If there are some very precise specific questions about these topics, or should I just try to give an overview about what we did and the events that we have in there, and then we can talk about how can that be included into the Jenkins Cloud Events plugin as well. I don't know, Karadai, you might have more context. No, I think that sounds great. Thank you all for being here. And really, we just want to ask you more questions about the event protocol that you worked on. It's come up quite a bit in the last couple of GSOC mentoring meetings that we've had, so we really appreciate you giving a warm-up discussion here today, but Shruti has a lot of very good questions. Good stuff, good stuff. So let me just share my screen quickly. And let's go here first, right? Like, I'm guessing that you folks know kind of like this repository already, like the CIG events. That's kind of where we are doing the work. And what you will find here is this kind of directory called vocabulary draft, where you will find kind of like the events that we are just aiming to have, and there are like four different categories here. And here, just it's basic description of the events. And again, the idea of the specification here is not to define the cloud events per se, but kind of like the semantics of the events and the terminology around the events. Because that's kind of usually not enough, and people usually wants to see something implemented. We created kind of like this POC using Tecton and Captain, and they are just exchanging these cloud events that are part of the CD working group, right? And I think that this is kind of like this image summarize something similar to what I think that Shruti is trying to achieve with the Jenkins cloud event plugin there, because it is related because we are using Tecton pretty much in the same way as we would use like Jenkins in general, right? And again, the idea here is that we will have events producers and event consumers and in this case of Tecton and in the case of Jenkins, kind of like they are both, right? Like they are producing cloud events and they are also consuming cloud events, right? So we created a demo that basically it's showing interoperability between Tecton and Captain for doing different things. And we are sending cloud events and we wanted to avoid sending cloud events from one service to the other one, right? Like we didn't want like Tecton pipeline sending cloud events directly to Captain for a couple of reasons, but the main reason is that when you send events, you want to make sure that you use some infrastructure that it's ready to handle events and for example, handle re-delivery and sequencing. And for that reason, we use for the demo here like the K&AD event broker, which is already designed and it works with cloud events like out of the box, right? So it allows you to filter cloud events and it allows you to, yeah, just move clouds even around between different systems and you can just define how you can subscribe to these events and send these events to whatever system you want. I am expecting to be able to do something with Jenkins. So if we have the cloud events plugin like ready at some point, we can do something pretty, pretty similar with Jenkins or even like add Jenkins into this demonstration, right? We are running two pipelines here with Tecton and we can easily swap one of these pipelines to be run in Jenkins showing kind of like again, like now three projects interacting and working together trying to do something, right? The demo wasn't that difficult to build. The difficulty here, it's always understanding each of the projects and knowing exactly what are the things that you need to change or what are the things that you need to adapt in order to consume and emit the right cloud events. And when you cannot make the tools to emit and consume the right cloud events, then you usually create like ended up creating a translation layer, right? And for Tecton, I think that this was kind of the translation layer that we built and for Kepton, we needed two translation layers, the inbound kind of plugin or service, how they call it and the outbound service as well. And again, the idea here is that if we start having kind of plugins like in Jenkins, we start removing those translation layers and we make kind of like in some way, we make the projects to adopt the cloud events that we are defining as kind of like the standard cloud events to interoperate with other tools. If you look at a little bit more like a creative eventing, which is a project that I'm getting more deep into it, like into how it works and how it was architected, you will see that it is not difficult to use, but again, it's one of those things that you need to understand why you're using it and why and in which situations, right? And for kind of like what purposes?  And then what you can do from your applications is send HTTP request to that broker and forget about the cloud event basically, just send it there and then you said, okay, whoever wants to consume it, they need to create a trigger, which is subscription just to filter the events that are going to the broker and just get only notified when there is an event that it's for a certain type that I'm interested in, right? So in general, that's kind of how people tend to think about like, KNATIVE eventing, you just install it and then what you do is you create brokers and you might be wondering kind of like, okay, but what's implementing the broker and then you can go to KNATIVE like the documentation and you see that there are like different implementations. So you can put Kafka in there, you can put RabbitMQ, you can use kind of like the cloud provider specific implementation and that's definitely offering a great amount of flexibility that you can start simple, for example, in a local Kubernetes cluster with like an in-memory broker and then if you want to make things more and more serious, like for production environments, you swap the implementation and put a different broker without changing any of the applications and any of the producers or consumers, right? So in general, that's the main objective of the project is to abstract these brokers which are basically in charge of receiving and filtering events and sending to different systems. I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I would love to see like a demo with the Jenkins Cloud Event Plugin using the KNATIVE eventing stuff and I can definitely guide people on how you can configure that and what kind of infrastructure do you need in order to run it. But I'm not entirely sure at what stage the plugin is and I would consider maybe more interesting to start working on the adoption of these new cloud events kind of like formats defined by the group instead of like worrying too much about the infrastructure and how do we connect systems. Can you folks kind of like share a bit more about like where are we right now and what kind of like questions did you have about like these projects and the POC or the cloud events that we have in the group? Yes, I will go ahead with what we are doing here right now and also thank you so much Mauricio for sharing all of this and going through this. So in like the last two meetings we were discussing about an architecture where you know, and if we have like a Jenkins sync it would basically be the sort of fall would have full tolerance, would have recent capacity and all of that stuff.  And then the last meeting we were talking about this and with Havan Khar and everybody else suggested that we let's design a system similar to what's there in the POC with Captain and Tecton and what we're gonna do for now is replace Captain with Jenkins as a Jenkins outbound. So Jenkins would be sending cloud events to the KNATIVE broker and then we would have Tecton listening on to the events coming in from the broker for KNATIVE. So what I have right now is actually I've been working on it and I have developed the sort of the core components for it like separately and I've been trying to connect it in the morning like today but I'm having like a bit of a trouble connecting like the Tecton event to listener. So it's everything is there and it's designed but when I'm sending anything to the event listener it's not triggering a task run. So we were just testing with a simple task run. It's not really specific of extracting parameters or specific information from cloud events per se but more or less first establishing that structure of Jenkins will send an event to KNATIVE broker and then there's a trigger which is basically have the subscriber URL for the Tecton event listener. So that's an issue that I've been having with KNATIVE or with Tecton actually not triggering anything when it's receiving an event on the event listener. Let's see if I can, like I was working a while earlier just having an issue spinning up the listener again it's giving me a timeout on the port. How are you running Tecton and where are you running it? So it's running on Kubernetes. It's actually running on AKS so Amazon's Provision Kubernetes and like the clusters they are of sufficient size if there was an issue with volume or anything like that I think that wouldn't be an issue I can. So I can also share my screen with what I had for Tecton running. Let me... So you can create and the other question is can you create like a task using kind of like the Tecton command line tool and seed run for example? Yes, yes. So let me actually go ahead and think it's present now. Okay. Okay. All right. So here was my, like my Tecton running and so I have to change the YAML quite a bit from basically it was, so it's the same it's most of it is the same but just change the triggers to be more specific to you know just like simple triggers. So I just like change it for one to have everything together have like a trigger template just a very simple of whenever it's receiving something on the event listener just maybe like echo something you know, hello Shruti, hello world, whatever. And yeah. So the namespace and service account is the same and then here's the event listener and I have the URL for it. So right now a while ago it was working but there's a connection socket error so I cannot exactly like trigger it but it gets so when I'm like when I post a curl request to it let's see if I can see, yeah so this is a point where it was working. So if I have like a post request sent to the event listener for Tecton here's like what I'd get. So this is, I also have components ready for the cloud made up for the Knative broker and the trigger with the subscriber URL for Tecton. So this was me just like testing if it is actually receiving an event and it's actually triggering something on like Tecton. But I don't know I'm not really sure because I tried a lot of like changes inside of inside of my triggers on YAML to make sure that okay I don't know what might be wrong. So I did try you know like having simple task here other than like the trigger template instead of a task run or like putting this together I also tried running like task ref. But again I'm not sure why it's not working but if I'm on the UI, right? If I'm on the UI and if I create a task run it has the definition here. It doesn't have it because I'm pretty sure that like something went wrong in like an average and I'll test it again. But before that it had like the task here which I had defined inside of the task ref or inside of like the template, the template binding on the time. It had that here if I would like go and create so it was working from the UI but as soon as I've been sent a post request nothing really would happen. Okay, so there are a couple of things there you can just check the one that it's receiving the event in the cluster. So you have access to the cluster, right? And you have access to the posts that are running in the cluster for receiving the events. Yes, yes. So looking at the logs there might be the first thing. The second thing is that you need to send a cloud event, right? You don't need to send like only a post. I don't know if you're sending a cloud event. Yeah, I also tried that. So that wasn't working either. So then I had like tried both like a simple JSON post and I also like tried sending a cloud events from the Jenkins event plugin that we have running. So I also tried that, so that wasn't working either. So let's see, where is our Jenkins? So at this stage, we pretty much have for Jenkins we pretty much have that part of Jenkins sending cloud events to an external system and we tried playing around with Sochi earlier. So it was working, it was receiving events. So if I go on to configure this was the URL for the event at the time when it was working. Time when it was like it was receiving requests and it didn't really happen. So I did try doing this as well. This wasn't working either. All of these events are basically like cloud event, compliant events. So I'm pretty sure. Where did you get that URL from? So right now actually when I'm trying it's right, okay.  