity and honesty in music, played with feeling and emotion. If that isn’t happening, then what’s the point?
Q: Touch on selling the CDs.
A: My CD [Between Silence] costs $10 because I want them to sell … it’s as simple as that. CDs are overpriced and have been since the 1990s. They are ridiculously cheap to manufacture, so the profit margin is huge, no matter how much the industry pouts and cries that they are losing money. As an independent, I produce a top-of-the-line CD made from a glass master, which digitally retains the best sound quality available today, for under 50 cents per disc. Everything included (recording and mastering time, artwork, graphics, printing, CD reproduction, travel time, even the time lost from teaching because I was in the studio), this project cost me only $3,500. CDbaby.com gets $4 from every CD, no matter what price the artist sets, and the artists net 75 percent of all downloads. Whether someone downloads my music or buys the CD, I get $6. At concerts and gigs, most people are able to pull an even $10 out of their wallets. One way or another, if I sell 1,000 CDs within the next year (and they are selling!), I gross $6,000, not even counting downloads. All my expenses are then paid off, with enough left over to do a second run at 43 cents per CD, with a much higher profit margin. Unfortunately, the public still is convinced that price equals quality: The more you pay, the better the product. There is no truth in this at all. If there were, Lady Gaga’s CDs should be 50 cents and Julian Bream’s $500! All of this notwithstanding, I think asking people to shell out what discretionary income they have in this bogus economy on an overpriced CD is rude and absurd. Of course, I never will be totally remunerated for my thousands of hours of hard work, study, practice, composing, sitting at the computer doing business, and so on. But I make a living doing what I love. If I want to get paid for every moment that I am working, then I should not be an artist. I don’t have much patience for the self-entitlement and the “I deserve” attitude I have come across with many musicians. I lived in Calcutta for a year. There are six million people living on the streets there. I think these are the people in our world who truly deserve something. I am lucky to have what I have in life, to have music and to bring some sort of beauty into the world, and furthermore, to make a living doing it.
Q: What new CD projects are you working on?
A: Another solo CD is floating around, based on pieces that haven’t been used yet and on new ones being created, but this project won’t even start until next year as I am still getting Between Silence out there. I’m working on a project with a fantastic chromatic harmonica player who has all the chops of the great classical player Larry Adler and of the great jazz player Toots Thielemans. The nylon strings of the guitar and the chromatic harmonica blend beautifully. We have been a working duo for three years, have lots of original material in many genres, and have been organizing a recording project for a while. I needed to take a long break from that project until Between Silence was finished and on its feet, so to speak, but now I can turn my attention to it. Also, I’m planning another project with my pancultural group—fellow musicians who are interested in music from outside of the United States and Europe. In the meantime I’m playing concerts and gigs, and teaching a fair amount, while writing my own teaching method, which has been an ongoing project. I keep busy!
A: I first considered this project as a set of guitar studies geared toward jazz players who lack a background in classical guitar. Inevitably, the music moved beyond this and took on a life of its own, especially as the technical demands of some of these pieces go beyond the technical skill sets that most jazz players have developed in their idiom. I am not saying that classical players are better than jazz players, or vice versa. The techniques merely are different, and meant to do different things.
Zarabanda, the first piece on this CD, is not jazz. It comes from the Spanish zarabanda, which the Portuguese brought to Brazil and melded with the rhythms that African slaves brought there, and with the music of the indigenous people. The zarabanda thus became something else altogether, more akin to what we typically think of Brazilian music today, in genres such as samba and choro. The tune is in ¾ time, with the quick motion of rolling 16th notes never letting up. The feeling of Brazilian rhythm comes from subtle accents plucked on certain 16th notes. This is not something I need to write out. It is instinctual with me because of my background in jazz and Latin music, and their complex syncopations. I wrote out the harmonies and left-hand fingerings, but the rhythmic accents just happen naturally when I play. This particular piece is a tribute to Heitor Villa-Lobos, who, as a Brazilian, played his own brilliant guitar works very differently from how most players perform them today. The specific Villa-Lobos piece that influenced me inZarabanda was his Etude No.1 for guitar. He wrote it in 4/4 time, with a complex right-hand pattern across the strings, but 16th notes run throughout the piece. His harmonies are easy for me to understand and hear because so much of what he did harmonically is standard in jazz, which he listened to and liked a lot. Most players, even Segovia, play those 16th notes very straight. It wasn’t until I heard Juan Carlos Laguna play Villa-Lobos’s etudes that the Brazilian rhythms implied in this music came alive.
