suddenlyLISTEN is evolving. For 23 years I have run sL almost solo. I always had highly valued administrative help, but I was terrible at delegating. A small company makes the million jobs seem small, and often it was just faster to do them myself... But this has proven to be unsustainable, so I'm growing and learning to get better at sharing!
Last winter, sL lost its newly hired Administrative and Production Manager to a better gig. Jacinte Armstrong who has been my friend and collaborator and sounding board for many years, swung in to assist. Thank goodness.
Over the summer, as I turned 60 and began to contemplate the 3rd chapter of my life, and the future of sL, I realized its next director was already in place!
Jacinte and I are now working on creating an evolutionary process that will take sL out of my hands and into hers, over the next few years. Along the way suddenlyLISTEN will change. Actually, the change sort of already began in 2021 with Outside In, a really beautiful outdoor multidisciplinary event that Jacinte curated! We don't know exactly how yet, but programming will become less about music and more about how music and sound works with other disciplines and art practices. This is challenging and transformative work, that speaks even more clearly to our place in this time, on this planet.
Don’t worry there will still be improvisation, (it’s all about improvisation!).
So next time you contact suddenlyLISTEN it won’t just be me Norm you’re talking to! For the next few years, we will be a dream team of artists making new work, new sounds, sure, but also new images, new constructions, new relationships, new understandings.
I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Photo of Jacinte Armstrong by Kevin MacCormack