I'll just copy paste it. So right now the stuff I'm getting a service unavailable and this might be like a port issue. So I might have another port running I'm not really sure. But before all of that when I was sending cloud events I like basically would get the same sort of reply from the server which I was getting when I'm sending like a simple. So this was the reply that I was getting even for cloud event sort of like cloud event compliant event and also for like the post event. But it wasn't like triggering the task run. Yeah, because in order to trigger, so that's the other thing like how did you install Tecdon there in the cluster? Did you follow kind of like the POC instructions? Yeah, so like first like going on to Tecdon pipeline. Okay, so, you know, like Tecdon pipeline trigger I have the dashboard on then applying obviously what was inside of, you know like service role and bindings and all of that stuff. I mean, I do have the controller, but like again as a point that we are not going to need that here so we can move away from that because we don't need that here. And then in place of, you know, like obviously like install the whatever resources we are going to need, but replaced the triggers with just specifically relating to like a very simple trigger of an event or a very simple trigger of a task run. Can you, but that's the thing that you maybe can do it's like list the triggers with QCTL, right? And see if they are like applied and they do not have any errors in the resources. That's something that I will try first. And also I would check that the broker is running, for example. Yeah, I think I might have, I might have like tried looking at like if the resources inside were running specifically like even when I had all of those things, you know like I would have tasks mentioned here when it was like a different format of a task rather than like a task spec inside of trigger template. So I had the task mentioned here. I had the event listener, trigger binding triggers, but it just, I'm not really sure why I was having, but I think what I might do is set it up again because it's like it is an AWS like EKS running cluster and there are a couple of other things that are running on it already. So I might try running it on another cluster because it could be an issue of, I'm not sure about like cross forward binding or something. So I might try doing that. But in general, if you have like the components, if you have the tecton component that it's waiting for cloud events, it should work, right? Like that shouldn't be a problem that you should try to solve. And if it's not working, of course, we can reach to Andrea or I can try to help debugging. In general, if I can access the cluster, if I can take a look at what's running in the cluster, it's way much easier than looking at the UI because the UI will not tell you, I mean, if something is failing it, you are not going to see there like the entry, right? So it might be interesting to see that and also see if the broker is running, for example, that might be the next step to check. And if you have the broker running, you can always use, you remember that in K-Native, if you have the broker running, you can send events and then you can create a trigger for sockeye, right? So in that way, we usually debug these applications. If we don't know if the event is arriving to the broker, then first we send a request and we expect to get, for example, a 200 in response. That's something I would do. And then if I do not know if a trigger or a subscription is working, I will create one to sockeye and I will just check if in sockeye that's arriving. You are thinking that you're trying the most complex use case, which is a tecton trigger, which is going to create a tecton object based on an event. So I will just try to split up the problem on checking that the cloud events have been moved around correctly. And then we can basically just create a task definition and trigger it manually. And then we just trigger it by the cloud event. Yeah, I think the problem is with tecton communication to tecton specifically, because I also have sockeye on the cluster for the Kubernetes. And then I did try first directly triggering from Jenkins to sockeye, then we are getting events there. And I was also doing a cross, maybe having a middleware, which would route events to sockeye. Maybe one thing we can try doing is shifting the Knet of broker in between Jenkins and sockeye to make sure that that part is working. But even if we take away Knet for now, I'm not really sure why the tecton specifically is not working because as you said, like trigger a definition manually and then try and triggering that from either like a post request or a cloud event. I did try doing that as well. Like I did try first triggering it manually both on through the command line, then also went on to the UI and did that there and then tried doing like a post from Jenkins cloud events, making sure that it's receiving something. But yeah, that didn't work. I'm not really, again, not really sure, but I feel that it probably is, might be some issue with the trigger style YAML because there are different like alpha version, beta version. And inside of that too, there's like the friends and how they're defining their YAML definitions. So I don't know that a lot of, like a lot of, sorry. Yeah, I think that you are on the right track. You just need to spend more time just figuring out the details. In tecton, you will see that there are like a lot of like namespaces filtering and you have like the event listener that needs to be configured correctly plus also the triggers, right? Like you need to make sure that the triggers and the event listener are in the same namespace. They are pointing to the right place and that you have kind of like everything in place to make sure that the things are connecting. That's why like looking at the resources, for example, and looking at the trigger, for example, trigger status and to see that's okay. And also looking at the event listener status and making sure that that's up and running and in the right namespace, I think that that's super important. So again, it's like checking your configuration and maybe I think that's something that will definitely help is creating something like what Andrea created like that script that basically does install all these things maybe in a kind cluster, right? Like you're running on AWS. That's a pretty complicated environment on its own, right? So maybe what you can do is just put Jenkins, just start Jenkins in a container with the cloud events playing. You already have kind of like that script bootstrap tecton and Kennedy broker in a kind cluster. So this will kind of like enable you to just do it faster and like just to reproduce that very complex environment just with a single script. So it might be kind of like one idea to look into it. If you are in Windows, that's a different thing. That's a more complicated stuff, but it can be done in the same way, right? Like you just need to create like a script from scratch. But I guess that creating kind of like that sense of, oh yeah, I can reproduce these in a local environment or I can reproduce these in AWS will help you a lot to just to avoid making mistakes of namespaces and stuff like that. All right. Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. And I might go on to like an EC2 instance or something because I don't have like Linux on my machine or like a WIM or somewhere because I feel like it might be easier to do. So you can put Windows and you can spin up the next containers on Windows. And to start off, I think you should just run TechCon by itself and play around with event list nodes without doing anything with the POC in the beginning because I have a feeling because of the POC some things here and there might be confusing right now. So just kind of like get started with running a simple task run and then turning an event list node which triggers something like a basic task run. I think you should start with that if you're on the TechCon side and like rest of the stuff, I think it will just fall into place after that. Yeah, that's like a fair point. And again, like the thing with TechCon that I feel it's probably the task run definition itself rather than like how the event listeners configured because the things with event listeners which could be wrong is yes, maybe the wrong port has been exposed for the URL that I'm using or it's in a different namespace or something. So I did check all of those things and it is receiving the request and it doesn't sort of give me an error right away or it doesn't give me an error in general even when it was running earlier. It's just the triggering part of the task run from the event listener. So which makes me wonder if they went like the task run definition itself which I have might be incorrect somewhere. So the thing is I think there might be UI bug with the task run and the task stuff because in a task run you can even define the task inside the task run or reference it. So that might be an issue there with the UI. So try using the CLI for that because it will become more clear that way like what exactly you're doing. So whenever you do like tech, TKN, task run LS or something like you can see the status of the task runs or even the task has been triggered or not. So I think that that's probably, like probably move to the CLI for now because the dashboard, yeah, I think just using CLI is more, is kind of better at this point. So when you say that the dashboard might not reflect, do you mean that it does like there are bugs with whenever we are trying to push it from external systems or they're just bugs? No, just kind of like formatting stuff. I mean, I'm not a UI guy as such, I prefer to use CLI. And in that way, like right now I saw the UI, I couldn't see, I could probably only see task reference over there. So I couldn't see a place where you could mention the task in the task run like the whole of a task. So yeah, so I got my attention and I think what you're doing is you're giving a task with a task from the task definition inside or is it referencing a task that is already out there? So I did three different things. So the first thing was having the task. So I'm basically first is like using a trigger template and inside of that we have like one of the resource templates task run. The one thing the first thing was like you, it's specifying a task ref and then having a task outside of it. So as I was saying earlier when I had that then over the UI it would specify like when I would click on trigger a task from the UI just to make sure that it's there actually. So I would go on to task, then go on to task, then define that particular task which I had defined in the YAML. So it was present. The other thing that I tried doing was inside of the task run have tasks spec which is just defining all of the steps inside of the task run rather than outside of it. And I also had something similar to what the POC has which is just defining a task outside of like a trigger template and that's just sort of the trigger. So I don't think that has the trigger template but it's more just the trigger which has the pipeline run. So something similar to that. And yeah, like when I was on the UI it was working so I did try running that