In Nessie’s Dream, I was hearing a Scottish air, and it’s dedicated to my mother, who is an immigrant from the highlands. Jacob’s Ladder is filled with jazz harmonies. In the opening chord phrases, and in the long chord phrases leading back to the intro, I was hearing not the guitar but a Debussy-like string section. I don’t always think “guitaristically” when I compose. In fact, I think less of the guitar than I do of other instruments, or even an orchestra.
The piece Estudio del Jazz was a conscious attempt to use jazz chord voicing in commonly used expanded and altered voicings, and following the basic II-7/V7 chord movement in many guises and secondary dominants all over. It doesn’t sound like a jazz piece, but the jazz harmonies are there. This is the crux of being creatively and artistically honest. I am who I am, with my own history and background, both personally and musically. The challenge is how to use what you know, and to be who you are, not something you are not. You draw from what you learn and how you grow from it, because art is a process, not an end in itself. Honestly, at this point in my life I don’t identify myself with any genre, because to do so is creatively limiting. I didn’t think of this CD as classical when I conceived it and brought it to completion. I subtitled it “Poems for Solo Guitar.” Nowhere do you see the word “classical.” This allows me the space to do other solo guitar projects—to do what I should be doing—without limiting my creativity simply in order to satisfy the art market. The issue is integrity and honesty in music, played with feeling and emotion. If that isn’t happening, then what’s the point?
Q: Touch on selling the CDs.
A: My CD [Between Silence] costs $10 because I want them to sell … it’s as simple as that. CDs are overpriced and have been since the 1990s. They are ridiculously cheap to manufacture, so the profit margin is huge, no matter how much the industry pouts and cries that they are losing money. As an independent, I produce a top-of-the-line CD made from a glass master, which digitally retains the best sound quality available today, for under 50 cents per disc. Everything included (recording and mastering time, artwork, graphics, printing, CD reproduction, travel time, even the time lost from teaching because I was in the studio), this project cost me only $3,500. CDbaby.com gets $4 from every CD, no matter what price the artist sets, and the artists net 75 percent of all downloads. Whether someone downloads my music or buys the CD, I get $6. At concerts and gigs, most people are able to pull an even $10 out of their wallets. One way or another, if I sell 1,000 CDs within the next year (and they are selling!), I gross $6,000, not even counting downloads. All my expenses are then paid off, with enough left over to do a second run at 43 cents per CD, with a much higher profit margin. Unfortunately, the public still is convinced that price equals quality: The more you pay, the better the product. There is no truth in this at all. If there were, Lady Gaga’s CDs should be 50 cents and Julian Bream’s $500! All of this notwithstanding, I think asking people to shell out what discretionary income they have in this bogus economy on an overpriced CD is rude and absurd. Of course, I never will be totally remunerated for my thousands of hours of hard work, study, practice, composing, sitting at the computer doing business, and so on. But I make a living doing what I love. If I want to get paid for every moment that I am working, then I should not be an artist. I don’t have much patience for the self-entitlement and the “I deserve” attitude I have come across with many musicians. I lived in Calcutta for a year. There are six million people living on the streets there. I think these are the people in our world who truly deserve something. I am lucky to have what I have in life, to have music and to bring some sort of beauty into the world, and furthermore, to make a living doing it.
Q: What new CD projects are you working on?
A: Another solo CD is floating around, based on pieces that haven’t been used yet and on new ones being created, but this project won’t even start until next year as I am still getting Between Silence out there. I’m working on a project with a fantastic chromatic harmonica player who has all the chops of the great classical player Larry Adler and of the great jazz player Toots Thielemans. The nylon strings of the guitar and the chromatic harmonica blend beautifully. We have been a working duo for three years, have lots of original material in many genres, and have been organizing a recording project for a while. I needed to take a long break from that project until Between Silence was finished and on its feet, so to speak, but now I can turn my attention to it. Also, I’m planning another project with my pancultural group—fellow musicians who are interested in music from outside of the United States and Europe. In the meantime I’m playing concerts and gigs, and teaching a fair amount, while writing my own teaching method, which has been an ongoing project. I keep busy!
