Sonifying, turning light, radiation into sound. And I've always been interested in that, and I've sonified a lot of, some of the universe, taking the radiation coming from the stars and the planets and sonifying them, the science is called. Well, I’m into the Webb Telescope, the new telescope that’s seeing deeper and deeper into space, and the images that it brings back. Tell us about that- There's always a magical element of drum space, and you seem to literally be conjuring things out of nothingness this time around. This year, we saw you what seemed like plucking sounds out of the air at a certain point on tour during Drums/Space. Because in the end, you know, it's just really a high point in the concert. And I do that, and it’s a joy for me, I just love it. You know, there's a great preparation that goes into it. But you have to prepare the table in order to make this kind of music that cool. So, it's real-time, made-up kind of music, in the moment kind of music. I had to also make the sequences and make everything really, you know, sound designed it going into it, because it's a place of complete- It’s not rehearsed, it’s jammed, as they say, it's made up. So, in preparation for it, both were carefully curated in some ways, the images and the MIDI control of the skeletons and all that stuff. When you go into the summer tours, what kind of conversations are happening backstage about what you want Drums/Space to look like? There were some wonderful visual nods to Planet Drum, of course. Now, this year, the Drums/Space portion of the show seemed to be the most highly produced and exciting yet. But, you know, always hoping that Bill gets better and will join us one day, and he did. So, there was only a few bumps in the in the road and he watched me really closely, and we played together to make one big rhythm machine. So he fit in real easy, he knows the material. Bill has a whole loping kind of a feeling, whereas Jay is a straight-ahead kind of feeling. And he's different than Kreutzmann, for sure. Jay is very straightforward, and he keeps a great groove. What was it like trading off drummers like that? WAMC: Now, you were faced with a unique challenge where your stalwart companion Bill Kreutzmann again took sort of a mid-tour break to heal up over the course of the journey, and he had Jay Lane come to fill in. You have to work your way through all of that to come out the other end looking good. And it was filled with drama, as most tours are. We went to new places and I had a great time. Stephen” at Gillette Stadium on July 2 nd. Before Hart shares his tour report with WAMC, here’s a taste of one of the jaunt’s musical highlights- an exhilarating run through a Grateful Dead classic that dates back to the band’s earliest years- “St. Through quickly quashed rumors of a breakup, last-minute substitutions, medical emergencies, and ever-present summer rainstorms, Dead & Company’s summer tour ended with a stellar two-night stand at Citi Field in Queens, New York in mid-July. The nightly segment climaxes with Hart playing the Beam – a custom-built instrument strung with bass piano strings capable of producing deep, undulating frequencies that can fill even the cavernous space of huge venues like Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Launched in 2015 with newcomers John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, and Jeff Chimenti joining Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir, Dead & Company continues the Grateful Dead’s legacy of complex, conversational improvisation and lysergic exploration.Ī staple of the live Dead experience continues to be the second set’s Drums/Space sequence, a percussion driven, free form improvisation led by Hart and Kreutzmann. It’s the most recent incarnation of the Grateful Dead, the cult Californian psychedelic rock band that ended a 30-year run in 1995 with the death of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jerry Garcia. Hart also just wrapped up a 19-date summer tour with Dead & Company. Reviewers have described “In The Groove” as a “hypnotic trance-like exploration of music at its most primal” and “an atmospheric sonic experience that is both uniquely organic and electronic.” This year, his long-running international percussion ensemble with tabla master Zakir Hussain, Planet Drum, just released its first record in years after a rare live performance in Stanford, California this spring. Since joining the Grateful Dead in 1967, the 78-year-old percussionist has explored ethnomusicology, astrophysics, the connection between music and neurology, archiving folk music for the federal government, authoring books on drumming, and more. 2022 is proving to be a landmark year in the long, incomparable career of Mickey Hart.
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