like steps from the task run going on creating a task inside of the inside from the definition in the YAML file. So that worked as well. But it was just- I have a question. So did these tasks when you ran them individually without the trigger template, did they run properly? They ran even inside of the trigger template as well. When I had outside of them, they ran when I had inside looking like something like I can share my screen, let me see. Like basically inside of you have the spec, you have resource template kind task run and then task ref. And then it's defining a reference to that particular task and then task is also another sort of CRD inside of that same YAML file. Oh, maybe I need to pull the components out into different YAML files because right now my trigger template, my like event listener and also my like the template binding or the trigger binding, they're in the same file. I don't know why that could be but it's like maybe worth trying if that can be an issue with different like sort of versions. So maybe. Everything should be V1, Veta one. I'm not sure what that goes. Yeah, that's the other thing. Like task references are something like it's in alpha, I guess. So that's why in like the POC we're enabling that like in TecPon specifically with the flag. But yeah. Anyways, I think that you're now like discussing the specifics and I would definitely again, like suggest the same as without like simplify the setup. Like if you're running in AWS, that's complicated for us already. Just to keep track and just to help you to divide in that. And also like from the UI perspective is that sometimes the UI will not show you things that are like available in the resources themselves. So you definitely need to get used to do that and use kind of like the Qubectl tool in order to see the details and figure out what's failing. But again, if you have any of those issues, just let's create there a thread in Slack and we can definitely help you or at least try to guide you if you, you know, if you get stuck for more than a couple of days. Yes. Yes, that sounds good because definitely this is not creating. So that sounds good. Thank you. And well, like one or another question is sort of more specific to the entire POC. Just would be enabling that sort of infrastructure where agnostic, sync and source binding can work. So, you know, like how you mentioned with captain that you had to create systems as a translation there for moving like cloud events between different systems. So how do you see that agnostic binding with maybe when we have Jenkins and we really want to go into a doing a lot of filtering and also triggering based on specific parameters and stuff. So how is it like? I don't like more issue. This is in relation to like filtering in the, like filtering the cloud events as well. And we were talking about the other day and your thing about doing a matching of cloud events cloud events, like we give a world and it kind of finds a substring in the cloud and through a match filter or something along those lines something that there is in soccer and something similar. So in TechTone triggers, they have a CL interceptor the common expression language interceptor. So do you have an idea we could do something similar in Java in this cloud event kind of scenario? Okay, so in general, like the infrastructure will allow you to filter events, right? And TechTone, both like the filters there and sockeye also like in the UI. But usually in order to filter things, yeah, I mean, as soon as you can just parse the event then you can do whatever you want with it, right? So I'm wondering kind of like, what's the specific question in there? You have certain filters in Kennedy and certain filters in TechTone, right? And then you can write your own filters in the cloud events plugin in Jenkins in Java because you can parse the event and then just filter in any way you want. Yeah, but the filter is something that the user will give in the configuration. So like, is this something, some library or something we can use for filtering these events? Because in the CL interceptor for TechTone, you can basically do something like header dot, I don't know, like header dot something like header dot artifact name is equal to something, something. Like, I don't know, I'm not being very articulate here. I'm not articulating well here, but you kind of understand what I mean here. I think that I do, but I don't know if there is any specific library to do that, right? Like I don't know if there is like any helper that will allow you to do that in Java itself. Besides like the cloud events SDK that I think that you're not using, right? Well, you're using the Java SDK, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think that there is anything in there to like easily filter cloud events by just sending kind of like a regular expression or something like that. I think that we would just need to do that in Java for now. It might be a kind of like a good feature request there for the SDK. But like it doesn't have to be cloud events as such because at the end of the day, we can read these cloud events as JSON object, right? So something that, something to pass JSON objects and the user can give like a string which will help us parse it. Yep. Yeah. And like also like super complicated JSON with JSON arrays inside of objects and other JSON objects inside of the array. It usually if you know, you and body can be complicated if you're talking about cloud events but also in general just JSON. So if something was to exist like that, I feel it would be easier for even the user to mention but definitely for us to also get that information parsed from the event body. I think that's the more sort of tricky part because the headers are straightforward. I wouldn't worry too much about like going and parsing the body because no framework is providing those filters. I think that if you want to really pass the body then you just need to use something like, you know like a JSON framework to just go and parse using the path basically. So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about that for now because I know that that sounds like that's something that people will use and probably they will at some point they will require that but no framework is actually providing that for now. So I might push to kind of this scope that from the demos and I know that sometimes we are filtering based on the metadata, right? Like the cloud event type or the source or like metadata level artifacts but not going into the body and just filtering there because that's usually a much more complicated thing to and it will not work for all the transports in cloud event and making it, you know just making that you're going to support that for all the transport makes it way much more complicated. Yeah. Data which is coming in from different sources is going to be very different and the structure probably isn't going to be the same except the actual cloud administration. Exactly. Folks, I need to drop to another meeting in a second. So but definitely I do see that there is a lot of progress in here and now you are just trying to tackle much more complicated issues and I think that that's great. So feel free to open a thread there and just mention me in Slack and I will just try to help to unblock if you keep hitting kind of like these issues with kind of like installation or just even sending cloud events to Tecdon that should work, shouldn't be such a problem. Thank you so much Mauricio and everyone else for the time and appreciate it. Yes, thank you for all being here. Great. Thank you Viva, thank you Kera for organizing. See you soon. Ping me there in Slack if you need me, please. It's okay, it's okay, nothing, I'm doing nothing here. No, that's good, that's good. Yeah, but thank you so much Kera, I'll see you on Slack. Take care, bye bye. Bye.


I have a background in forestry and metrology, and I'm interested to look at the role of forests in relationship with the climate and very precisely the role of forests in regulating local climate or microclimate. But at the moment it's also interesting to look at what's the role of forests in sequestering and also releasing carbon from the ecosystem. We need to know exactly how much carbon will be sequestered by this ecosystem and also release when it is removed from the landscape. So we want to know the detail about the above-ground biomass in the forest and also below-ground biomass. We're also interested to look at the below-ground biomass because we are also working in the pitland ecosystem where organic material is so important there and we look at the dynamic of pitland and the role of pitland in storing carbon as well as the vulnerability of pitland itself when the forest is removed. So we are interested to look at how the ecosystem will respond when land use is changed in pitland ecosystem. If you look at from the surface, pit forests look similar to the rest of the forest, what we call forest grown in mineral soil. But if you go into the forest itself, you will see how different it is when you look at the situation on the ground and below the ground. When you dig up the soil, basically you do not have what we call mineral soil. It's basically organic material, damped there for thousands of years. So it's very rich in terms of organic material. And the depth of this pit can reach up to 15 meters. So you can imagine the amount of carbon stored there. Most of the area where we can find pitland is a lowland area and it's regularly flooded and also drained. So this inundation and draining caused the system to try to accumulate carbon but the decomposition rate is relatively slow so that the organic material coming from the litter, the dead material will be damped there for years. It's very much associated with the policy being drafted or being implemented in connection with the so-called conversion forests. In this particular class of forests, pit forests is amongst them. So it's interesting to look at the policy and the biophysical processes on the ground. We try to see how policies should be or will be informed with regard to what's happened if you convert pitland forests into something else. And strictly speaking, most of this area will be converted to agricultural expansion including oil, palm, and palpable plantation. With the debate on the climate change and people start to understand the role of forests in regulating global climate, not only microclimate, I think people should be aware and should be made aware of the role of forests. What I mean by people here is not necessarily people on the street but it's good that they're also aware but also people who do business. So the business community should be aware also about their consequences of their action. This is the beginning because the new government also starts with a new set of teams and I think it's timely to discuss that across the table. In the cabinet, you cannot address the issue of pitland in one particular sector. It has to be discussed across the cabinet including, for example, Ministry of Agriculture, Planning Bureau, whatever, related to the use and also the role of pitland. And also the issue of, I think it's long debated, this spatial planning and I think from the legal point of view it should also involve parliamentary debate as well. From the political point of view, a lot of things have been discussed outside the negotiation table but I think the leaders of the world send quite mixed messages to the rest of the community. In one hand they want to do something meaningful to cut or deep cut the emission but at the same time they also have their domestic agenda. So it's not quite clear how things will converge in Copenhagen right now. This is exciting because science is always exciting. We have a lot of questions to answer and hopefully the answer will be meaningful in decision making and you want to convey that message to them. For climate change, I think the impact is clear. It's here and now. We can feel it. We do not need to wait until 50 years or 100 years and for developing countries like Indonesia the impact is so evident and we need to do something however little it is.