Q: You have a passion for education and mentoring, don’t you?
A: I’ve taught at two colleges, done lots of workshops, participated in jazz camps for high schoolers, and given lessons privately in my home studio for more than 30 years. One can’t just be an artist and not be aware of the world outside of one’s creative sphere. The constant pursuit of new knowledge is paramount to developing an open creative mind, and to the understanding of not just art and music, but also of humanity. Everything affects us, even if we don’t consciously acknowledge it. It is not enough to practice beautiful pieces to perform, study music history, and learn music composition theory (which is almost immediately forgotten by most graduates, assuming that they ever really understood it!). Students need to learn about who they are, and how to experience their own inner worlds. This is a key part of creative expression in any field, but especially in music. To be a good listener, one must be able to go inward and feel comfortable here. Listening is an internal experience. It is in this inner place where all of the education, the practice, the theory, and the rest come together. This is where music is born and lives. A good musician knows how to listen, not only to the notes, but to their insides. And good human beings are made from the feeling, empathy, and compassion that is created from this place. Music is a process of thought and feeling, communicated in sound. It is not an end in itself. There are too many students coming out of schools with great chops, all of them competing (literally!) for attention, awards, success, and a career. But most of them are not artists in the inner creative sense. They don’t know who they are, and so they have little to say. This is why so many of them sound the same, and lack feeling and emotional commitment in their playing.
Even though I have taught at the collegiate level, I did not go to college myself. As a young man, I tried twice but left within the first year both times because I perceived that real education, as opposed to being trained and prepared for the work market, were not the same. So I came to study music in a way that has been lost, which is by serious study under the guidance of mentors. I studied with working professional players and with composers who were actively engaged in creating art, and at the same time, professionally engaging in the music business. I still recall the first day I walked into my first mentor’s studio. His name was Joseph Potosky, and he lived in South Philadelphia, which is famous for turning out great guitarists, such as Elliot Fisk and Pat Martino. Joe’s studio wasn’t a room with a chair and a music stand. It was a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with music books, scores, and manuscripts. Also, there were books on history, philosophy, politics, economics, world religions and cultures, poetry, great novels, painting and sculpture, architecture, psychology, medicine, and so much more. He also had an incredibly huge music collection, encompassing all kinds of music, and a great sound system. At first I was daunted and intimidated, but what I soon realized was that music was more than practicing scales. (That’s not to say that there wasn’t lots of this too!) It was a different feeling from what I experienced in a classroom. Lesson times could stretch to three hours instead of the usual one hour. After the lesson, sometimes he and I would hang out and listen to music, talking about anything and everything. A mentor gets to know you well, your background, your personality, and your thoughts, in addition to your musicianship. He can help you to discover your strengths and to steer you in the right direction, so career decisions can be made wisely.
It was a mentor I studied with in Providence, Rhode Island, who guided me into focusing on jazz. I was 30 when I met Vincent Fraoli. He was a classical player and composer who studied under the great Cuban guitarist José Rey de la Torre, then living in New York. Fraoli also was a studio musician, playing electric guitars and all kinds of different music to support himself and his family. He loved jazz, and he advised me that, given my age and my extensive prior experience with jazz (almost 20 years at that point), I should stay with jazz and develop my abilities there, rather than change directions and become a classical musician. So that’s what I did. It was a wise choice, and a choice I may not have made without his guidance and knowledge. I studied technique and composition with him, but geared toward improvisation and a creative jazz writing style. I also learned classical guitar, but only to learn valuable techniques and musical concepts that could expand my jazz playing and writing, and to augment my improvisational abilities in other forms. Only later in my career, when I was in my early 40s and already professionally established, did I return to serious study of the classical guitar, where I am, for the most part, self-taught.
