Art by Mariel Vandersteel-Wyslouch
WALLFLOWER is an arrival. After ten years of backing singers, rock bands, latin and jazz big-bands, orchestras, and New Music ensembles, WALLFLOWER is my percussion, performer, and composer debut of all original music for the vibraphone. Though many drummers are type-casted as rambunctious animals, I approach percussion and music with intense sensitivity and subtlety. With my hyper sensory awareness due to my synesthesia (the blending of the senses), I create and manipulate blankets of sound that surround the listener with both color and texture that excites the senses yet and calms the mind.
I entitled my album WALLFLOWER because I am one. Though an awarded entrepreneur, I struggle with the need to be loud and boisterous, not just with my craft, but my personality, while inwardly I feel rather recluse and shy. Music has been my haven since beginning as a lost teenager. Only after becoming obsessed with my grandfather’s record collection did I become enthralled simultaneously with the music of J.S. Bach and Philip Glass. These musics gave me a soundscape and dreamspace to let my mind wander with no judgement. The colors, shapes, and forms swirled in my mind lighting up my closed eyes. Glenn Gould and Philip Glass shifted my trajectory from being a rock drummer to an esteemed classical percussionist.