Heat transfer happens to us every day. It always moves from hot objects to colder ones. Let's talk about radiation. This is defined as electromagnetic waves traveling through space. When electromagnetic waves come in contact with an object, the waves transfer the heat to that object. It's heat traveling in the form of visible and non-visible light. Some examples of radiation include feeling warm while standing next to a campfire, reheating that slice of pizza in your microwave, and turning on a light so you can find your phone.


create new ways of presenting. And we had Bob Wilson with us on last week on Wednesday, which was a fantastic conversation. And today, we continue our series with artists, curators, and producers who try to make sense out of the time of Corona create, create meeting. And and now after the immediate talk, which we experienced last year, we talked with over 150 artists from 50 countries. Now it's all about what do we do now? What's last tune? What to do? The big question. And with us today, we have someone who does something, John Glover. And John is also, how would you say, a triple champion. He's an artist. He's a producer. And also a presenter. So John Glover, as I read from his bio, which hopefully you all got is an expressive composer, unabashedly expressive, they say. And he has created music for concert, opera, dance, and theater. And he has received commissions from the Houston, Houston Grand Opera, Onside Opera, New York Youth Symphony, the Washington National Opera Sparks, and Byron Christ, and Milwaukee Opera, American Conservatory Theater, and Mirror Vision Ensemble. And he has many upcoming projects with artists that he is collaborating with. And a new music theater work was the American Opera Project titled Eat the Document, with his frequent collaborator, Kelly Rook. John serves as the director of artistic planning for the Kauffman Music Center here in Manhattan. This is what we have in here. He invented something, the musical storefront, things a little bit. Hey, you have to talk to John. This is essential. What he does is stunning. And I have to admit, John, I didn't know what it is. So tell us something. What is the musical storefront theater? Sure. So just a little bit too about, thank you for that introduction, and just a little bit also about Kauffman Music Center for, I know that more of your audience tends to be theater rather than concert audience. So a little bit about Kauffman Music Center is we're located on the Upper West Side, and Kauffman is sort of this whole ecosystem of what music making means. So we have basically three main initiatives here that I help oversee the artistic guidance with or help coordinate the artistic guidance with. So we have Merkin Hall, which is where we would normally be presenting concerts in our 450-seat theater on the Upper West Side, which is our professional presentations. We also have Special Music School, which is a unique collaboration with the Department of Education. It's a K-12 public school, and we provide music as the central curriculum component to that education. Our high school is the only arts high school in New York City that provides composition as a focus for instruction. And then we have Lucy Moses School, which is New York City's largest community music school. So all of that is normally what Kauffman is. And my role is director of artistic planning is to oversee presentations on the hall, but also to find ways that we can connect our professional presentation work with the wider sort of student body that also exists within Kauffman. And so the musical storefronts was one of the many ways that we responded to this last difficult year where live performance has been a challenge for all of us. And so we pivoted in a couple of ways. We did also do digital presentations, which we have going on throughout the season. But at a certain point, this opportunity presented itself to bring live music back to the city. And just a little context about musical storefronts is this is a project that it's certainly not my idea alone. And it's a real example of, I think, how things are always stronger with community and a group of people coming together to realize something. So in this case, there is an individual, Jay Dweck, who was walking around the upper side and noticing all the empty storefronts and sort of had this idea, well, why couldn't people be performing in storefronts? And of course, there have been a number of initiatives over the years where people do use storefronts for performance, whether it's theater or music. And he approached us with the idea, the sort of the broad concept, the idea, and our executive director, Kate Sheeran, and myself sort of thought into that more, hunted around for storefronts that could be a great concert hall. And also the technical possibilities, how do you really execute this? How do you do something that would be a really successful performance? So there was this initial seed of an idea from Jay and then a foundation he's connected to the Alphadine Foundation, which provided the funding. And then on Kaufman's side, it's our presentation, and we worked through how to technically realize this, curating of the artists and sort of running of the series and finding the storefront. And so it's sort of that whole collaboration that's come together, including our location at 62nd and Broadway, Milstein properties and Milford management is the landlord of that empty storefront. And they actually donated the space to us, which allowed us to hire even more musicians and present more concerts because we weren't worrying about having to rent the storefront. And then we also had Steinway and Sons donate a grand piano to the space. So it's this sort of shared collective effort to get live performance back to the city. And as a quick summary of how it works is we present the same range of music that we would present at Merckin Hall. So it's predominantly classical, but not only there's a lot of jazz, there's Broadway and music theater, there's contemporary and experimental music that whole range is being presented at the storefront. And we started on January 23rd. And the series is going up through April 28th. So we are presenting 107 concerts. Over 200 musicians are being hired all being paid standard professional wages for the concerts. And there are two concerts a day, almost every day of the week. So we have an artist or a group of artists do a set from 11 onwards, like an afternoon set, they'll do three performances of 50 minutes in length each. Then there's a break and then we do like a four, four o'clock onset with a different set of artists. So any day you walk past the storefront window, you might experience a completely different sort of short 45 minute concert from a totally different artist. And how we accomplish it technically is it was an old clothing store that's been empty for over two years on the corner of 62nd and Broadway. And we were able to convert it, we brought microphones from Merkin Hall, purchased speakers, moved the piano in, and basically anywhere from a soloist to up to a quartet of performers can be in the space. They're all mics, they have monitors, they can hear themselves. You have a sound engineer who's outside on the sidewalk, who is monitoring the levels and sort of designing as if we were in a normal theater. And the speakers are outside of the window. So the audience that's on the sidewalk can hear the performance that's happening in the storefront, as you would if we were in a standard theater. So that's sort of the broad look at it. It's also meaningful to me because it's a whole range of performers we're presenting, but one in particular that I think is vocalists, particularly right now, don't really have a lot of opportunities for live performance because of the challenges of this particular virus that we're dealing with, right, and that it's airborne. So being able to present operatic singers, Broadway singers, we've had stars from Hamilton, from Tootsie, we have singers that would normally be on the stage of the Met, they can perform at this storefront live for people because there is this glass, there's a way that it becomes a safe medium. So that's sort of the broad picture of it. And I could, if it's of interest, I could share a short sort of video clip that gives a good summary of a few performances and gives people a sense of what the storefront looks like. Oh, I don't think I can hear you right now, Frank. Okay, great. So I'll share. Yeah, absolutely. So give me one minute to share screen here. And that should. So this is sort of a summary of, this gives a few highlights of the storefront. About two and a half minutes. It gives a sense of sort of the scope of it is, you know, it really, we were trying, the idea was to be both a way to get live performance happening again in New York, which for most of these artists and most of these audiences when we started this in January, it was the first live performance that either side had experienced in, you know, since March. And part of it was really to replicate or to replicate the theater experience as well as much as possible in terms of the sound. So to have really high quality sound for the artist and for the audience. And I think also it's been a great, it's nice that it's a free initiative. And it's just been a really inspiring thing to do, especially in the middle of the winter when things were pretty, pretty tough. And the incredible thing is, you know, for anybody who was worried about, you know, where will the audiences go when we're able to come back? And where is that engagement at? I mean, we have, I think we're still, we've still got two weeks to go. I think we're over 17,000 audience members that have stopped in front of that storefront window to experience the concerts. And I think that number is even more remarkable because we can't publicize them in advance. So when we started this COVID restrictions were such, obviously they're loosening up now as we're further in with the vaccine. But when we started this, it was really early days in terms of figuring out how to safely do live events. So we had the entire series planned out, but audiences wouldn't know in advance when the performances would be. So it served as a pop-up series, even though we're just in this one location. But I mean, even in our coldest days and like late January, early February, when it would be like 22 degrees, you'd have like 100 people standing out there watching a 40-minute long concert just totally bundled up. And these aren't, for the most part, these aren't people who were planning to be there.  So it's been a real, a really joyful thing to do in this time and a real affirmation that, you know, there is no replacement for live performance really. You know, there's no replacement for that actual experience. So incredible, really congratulation on that. But I hadn't heard, I wasn't aware of it, but as you said, you can't really advertise it even now. It's not, you're only shortly before you will hear when it happens, but it's an intervention in a public space. It is also giving a sign that you care about audiences, that you care about musicians, and also the change. Someone has an idea, it goes to an institution, the institution has a funder, and then it's being produced. So it's a real model that works. It's very clear. It's about my space. One cannot go around the question. You're close to Lincoln Center. So how does that make you feel? I don't know.  