When you work with a mentor, you get to hear your mentor’s composing and playing as it is progressing, and to hear him perform in public, whether on concert stages or in clubs and smaller venues, for free. We became close friends, which did not affect our study relationship, because at that point I was older. This kind of exposure to the world of music is a tremendous opportunity. I was a good and eager student in this method of learning. I was very self-disciplined. I still am a very good student when the opportunity arises because there is always much more to learn. I read—a lot! I enjoy friendships with many musicians, artists, educators, and others, and knowledge is constantly shared. In my own teaching, I carry on the practice of being a mentor as my own mentors did, and my own studio is similar, in concept, to what Joseph Potosky introduced me to. Taking lessons in a high school or college music department, and studying all the material relevant to becoming a professional musician is not enough. Even taking master classes is not enough. It can become too narrowly focused in particular areas, and frankly speaking, almost all of the education (at least in the United States) imparted still has a very Eurocentric bias. Europe is not the center of human civilization and never really was, any more than the United States is today, no matter how much nationalism is floating around. Yes, we hear of “world” culture being taught in colleges, to create at least some sense of inclusiveness. But it doesn’t go deep enough. It always comes back to Europe. I think some of the most inventive and creative guitar music is coming from places such as Iran, Japan, and Brazil. Composers and players from these and other cultures really are beginning to understand and appreciate who they are, and to look inward, so as to bring out their own voices on the guitar. As these new voices are found and heard around the world, our music education system needs to change, to accommodate and welcome them.
Q: What impact has living in Vermont had on you as a performer or as a composer?
A: At every moment, our environment affects us in ways that we aren’t even aware of. Vermont winters are cold and long, with tons of snow. In December, the sun sets at 3:30 in the afternoon. Vermont is part of New England, with all of its American history, and the Puritanism that went along with it. Nevertheless, Vermont established itself long ago as a very independent state. Also, it’s next to Quebec. Cross the border and suddenly you’re within the French culture. I used to keep an apartment in Montréal, going back and forth twice a week, because I needed the stimulation of a major city. Music and art in northern New England and Quebec are very different from what I was raised with in Philadelphia, or in any other place I’ve lived or visited. But Vermont also is filled with an awful lot of national and world-class musicians, and artists of all kinds who have moved here over the last four to five decades. I would say at least a third of the state’s residents are not from Vermont, but, like myself, have come here from large urban areas. Vermont is not whatVermont Life magazine shows to the world. It isn’t what the tourists believe it to be. The farms are all but gone. It’s much more cosmopolitan in attitude than that, and has been for a long time. I’m a member of the Vermont Composers Consortium, which has a membership of more than 900 composers in various styles. For a small state that’s quite a few. There are 125 theater production companies here, from community-based to New York summer stock, with well-known actors and directors coming here in the summers. Painters, illustrators, writers, sculptors, actors … a lot of them make their way here. David Mamet has a getaway house 20 minutes outside of Montpelier, where I live, and occasionally does his plays at the theater downtown. Louis Moyse lived in my town and held his world master classes here. The artist and illustrator Karen Brooks, who does the artwork for my CD covers, lives here but again, doesn’t make her living in Vermont. But everything that goes between New York, Boston, and up to Montréal and on to Toronto has to come through Vermont, because this is how the highway system was designed. This definitely helps with being connected to a wider world of music and art.
When I first came to Vermont in 1980, it was a very different place from what it is now. There was a thriving music scene, in all genres. There were six record labels right around the Burlington area and studios all over to work in. Concert and playing venues were everywhere. You could actually make a living just playing if you were a serious musician and pursued it. But things are changing, and not for the better. Like everywhere else, the art and music communities here are struggling, and for a lot of reasons—not solely because of the miserable economy thrust upon us by white-collar criminals. It started many years ago, maybe over the past 20 years, but especially in the last decade, with the development and selling of computer technology, and the overly corporate approach that the music industry has taken toward the concept of music as a product to be sold to maximize profits. This affects everyone worldwide, but in a small state like Vermont, the toll is much greater. Many of the professional musicians in Vermont take part in their communities and do a lot musically, but they don’t make a living doing it. Many do a lot of out-of-state session or orchestra work in New York, Boston, or even farther away. They have to do more than one thing to survive. Jazz players have it particularly hard here. Venues are drying up, and the ones that are left don’t pay any money. So, if you are a jazz musician, you leave for a period, do your concerts and gigs, and then you come home. Some of my own students actually never come back; some even have moved to other countries. It is especially difficult if you are an artist creating music outside the mainstream of any genre.
