Mark Growden: Living an Adventurous Life in Music

Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman

Mark Growden is a brilliant, curious, and expressive American multi-faceted musician. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, music educator, conductor, and visual artist. In this episode we focus on his large and varied instrument collection and he demonstrates several unusual instruments, including different jaw harps, biclycle handebars, and overtone flutes. He shares his unique journey, and how he developed new skills in response to different challenges and opportunities. I was fascinated to hear about his inspiring recent trip to Kyrgyzstan, about many of his mentors and collaborators, and his expressive approach to musicianship training. Mark has devoted his life to making music for other people and to helping other people make music for themselves, and he is an advocate for openess about respect and understanding for people with neurodivergence and mood disorders. Mark is the founder and Artistic Director of The Calling All Choir, The Chromatic Community Music Center, SF SingFest, and The SF Jaw Harp Choir. He has released several critically acclaimed albums and has toured the US extensively. He has composed original musical scores for dozens of dance and theater companies and scored several films. We are featuring music from 3 of his albums during this episode and you’ll find his discography linked below.

This episode on YouTube, and the transcript:

https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/mark-growden

Mark Growden website: https://markgrowden.org

To support this series, please either buy me a coffee here: https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman

or shop at my merchandise store: https://www.leahroseman.com/beautiful-shirts-and-more

Newsletter sign-up: https://mailchi.mp/ebed4a237788/podcast-newsletter

Catalog of Episodes: https://www.leahroseman.com/about

You may be also interested in my episodes with other wide-ranging musicians involved in community music, instrument-making and exploring, such as with Linsey Pollak, Kavisha Mazzella, Philip Griffin, Polina Shepherd, Jesse Stewart, Sarah Jeffery, and Gary Muszynski.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(03:16) Kyrgyzstan, Irina Bogatyryova, jaw harp music, Kutman Sultanbekov

(08:25) overtone flutes, bicycle handlebars, selijefloyte

(14:06) jaw harp history and demo

(17:32) jaw harp technique

(21:21)clip from bicycle handlebars improvisation on Mark’s album Saint Judas

(22:02) in-blown flutes, interdental embouchure, Central Asian flutes

(28:23) Mark’s childhood, music education, bands

(31:24)Orff Schulwerk, Blues

(35:05) New Orleans, writing for choirs, leading Community Sings

(42:36) Mark’s early music education

(46:53) Driving into the Sunrise, from In Velvet with the New Orleans Heavies and Mark Growden

(50:20) other episodes you may like and different ways to support this series

(51:07) Juggling, busking, bands, digeridoo, studying art, jazz

(53:04) Kodaly method

(55:11) Mark’s approach to teaching musicianship, hearing intervals according to function

(59:11) how Mark got into singing and choral direction, claw hammer banjo, album Lose me in the sand

(01:04:26) Shady Grove from Lose me in the sand

(01:08:53) move to Portland, show for the Getty museum Edyth Eyde

(01:16:15) Aron Szilagyi jaw harp festival World Vibes Hungary

(01:17:53) bass jaw harp demo

(01:19:06) Lithuanian psaltery tuned in whole tones, Veljo Tormis Tabu, kankles psaltery

(01:22:07) video music art new projects

(01:25:47) mentors Vance George, Alice Parker, Michael Kaulkin

(01:31:50) living and creating with bipolar type 2 and ADHD