Or am I misinformed? Or have they been?  And then, you know, obviously, there's the music making community. And there's many communities within there as there are, of course, in theater. And the thing I really keep reflecting on in this last year is just that, you know, we are all in the same ocean that is trying to create work in a pandemic, but we're definitely all in different boats. And so, you know, I think each we have this sort of shared challenge that we all are aware of this broader existential issue of having a living through a pandemic, which none of us have done before and figuring out how to create art in the midst of that, which often depends on at least in our fields in live experience. And I think we're all the tools we have available to us are all different. I know there are a number of other pop up initiatives going. Obviously, there's the New York pop stuff has been going on, which is through the city and the state. And I know Lincoln Center has now initiated a project called restart our stages. So I think that has started already, and I think goes mostly through the summer. So I think with us, I think it was we are a unique institution, I think in a lot of ways in that we are equally grounded in professional presentation, but also in deeply engaging with our community and a community music school that has students from ages three to 90, and then also a public school with a core curriculum of music. So we're connecting with communities in all three of those ways and we're a large institution, but we're smaller than many of our colleagues on the Upper West Side. And for that reason, I think we're more nimble in sometimes in addressing some of these things. So I think this was one of those elements where we're a presenter that normally works in a professional theater. So when this idea appears of, well, what if couldn't you take over an empty storefront? You know, for us, the answer is yes, because we have stage hands, we have audio engineers, we have even like our front of house people and our ushers, who, you know, haven't, haven't, we haven't had live audiences in our theater since last March. Suddenly, they can all come into play and they can handle crowd control management and so they can run a front of house on the sidewalk. So I think that's part of the uniqueness with us too, is that we're, you know, we're nimble in that way. So I mean, I know that there are other storefront initiatives happening around the city. Mostly I've seen it with theater companies and not so much with music presenters. And a hamburger created a great festival and some of the meatpacking districts have done it. But still, the scale of your initiative is remarkable. And one thing is the New York City, you know, opera company, I know the phalaemonics have a track, they go around, I actually saw one of the performances. It felt very small. The musicians were kind of looking to each other. They didn't want to talk afterwards. Someone was singing kind of even the show tune and dancing on the red truck they had. And it felt, at least to me, it didn't feel appropriate in a time of Corona when people were dying and to show if I feel what you are doing there in a way. Also with that glass, you know, there is something of interest that this screen we look at now, I see you through a glass, the television and all of it. But in a way it's a hybrid format. People are behind them. You hear their voices, but through a great sound system. And what's missing, the absent is kind of highlighted, but you're still experiencing. And I can think this is why a hundred people stay below freezing, if you say that or not. For 40 minutes to listen to a concert, it's remarkable. It's, I mean, I think it's, I think there is something interesting about, you know, like I say, we're not the first to do something like to sort of re-engage a storefront.  But I do think there's, when you're trying to, I think there's something about it that, because I didn't really, you know, we didn't really know exactly how it would come together. Would people really stay? How would the artists feel when they're performing? Would they feel like they're on display? Or would they feel really comfortable? And I think in a lot of ways we just, we took all of our expertise and our knowledge and our best practices for what works to support an artist and what works to create a concert in a theater and sort of just made that translation. And so, you know, like, you know, bringing in incredible audio engineers that would normally be amplifying performances in our theater and having them do it there and making that translation. And I think also like, for example, the artists, when we thought through how does this programming work? Like how it, when you invite an artist to come do this, what does that look like? And so we really wanted to create a situation that felt as familiar as possible. So you have a stage manager, you know, you have a, you know, five minute call, two minute call. You do a short sound check, but also that we arranged it so that each, if you're engaged for a performance on the storefront, you're given a really respectable fee. And that calls you to the storefront for a three hour period of time. So there's a sound check in there. And then you do three performances spaced out. And we, then the adjustment, of course, is that unlike a normal concert, we're not asking you to do like a first act and a second act or something like that, but more like three shorter sets with breaks in between. And that helps for us both with spacing out audiences that we don't have audiences gathering for too long. But also the artists can get a breather. But in a normal, in normal concert seasons before this, if you were hired for a concert performance at Merckin Hall, or if you were hired to perform with an orchestra or in chamber group, that probably took about three hours of your time, right? It was, you know, you'd show up at the hall, you do maybe an hour sound check, break while the audience is gathering, and then you've probably got a program of around an hour and a half of music with an intermission. So I think, I mean, I know these are kind of less interesting brass tacks, things, but I think all of those small elements created an environment that felt like a familiarity that a lot of us hadn't experienced in a long time. And I think that that allowed the artists to also feel just a little more enlivened. I mean, the other joy is that, you know, it's really, it's sort of like really elevated busking, really, right? I mean, it's they're on a street performing music is what's really happening, but elevated in the sense that we can accomplish it at a technical level, like we would in a theater, because the performance part of the space is a controlled environment. The sound is really good. The performers feel safe in their climate control. They can hear each other very well. So they can really play at the same level that they would play if they were in the theater. And then we can really control the sound and make it a very high professional level. So I think those things, you know, all and yet at the same time, it's a free outdoor experience. So I think those things help it come together to feel natural. And also, you know, it's a general philosophy of mine when doing programming in whatever context I'm doing it. But in this case, it's sort of, you know, once we had the generosity of the funding from the Alpha 9 Foundation to make it possible, and the generosity of Milstein and Milford for donating our storefront space, and providing us with the support of like their super if we had issues with electricity and things like that. And once we have that piano, it's once all those things came together, it's really all reward and no risk. So you really just reach out to artists that you're excited about or that that you trust and just sort of say, okay, here's a storefront performance. What do you want to do?  Because obviously it's a free public event. So we're not concerned about ticket sales in the same way we would be in a normal presentation and things like that. And so I think that too allowed it to be a kind of it's sort of just like, like this, like this fire hydrant of just all this creative energy that's been building since March and we just opened it, you know, and it's been incredible to see that some really deeply emotional experiences with artists that would come up to me afterwards and say, I haven't played in front of somebody else in a year, you know, I've played in my living room on Zoom, but I haven't done this in a year or same with audience members, we've had audience members that have come up to us and just been weeping because they just haven't seen someone perform for them in light in real life. And so yeah, it's it's been, I think it's sort of hit the best of all possible aspects of being a really controlled, like a theater style environment for the artists, but also a totally open available free public experience in a high traffic area of the city. Yeah, it is really remarkable. How do the artists, did they try out things and normally wouldn't? Yeah, you know, it was it was it was interesting to see a variety of responses, you know, we had some musicians that really thought I would say each of the artists that we've invited was definitely thoughtful about what the actual environment was, you know, they understood that it was a storefront, they understood that it was the public passing by that maybe people would stop, maybe people wouldn't. And different artists had really different approaches to that. So we had like the performer who opened the whole series, Sean Lee, phenomenal violinist, when we invited him, he said, okay, well, I've been working on all the Paganini caprices, especially over the pandemic and I, you know, got them all. So I think what I'm going to do is just I'm just going to play Paganini caprices. And I'll sort of announce them as I go, and I don't know what order I'll do them in, but I'll just do that. And I think for him, he thought, you know, they're these really beautiful virtuosic incredible pieces, right, that he's he's absolutely mastered. But also they're all sort of tuneful and vibrant and short, right, they're all these sort of two to three minute things. And it allowed him to, if someone stumbled across it and stopped, they could take in one three minute piece and then keep walking, or they could take in a series of them since there is this set of 24. But also because of the short works, he could kind of play a caprice and then talk to the audience and play a caprice and talk to the audience and have it be this really interactive and casual experience. And then we had other artists, Michael Kelly was a baritone who and he did a whole, because I also offered to artists they could either do like think of 140 to 50 minute long set and do it three times since there would be breaks and you would have different audience, or they could mix and match or they could however they like. And this this artist, Michael Kelly is fantastic baritone. He actually went on a whole research thought about like windows and different he's an operatic baritone but he also does music theory theater and he thought through the concept of being through a window and glass and barriers and also the fact that he would be performing from four o'clock