Over time, I have grown as an artist, and I am constantly changing, learning, and progressing in my work. I am deeply influenced by and interested in music from cultures other than those in the United States or Europe. You see, even at the age of 60, I still have the thirst to learn more, and the energy and compulsion to keep creating. However, living in Vermont—as opposed to San Francisco or Philadelphia, for example—provides me with few opportunities to be exposed to music from other cultures. What this means is that I have to create the opportunities myself, by reading, listening, experimenting, and exploring, either alone in my studio, or by traveling to places where I can get what I need. Luckily, here I have musician friends who are in the same situation, so naturally we play together and collaborate on projects. I am one of the few professional-level guitarists in my area, and one of the few established teachers for serious students and players. I still perform and do recording projects, and I am remunerated decently for the most part, but this is not my primary income source. My main income is from teaching. Luckily I enjoy teaching a lot. At this point in my life, the idea of red-eye flights, hotel living, restaurant meals, and doing all of it alone has lost its appeal. That whole lifestyle never appealed to me, so I never really pursued it. When I was younger, so many of my friends just couldn’t wait to go out and tour. For some reason, it just didn’t excite me.
A: I’ve taught at two colleges, done lots of workshops, participated in jazz camps for high schoolers, and given lessons privately in my home studio for more than 30 years. One can’t just be an artist and not be aware of the world outside of one’s creative sphere. The constant pursuit of new knowledge is paramount to developing an open creative mind, and to the understanding of not just art and music, but also of humanity. Everything affects us, even if we don’t consciously acknowledge it. It is not enough to practice beautiful pieces to perform, study music history, and learn music composition theory (which is almost immediately forgotten by most graduates, assuming that they ever really understood it!). Students need to learn about who they are, and how to experience their own inner worlds. This is a key part of creative expression in any field, but especially in music. To be a good listener, one must be able to go inward and feel comfortable here. Listening is an internal experience. It is in this inner place where all of the education, the practice, the theory, and the rest come together. This is where music is born and lives. A good musician knows how to listen, not only to the notes, but to their insides. And good human beings are made from the feeling, empathy, and compassion that is created from this place. Music is a process of thought and feeling, communicated in sound. It is not an end in itself. There are too many students coming out of schools with great chops, all of them competing (literally!) for attention, awards, success, and a career. But most of them are not artists in the inner creative sense. They don’t know who they are, and so they have little to say. This is why so many of them sound the same, and lack feeling and emotional commitment in their playing.
Even though I have taught at the collegiate level, I did not go to college myself. As a young man, I tried twice but left within the first year both times because I perceived that real education, as opposed to being trained and prepared for the work market, were not the same. So I came to study music in a way that has been lost, which is by serious study under the guidance of mentors. I studied with working professional players and with composers who were actively engaged in creating art, and at the same time, professionally engaging in the music business. I still recall the first day I walked into my first mentor’s studio. His name was Joseph Potosky, and he lived in South Philadelphia, which is famous for turning out great guitarists, such as Elliot Fisk and Pat Martino. Joe’s studio wasn’t a room with a chair and a music stand. It was a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with music books, scores, and manuscripts. Also, there were books on history, philosophy, politics, economics, world religions and cultures, poetry, great novels, painting and sculpture, architecture, psychology, medicine, and so much more. He also had an incredibly huge music collection, encompassing all kinds of music, and a great sound system. At first I was daunted and intimidated, but what I soon realized was that music was more than practicing scales. (That’s not to say that there wasn’t lots of this too!) It was a different feeling from what I experienced in a classroom. Lesson times could stretch to three hours instead of the usual one hour. After the lesson, sometimes he and I would hang out and listen to music, talking about anything and everything. A mentor gets to know you well, your background, your personality, and your thoughts, in addition to your musicianship. He can help you to discover your strengths and to steer you in the right direction, so career decisions can be made wisely.
It was a mentor I studied with in Providence, Rhode Island, who guided me into focusing on jazz. I was 30 when I met Vincent Fraoli. He was a classical player and composer who studied under the great Cuban guitarist José Rey de la Torre, then living in New York. Fraoli also was a studio musician, playing electric guitars and all kinds of different music to support himself and his family. He loved jazz, and he advised me that, given my age and my extensive prior experience with jazz (almost 20 years at that point), I should stay with jazz and develop my abilities there, rather than change directions and become a classical musician. So that’s what I did. It was a wise choice, and a choice I may not have made without his guidance and knowledge. I studied technique and composition with him, but geared toward improvisation and a creative jazz writing style. I also learned classical guitar, but only to learn valuable techniques and musical concepts that could expand my jazz playing and writing, and to augment my improvisational abilities in other forms. Only later in my career, when I was in my early 40s and already professionally established, did I return to serious study of the classical guitar, where I am, for the most part, self-taught.
