Possibly the worst flute music project brief ever given? E: 230 with Dr José Valentino

Talking Flutes

'Funky Fusion Flute Flix' (now say that fast 3 times!)

When you give a brief to a musician, you usually need to supply them with an expected overview of the project, how much artistic freedom they have, how long or short, how many segments, who is the audience, what is the expected outcome…

Early in 2022 the team at TJ flutes said to Grammy and Emmy winning musician José Valentino they wanted to do a project with him which was not like their usual musical adventures together.

The brief to José… to create 10 x 60 secs videos of a brief musical moment in time.

Simple eh?

Not really! José was tasked with writing down 10 things that came to him at one specific moment. Each of these thoughts would then become the name of a track and would then represent the spontaneity of interpretation and freedom of that particular moment in time in which it was recorded. He then had to record the background 'vibe' for each track without knowing what the top line would be.

When in the studio, José had to hold each of the ten thoughts in turn and let himself be free to just play over each track. No re-takes…just one-off moments!

Artistic freedom was there and yet it was at the same time confined between boundaries of imposed time structures dictated by an external entity.

Was each recorded moment actually going to deliver freedom of musical expression, or was the barriers of space within time going to impose creative limits?

Within the time structure, José was artistically free to spontaneously improvise knowing that each moment is always different to the moment before. Creating with freedom and understanding that every recording immediately becomes a reflection of an earlier moment.

Why set a 60 second barrier? The audience. These videos are aimed at the transient and fast moving social media population. Those who expect their information, both auditory and visual to be contained with a brief message via their scrolling finger. Valid in that moment and consigned to the archive when the finger pushed upwards.

'Talking Flutes' and 'Talking Flutes Extra' are podcast productions by the TJ flute company. For more information visit www.tjflutes.com