to seven for him it was four o'clock on. And so his first set it would still be daylight. But by the time he got to his last set, the sun would have set because this was in February, early March, so the sun was still setting earlier then. So he created a whole like three 50 minute programs that each were added like if you stayed there for the whole three hours you had this three act experience of that reflected on the time of day but also different ways of thinking about singing or reaching through barriers which I was totally amazed that that's where he went with it because it's like, I mean he puts together a bigger program than he would have ever put together in a normal concert hall. It really was like 150 minutes of music like and if you stayed for that full three hours you experienced a complete show. And I'm trying to think of a couple other examples of some artists have taken it as an opportunity to collaborate or connect with pianists that they haven't worked like some soloists. For example, we had Akash Mittal who's a fantastic jazz saxophonist and also is the lead coach for our Face the Music program at Kaufman Music Center, which is a youth ensemble dedicated to only the work of living composers. So he's a jazz saxophonist and composer and he took the opportunity because you could work with a maximum of four artists in the space and since he had to do three sets, he took it as a chance to work with three different pianists. So he had a different artist join him for each set. Two of them were artists that he hadn't previously performed with. And so I think that's a unique example also because obviously we're busy but we're busy in different ways, right? So a lot of musicians that would normally be on tour right now that are based in New York but would normally be traveling all around the globe and only here for a week at a time, they're all here. So a lot of artists, Akash is just one example, a lot of artists were able to put together projects or try out things that they haven't been able to do in a long time because normally we're all more spread out. And so in that way it had a very sort of local feeling to it in terms of the art making. Incredible. Can you choose whatever they want to do or do you ask them? Within reason, I mean we would start it as I gave them the broad sense of like we would give them the broad sense of it's a storefront, you know, the sort of setup, also the fact that you know that what you're going to be performing is people walking by in the street. So something that you think might draw people in or engage them. And just to be mindful of the fact that it is art that you're creating in a public space, right? So we're not, and it's a pop-up. So we're not contextualizing it before this isn't an audience that's coming specifically for one sort of thing. And then beyond that really just ask them what do you want to do? And some artists wanted to have more back and forth conversations and some just said this is what I want to do and I didn't that that's where it would go. So yeah pretty open ended in terms of their options. Incredible. Just think about it and in a way of course also radical you are outside your normal space it's on the street but it's not on the street it's inside. It's artist depicted by temperature or weather or weather but really great sound quality normally it's not such a great quality also great performers. And audiences are free to come and go stay. Robert Wilson is famous for his long seven or nine hour operas especially in the beginning of his live in Time of Sigmund Freud. Also Einstein on the beach where he would give to the audience the audience are free to leave and come back and take breaks on their own judgment which is a radical thing in a way to do and you play with all of that. Yeah I think it's sort of yeah we do end up delving into all those things and I think it was it was also sort of a learning as we go you know it was once we had this initial idea then you just sort of solve the problems one step at a time and you know there are things about it that were very clear to me from the beginning that would be successful about it. For example you know I have produced stuff outdoors before and so just that huge relief of well if we're in a storefront but it's amplified out like great we don't need to I don't need to worry about I can't hire you know I can only hire certain kinds of instrumentalists I can't hire you know you really it left you as open as possible and because you know it's an indoor space you have a piano which you can tune and maintain and make sure that it stays stable which is which is unique you know that wouldn't that wouldn't happen or it would be much more difficult to do outside there's just so many variables that you you remove and and I guess the only the only one that remains is will the audience stay engaged or not right because the artist is in a position where they're going to be able to go forward with the performance no matter what rain or shine and the incredible thing was just to watch I mean there's really you just watched audiences didn't matter what the weather was they just stayed with it so that part of it was really it was a much needed affirmation I think especially this winter and they allowed to take pictures and film normally you're not allowed as an audience members completely forbidden yeah as we say you can that here they just so it's also a meaningful moment if you know this is something um special what did you learn what you didn't know or say this is something we just covered and maybe people who are listening now around the country or around the world so this is a great idea we should do that um what did you learn what was important what is important sure I mean I think the first thing that we learned which I I knew it before and I think it's why I was so adamant about setting up this discussion in this way uh at the beginning is is um it really something like this only comes together with a with a coalition of people there's not one one piece of this puzzle that you couldn't have had to make the whole thing come together you know you really need um the presentation and performance and experience of an institution like Kaufman that is also willing to be flexible and nimble and creative but you need that you need that funder or that donor who's equally imaginative and and and excited and interested in an idea like this um and and again having the landlord rally around it they could have very easily said well you know if you have if you have a foundation supporting this you know we really need to charge you some kind of rent and for them they just saw this as they've had a space that hasn't been occupied for over two years and uh they they they really saw the value in just um enlivening the space you know in just energizing that part of the city um so I think that really that was probably the biggest thing to learn was just that um the most joyful and successful projects um I think tend to be ones where you really do have this coalition of people who each bring something really strong to the table and uh create a collaboration beyond what any individual organization could have done we might have been able to put on 10 concerts you know if I'd shifted some of my presentation budget from what would have gone to Merckin Hall but we would never would have reached you know 107 concerts and over hired over 200 musicians um so I think that's the big one and I think the other thing that I learned is that um you know it's which shouldn't be a surprise but it's a good reminder is um it really you really couldn't predict time of day weather and this may be unique to the pandemic I don't know but time of day weather style of music it you know the size of audiences really ranged there was no sure hard and fast rule I can't tell you I mean there were days where we had someone at the window uh we had like Jesse Montgomery phenomenal composer and violinist doing all of her own original contemporary uh work um we had hundreds of people there for the performance you have somebody else playing you know really standard repertoire Beethoven and Chopin and people would stay engaged it really didn't there was no um no hard and fast rule to what aesthetic would draw the audience in more than any other um but I think what did really have an impact was um just the engagement of the artist and and as if the artist was doing the work that they really wanted to be doing and that they were excited about and and creating in an engaging way then an audience would naturally be drawn in regardless of what what the art was that was being shared incredible um so you know some people say about democracy and we feel of course the arts always have been on the right side of history most of the time they are on this complex struggle for freedom for democracy you know excuse me well countries often get the democracy they deserve and some say well also countries get them culture the music the art um say deserve it's a community is functioning as a result you will have great arts so it's not just what it reflects the unity as just people say even about sport you have great games if things are working you know you have great exciting things is the fact that the Kauffman center is as a community it was a school a good education right you're into presenting and also creating work is perhaps that the big difference to a place perhaps from Lincoln Center where and they do really great things I don't want to say anything against them but you know still you do you did something that has an impact now um is that fact is it a working community and do you care about the community around you was it for the community around 67th street or are you using those like you know towards the gods of music we have to do something to celebrate the art so what yeah I mean I would say um I mean I think there are a couple things I think yes I think the ecosystem of what Kauffman music center is is really speaks to um a lot of it I mean there's just the fact that you're I mean also you know like the fact that we have um and pre-pandemic all these things are in the same building Lucy Moses school um this community music school and special music school and merken hall they're all in the same building and they all the people who engage with us in each of those programs and projects they all um much to our frustration sometimes but we all use the same elevator so the same elevator that takes you to the backstage of murk straight to the backstage of merken hall and onto the stage is the same elevator that takes you up to a classroom on the fifth floor of the building where um you know maybe your second grade child is going into their doll crows class to learn your rhythmics and and internalize how rhythm musical rhythm works in their body and so joshua bell and that second grader might end up on that elevator at the same day at the same time trying to go in different directions for example and I think um I I think that makes a lot of sense I think something about the fact that the full ecosystem is here at all times um does it just creates a special kind of energy um where I think for one thing I think you never feel like you're getting stuck there's always a new idea or there's always an openness to trying something else I think when you're in a place that has learning at its core that is part of it um and I also think um yeah I think that I