When you work with a mentor, you get to hear your mentor’s composing and playing as it is progressing, and to hear him perform in public, whether on concert stages or in clubs and smaller venues, for free. We became close friends, which did not affect our study relationship, because at that point I was older. This kind of exposure to the world of music is a tremendous opportunity. I was a good and eager student in this method of learning. I was very self-disciplined. I still am a very good student when the opportunity arises because there is always much more to learn. I read—a lot! I enjoy friendships with many musicians, artists, educators, and others, and knowledge is constantly shared. In my own teaching, I carry on the practice of being a mentor as my own mentors did, and my own studio is similar, in concept, to what Joseph Potosky introduced me to. Taking lessons in a high school or college music department, and studying all the material relevant to becoming a professional musician is not enough. Even taking master classes is not enough. It can become too narrowly focused in particular areas, and frankly speaking, almost all of the education (at least in the United States) imparted still has a very Eurocentric bias. Europe is not the center of human civilization and never really was, any more than the United States is today, no matter how much nationalism is floating around. Yes, we hear of “world” culture being taught in colleges, to create at least some sense of inclusiveness. But it doesn’t go deep enough. It always comes back to Europe. I think some of the most inventive and creative guitar music is coming from places such as Iran, Japan, and Brazil. Composers and players from these and other cultures really are beginning to understand and appreciate who they are, and to look inward, so as to bring out their own voices on the guitar. As these new voices are found and heard around the world, our music education system needs to change, to accommodate and welcome them.
Q: What impact has living in Vermont had on you as a performer or as a composer?
A: At every moment, our environment affects us in ways that we aren’t even aware of. Vermont winters are cold and long, with tons of snow. In December, the sun sets at 3:30 in the afternoon. Vermont is part of New England, with all of its American history, and the Puritanism that went along with it. Nevertheless, Vermont established itself long ago as a very independent state. Also, it’s next to Quebec. Cross the border and suddenly you’re within the French culture. I used to keep an apartment in Montréal, going back and forth twice a week, because I needed the stimulation of a major city. Music and art in northern New England and Quebec are very different from what I was raised with in Philadelphia, or in any other place I’ve lived or visited. But Vermont also is filled with an awful lot of national and world-class musicians, and artists of all kinds who have moved here over the last four to five decades. I would say at least a third of the state’s residents are not from Vermont, but, like myself, have come here from large urban areas. Vermont is not whatVermont Life magazine shows to the world. It isn’t what the tourists believe it to be. The farms are all but gone. It’s much more cosmopolitan in attitude than that, and has been for a long time. I’m a member of the Vermont Composers Consortium, which has a membership of more than 900 composers in various styles. For a small state that’s quite a few. There are 125 theater production companies here, from community-based to New York summer stock, with well-known actors and directors coming here in the summers. Painters, illustrators, writers, sculptors, actors … a lot of them make their way here. David Mamet has a getaway house 20 minutes outside of Montpelier, where I live, and occasionally does his plays at the theater downtown. Louis Moyse lived in my town and held his world master classes here. The artist and illustrator Karen Brooks, who does the artwork for my CD covers, lives here but again, doesn’t make her living in Vermont. But everything that goes between New York, Boston, and up to Montréal and on to Toronto has to come through Vermont, because this is how the highway system was designed. This definitely helps with being connected to a wider world of music and art.