think that is that's probably a lot of it is that that kind of um that that full ecosystem exists here I hadn't really thought about that that idea before you brought that up but I do think that that um that speaks to a lot of our interest this year you know every institution is handling it differently but during the pandemic there are many presenters who have you know taken a pause or or sort of just stepped back and and have wanted to wait and I think you know for us back in March um I mean one thing that we did say um amongst ourselves because you know March and April was just so difficult um canceling everything and calling artists and saying I don't know when this art this show will happen I'm sorry you know um so we did make this promise like look we don't want to cancel anything ever again but we did also say you know but we also can't stop I mean if we stop how will these students keep learning and how will we get artists performing and how will we maintain our community connections with our normal audience at Kaufman but also if we have to go online can we reach more audiences or the storefront for example okay if we can put on shows in a storefront for free and show the whole range of artists that we celebrate and that we present um we'll find new audiences I mean there are people stopping at that storefront that maybe have never walked into Merckin Hall and maybe because of an experience they've had there now they will um or they'll seek out that artist I guess what I should add to here again it's a more grass tax technical thing but um at the storefront so there's no um we don't announce the program in advance but when an artist is there there's a QR code at the bottom of the window you can scan the QR code if you have a phone or we our ushers have small cards that have the information you scan the QR code it tells you who's performing what their program is and then rather than um bios of the performers like we would put in a normal printed program we just it's the headshot of each artist and then a link to the bio on their individual website as well as obviously links to Kaufman so that you can find out about our digital offerings and also you could sign up for classes that are in our school but um so very quickly and in at any point during the performance the audience can feel unencumbered to they can walk right up to the window and find out who the artist is they can get to their website very easily to follow them later so it provides an opportunity for discovery I think as well um both of these artists and and and of what we do so yeah restaurants who adapted the QR code yeah exactly it's like that there are some people where I'd say like you can scan that card like you can find you can scan because people that who's playing who is this I'd say well that's you know Jordan Bach is this phenomenal be honest but you can scan that code you'll get more they'd be like what I don't get it and then you eventually you'd have to say it's like when you go to a restaurant now and they'd be like oh okay you know this something is changing and something's I also like the fact that it's not a fundraiser the beloved fact actually from the New York Metropolitan Opera and the big concert around the world which is beautiful from people so much of course it's also a fundraiser and here you say this is a free offering and in America especially we should not underestimate the effort to be doing and also appreciate and celebrate this gesture what you guys did your funders the building the spirit behind this because it is for the people by the people and with the people and caring about the community around you and yes of course maybe also someone say we support that something seems to be working but it was not right away and it's so beautifully presented the white piano it looks like a shot you know from MTV you know so you really would care into it and not say well let's do something I mean I saw also from some theaters a pop-up performances on the one from the vineyard theater and the artist you know it was next to a subway where the sound would come out the sound thing didn't work you couldn't see really you couldn't even hear the artist the microphone was working but there were about five fantastic cameras and it was filmed and you know it's going to be used for a fundraiser in a way but it's great that they did it and they do that but they had no experience and nobody people couldn't connect also the what was presented was spoken so fast so fast it was almost impossible to follow far away so they were not thinking it through in a way as you did as the music people with that experience do you think the fact that you are an artist and I think one of the great complications in American arts and culture is that artists are not really in the driver's seat they have a lot of money for art in America some claim more than Europe of course it goes often more to great museums or the symphonies and I love them it's fantastic that it should be but often on the boards there are no artists and they are not making those decisions is the fact that you are an artist did that make did that tilt it to present this or would the Kauffman Center have done that anyway or or would a normal arts presenter have said yeah well you know we can't do anything theaters are closed and let's save some money let's not pay anyone and so what is that fact that you are an artist that you felt we need to do something is that maybe it doesn't make a difference I um I mean I can't speak to what it would be like to not be an artist but I will say that in the leadership of our organization in general there's a great deal of that we have a number of artists both on the board and in leadership positions and I think that that I think that that is a crucial and important thing I think our executive director Kate Sheeran who who also is you know massive amount of credit for this project goes to her and she is a french horn player she trained as a french horn player at Eastman and Yale and she talks about and I totally agree with her she talks about the fact that you know running an organization or arts administration it's like chamber music it's like it's the same thing as chamber music it's getting getting everybody together and you know the same way when you start playing music together and you figure out you know who who are each of these people what are their strengths what are their weaknesses where does someone need to lean in to help somebody else where does this you know it's one sort of joint collaboration and so I think yes on that and I also think you know I think it's a I'm trying to remember if it's might be a Peter Sellers quote that I'd heard at one point the idea that you know the artists you know artists is somebody who imagines who who looks out into the world and sees has an idea of something that needs to exist there but currently doesn't exist right that there's there's something that when they look at the world they see that there's a gap there's something that should exist there that that isn't there yet you know that there's an imagination for that and I think that that is totally crucial to arts administration as well so I think all those reasons yeah probably contribute to why when this first seat of an idea that came from Jay Dweck to us which he presented it to a number of other institutions I think and it had never really landed and when he came to us and said I'm seeing all these empty store fronts and I just and I I'm feeling so strongly that all these working musicians in the city that are just not aren't working right now and isn't there some way we can put those two things together couldn't we somehow in in live in storefronts I think he'd said that to other organizations and they didn't pick up on it and when he said that to Kate and and then we had a joint meeting him and Kate and I and we were like yeah we can figure that out totally that doesn't sound crazy that sounds like a great idea I'd also say when you're saying about artists in the driver's seat the chairman or chairperson of our board this year is now Orly Shaham who's a phenomenal pianist who also has two children who attend school at Kaufman but you know renowned concert pianist and also curator and presenter and many places including the chamber music series of the pacific symphony and so having and we have a little number of artists on the board and Nikki Renee Daniels who's a phenomenal Broadway singer Natalie Joachim who's an incredible composer and flute player who has worked with our students and I think having people like that on your board and in leadership positions having artists there mean that an idea like this doesn't seem crazy to them you know when you say okay well we we've gotten this funding we're going to take over the storefront they they they know what that is you know they're excited by that so I do I agree I think that it's important to have people who are artists working on the administrative side of things and I for some reason there's a general feeling I think or sometimes I feel like there's a misunderstanding that someone who's an artist uh couldn't possibly also handle doing production or administration or or or that side of how we accomplish all this which I I think is absolutely not true I think most art making is a combination of you know the imagination of of wanting to create something that doesn't exist in the world and also then all the problem solving that goes along with that and all of the community building that goes along with that and all of the the collaboration and gathering people and resources around you to help you realize that work it's it's to me it's a very direct translation yeah I mean to one of the greatest artists at Lincoln Center is a great example of things to do work I went to Marsalis was in a way also on the driver's seat he said I want to have that theater walk a special way to look outside and this one to remind us of the club so he created something that made it also work and made it different and so I think this is in the significant um um statement that's coming out from you and it's also inspiring we in the theater world also have so many theaters whether it's the public new york theater workshop who knows the second stage and uh where are they all what are we doing what could we be doing and I know we all also under shock this perhaps a lump time's a little bit less money in the theater and the experimental world so it's not as easy as in the art world often or in the classical world um it gets more recognition from society and I think it should be cleared up but still what you guys did is also beyond uh just the the money and it's not right to tell they could make it you had an idea you recognized it you put it into motion and something happened and it made a difference and my guess is also you have deep roots in your neighborhood right where you are and yeah and this this has deepened them I mean this this really um I should also the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District which our Executive Director Kate is a member of that of that board um how we found the specific storefront we found ultimately because we were looking at a number of sites and many of them were challenging for different reasons and then she was in a board meeting and just tossed it out um you know to the group there and said we're you know we have this idea we're working on