When I first came to Vermont in 1980, it was a very different place from what it is now. There was a thriving music scene, in all genres. There were six record labels right around the Burlington area and studios all over to work in. Concert and playing venues were everywhere. You could actually make a living just playing if you were a serious musician and pursued it. But things are changing, and not for the better. Like everywhere else, the art and music communities here are struggling, and for a lot of reasons—not solely because of the miserable economy thrust upon us by white-collar criminals. It started many years ago, maybe over the past 20 years, but especially in the last decade, with the development and selling of computer technology, and the overly corporate approach that the music industry has taken toward the concept of music as a product to be sold to maximize profits. This affects everyone worldwide, but in a small state like Vermont, the toll is much greater. Many of the professional musicians in Vermont take part in their communities and do a lot musically, but they don’t make a living doing it. Many do a lot of out-of-state session or orchestra work in New York, Boston, or even farther away. They have to do more than one thing to survive. Jazz players have it particularly hard here. Venues are drying up, and the ones that are left don’t pay any money. So, if you are a jazz musician, you leave for a period, do your concerts and gigs, and then you come home. Some of my own students actually never come back; some even have moved to other countries. It is especially difficult if you are an artist creating music outside the mainstream of any genre.
Over time, I have grown as an artist, and I am constantly changing, learning, and progressing in my work. I am deeply influenced by and interested in music from cultures other than those in the United States or Europe. You see, even at the age of 60, I still have the thirst to learn more, and the energy and compulsion to keep creating. However, living in Vermont—as opposed to San Francisco or Philadelphia, for example—provides me with few opportunities to be exposed to music from other cultures. What this means is that I have to create the opportunities myself, by reading, listening, experimenting, and exploring, either alone in my studio, or by traveling to places where I can get what I need. Luckily, here I have musician friends who are in the same situation, so naturally we play together and collaborate on projects. I am one of the few professional-level guitarists in my area, and one of the few established teachers for serious students and players. I still perform and do recording projects, and I am remunerated decently for the most part, but this is not my primary income source. My main income is from teaching. Luckily I enjoy teaching a lot. At this point in my life, the idea of red-eye flights, hotel living, restaurant meals, and doing all of it alone has lost its appeal. That whole lifestyle never appealed to me, so I never really pursued it. When I was younger, so many of my friends just couldn’t wait to go out and tour. For some reason, it just didn’t excite me.
Q: What is success, in the world of David Kraus?
A: Well, without a doubt, I do not define success by the amount of money or material goods that I have amassed. If this had ever been the case then I should never have become a professional musician. I chose music…but sometimes I think music chose me. That may sound strange, but I was not thinking about my career when music became an integral part of my life at age 11. When I was 25, I realized that somehow I was making good music and making a living through it. When I tried to ascertain how this could have happened, I had no real answer. As I said earlier, making music is an internal process. I just kept at it year after year, while doing other things in my life (like being a competitive swimmer for 12 years, with a case of trophies and medals to show for it). But all the while, music remained at my life’s center. And it still is. My idea of success, then, is creating music that is real, from my heart, and done to the best of my ability, bringing that to people through recordings and performances, and knowing that I am reaching them. Success also is teaching my students, and watching them learn and grow and be excited about it. Of course success also is about being able to own a home and make a living through what I do. Am I rich? Well, not in the usual sense. But in a truly human and spiritual way that brings me inner peace, the excitement of creative discovery, and an understanding of my identity and of my purpose, I do believe that I am far richer than any amount of money or material goods could ever provide. I am not living a vacant life that yearns to be filled, but a full life that wants to be heard because it’s worth listening to.
A: Well, without a doubt, I do not define success by the amount of money or material goods that I have amassed. If this had ever been the case then I should never have become a professional musician. I chose music…but sometimes I think music chose me. That may sound strange, but I was not thinking about my career when music became an integral part of my life at age 11. When I was 25, I realized that somehow I was making good music and making a living through it. When I tried to ascertain how this could have happened, I had no real answer. As I said earlier, making music is an internal process. I just kept at it year after year, while doing other things in my life (like being a competitive swimmer for 12 years, with a case of trophies and medals to show for it). But all the while, music remained at my life’s center. And it still is. My idea of success, then, is creating music that is real, from my heart, and done to the best of my ability, bringing that to people through recordings and performances, and knowing that I am reaching them. Success also is teaching my students, and watching them learn and grow and be excited about it. Of course success also is about being able to own a home and make a living through what I do. Am I rich? Well, not in the usual sense. But in a truly human and spiritual way that brings me inner peace, the excitement of creative discovery, and an understanding of my identity and of my purpose, I do believe that I am far richer than any amount of money or material goods could ever provide. I am not living a vacant life that yearns to be filled, but a full life that wants to be heard because it’s worth listening to.