it we've got funding but we haven't found a storefront yet if anybody knows of any that might make sense and it just happened to be one of the people on that meeting was connected with Milstein and said I think I might know a space and so that you know we we've engaged even more deeply in our community not just audiences and the people in the neighborhood that who've passed by but um but with you know the the Business Improvement District people now a large property owner in our neighborhood is now has really produced concerts with us I mean I wouldn't have expected to say that to you a year ago that my key collaborator in a concert series is um you know is a property management company but they've really been deep in it with us what are the artists coming in what's the schedule going to look like how long should it run um and then also breads bakery which is just up the street from the theater um they uh got excited when the concert started happening and uh they're music lovers and so then they came to me and said how can we help what can we do and I said well we can't you know because of covid we're being really cautious we don't want to run a full restaurant or anything in here so we weren't really providing craft services for the artists beyond bottled water um I said what if do you do coffee and tea for the artists maybe just because since you guys have all those protocols in place and they came back and said no no no no we're not just going to do that like yes they can come by and get they just say they're at the storefront we'll give them free coffee we'll give them free tea but we want to do something else for them so every day that there's a concert our house manager goes over to breads tells them how many artists are performing in the storefront and then they get these gift bags full of like bread and like desserts and like like these huge tote bags full of like enough carbs to feed them for two weeks as a thank you um so it's just like um it's also really galvanize a community yeah and also that i mean property management company might truly appreciate or understand the value of art and the difference it makes and you guys really made a difference but we talked now a lot of your service of your work and the for other artists and we are coming closer to the end of the talk but you're also a composer so tell us a bit about your work and i think i asked you i don't know if you have it somewhere to have maybe show us a bit of your what are you working on and and what inspires you where is your work situated sure so i mean as a composer i it might be why i've ended up in this position of artistic planning at kaufman i'm really inspired by collaborative work mostly i mean i trained as a composer in undergrad and grad school undergrad at indiana university and grad school university of southern california and i also did school study classical saxophone but my my light bulb really was one summer i took an internship up at glimmer glass opera which is upstate new york and my job there was to coordinate a lot of the orchestra work and um assist a couple of the of the assistant coaches um and then uh one of the chorus members tripped uh spraying their ankle on the set for the production for fenchula del west and they didn't have anybody else to step in and i'm not a great singer but i'm an accurate singer um i'm not an operatic singer but i can sing the right notes at the right time and so they asked if i would jump in and that was a real um that was a real light bulb for me because i suddenly was in this professional opera um production and um watching all of the pieces that come together to realize that was sort of when i figured out oh this is the part of composing that i love not sitting in my room all by myself all day toiling over a string quartet or you know was but creating collaborative work and so that really shifted everything and then i studied their dramaturgy a couple more or worked as a dramaturg there for a couple more seasons um and since then all my work has been um working with singers on chamber operas um or working with dancers on sound design and then sound design for immersive theater work as well um but that's really been my primary focus um and the most current most recent work i'm doing in that vein um i had a piece called stay that had been commissioned by onsite opera here in new york that was supposed to open this fall which was an immersive opera theater work um for a house on governor's island and it was with um it's a acapella opera so for eight vocalists uh one of which plays guitar and one of which plays a lot of kitchen equipment and it was for 30 audience members and eight singers and it was sort of like if you take all the elements of an opera and operatic singers and merge those with um a sort of an immersive theater project like a sleep no more or something like that where people can get divided into different rooms we actually controlled where the audience is went uh it wasn't totally free but um sort of created this immersive opera experience um so that was the project that we workshopped right before covid and then obviously hasn't happened yet because we're not getting in a crowded theater with singers in your face uh and then the thing i'm working on right now is a an operatic adaptation of a novel by danis peota called beat the document um which is uh for eight singers and chamber ensemble and the novel circles around uh the 70s and the 90s in america and looking at um in the 70s a young couple who has done a series of actions or demonstrations against the vietnam war one of which has accidentally resulted in killing somebody because planting bombs at different uh corporations house uh the leaders of corporations houses and they've accidentally killed someone so they've had to go on the run from the fbi so it jumps between there and the 1990s where um mary louise and her previous life life and caroline um in her older life she now has a son and she lives as a single mother in the pacific northwest and her son has start is in his teenage years and he started listening to the music of her childhood but as if it's his music because that's what we do when we're teenagers so he's listening to the beach boys over and over on repeat and sees a glimmer of something in his mother that makes him realize he doesn't actually know who she is he doesn't know her past he doesn't know anything so it's a piece that um we're creating as a series of ep albums with american opera project right now um that will start releasing next season and then eventually it'll lead to a staged production but for now we're developing the work in a recording studio because that's what we can do amazing quite uh um and quite as well i don't know if you can show us 30 seconds or a minute of it or we go on um um but uh let us know about if you know about the about the work um what you're doing and do i'll just let it if you go to um american opera projects um uh and the project is called eat the document um there's a great like a sort of three and a half minute video there that summarizes the project really well but i think just if you if you head to american opera projects eat the document you can find that yeah how wonderful um to see how you know you're able to combine all that create work and that uh we always do say that um the artwork and organizing work and community work it's so so connected there is no strict division you know if we have learned anything in the contemporary art we now work living no longer in the post-modern world but in the contemporary output but there are hybrid forms of creating art of producing and filmmakers make theater theater people make films filmmakers write articles uh journalists make a theater piece so and i think this is makes it all richer and better and it is in the sense of what um bachelet aqua said it's an open artwork and i think it's a one great open artwork the musical storefront there's an ongoing long performance with some interruptions over the nights and um it is a great new york moment i think that you create on the streets it's unique and it's so meaningful for everybody to really thank you thank you for staying here and i'm sorry that i didn't know about it before but a little bit is is that you know this is important and she is she was right tomorrow we have pidge uh oh wonderful yeah pidge and he will talk about his work at the tippet rise art center you know him i guess yes i know him very well and i'm also share what they are doing and we it's a bit around the music world what we are also taking but i think we all have to listen and to learn from each other and as you said the storefront idea came also from the theater world the great squat theater a great hungarians theater that left in the 70s they were famous they had a building they performed everything in the storefront people outside would watch what the performance would go on sometimes performers were outside you never knew in that question what's real what's not really old age old question that a theater poses and um and they always had an eight o'clock scene where the company would sit down and have dinner because the kids of the company they need some dinner and uh audiences were there and there was a fantastic time and i think perhaps we are reconnecting to something that might have been lost and that spirit that you present there that is in a way new york spirit in the city will come back this is a great city over centuries it has been through many many crisis i have my prediction is there will be perhaps a roaring 20s the wild 20s as they called in berlin um but it will be different and it should be different and this is a one way to i'm sure it also transformed in a way your organization to experience something that out of necessity if you created something new and i think it will also change the way you do and think further on so the our audience also thank you for listening and um i hope you also found that as significant and meaningful as i did it's a great contribution really also you have to think about it what it means philosophically to say use an empty space don't just have the space done by the expert who can't get in even for young are used to spaces in between open spaces public spaces make partnerships and create something and try also something else so this is an important thing something that perhaps also was missing in a way um how we didn't pay enough attention for those who did but it's a great contribution in the time of corona and i think also with significance for the time after corona the tac as we say here don't thank you again really thank you for taking it so seriously and explaining as it's great work what do you do with the government center all the people who support it and congratulations and it's a great contribution to our series thanks to our listeners again for for taking time you know so much more is going on since we started large march and there were a few of these talks but it's meaningful for us but also as artists need to do great art we also need a great audience good audiences that's important also for the artists that you are there listening and over the arts managers in that sense john in his country to know that people are interested that they do care and support so thank you for taking your time and see you all hopefully tomorrow bye bye john and good luck with everything i'll come soon bye bye great take care