Exploring Kodawari

This episode can be summed up with two competing quotes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!” The first quote is by the famous science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. The second quote is unknown, but points out that the spell books for such magic are to be found in the methods and tools of scie...

This episode is Part 2 of our conversation with trumpeter Chris Coletti. If you haven't already, you can listen to Part 1 of the conversation here . In Part 2, we get a bit more geekier about trumpet specific topics. We talk about sound production, flexibility, and the difficulties of teaching trumpet. But if you're not a trumpet player, don't worry! We also talk about the mentalist Derren Brown,...

For this episode, we were joined by internationally acclaimed trumpet player Chris Coletti. Chris is most well known for his ten years of playing with the famous Canadian Brass which he left in 2019. More recently, he has become an Assistant Professor at Ithaca College School of Music. In the episode, we discussed many topics music and otherwise. We talked about what it was like performing and tou...

When is it okay to break an oath? How do we deal with the tension between honor and duty on the one hand versus love and doing the right thing on the other? This episode is essentially a conversation about life philosophy, and we tried to answer difficult questions such as those. Specifically, we did this by examining the concepts of oaths, honor, duty, and love in the hit HBO series Game of Thron...

In this episode, we sat down with Turkish violinist Emre Engin. Emre is the recipient of many awards and he's an active soloist in both the US and Turkey. Although we both come from Turkey, we did not actually meet officially and become friends until meeting at Stony Brook University in New York, where he and I are both completing doctorate degrees in music. In the episode we talked about his musi...

The topic of this episode is the work of Dr. John Sarno and his theory of TMS or Tension Myoneural Syndrome. This is a diagnosis for people with chronic pain, especially lower back pain, for whom no physical cause or explanation of their pain could be found. The concept is basically that unconscious emotional issues, primarily anger, manifests itself through the autonomic nervous system to create...

Our guest for this episode was Dr. Justin Waller, a fantastic trombone player based in the Southeastern United States. He is currently serving as the Lecturer of Trombone at East Tennessee State University, and has performed and recorded with such groups as the American Brass Quintet, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, the Chattanooga Symphony, and many others. My c...

In this episode, we talked about the science and art of craft beer with our good friend and home brewer extraordinaire Johnny Labriola. Johnny got into craft beer and home brewing around 5 years ago, and since then he has fallen headfirst into the craft beer rabbit hole. We talked about the science of brewing—malt, hops, fermentation—as well as the creativity of inventing new recipes. We also expl...

Our guest for this episode was Los Angeles based trumpet performer, composer/arranger, and teaching artist John-Thomas (“JT”) Burson. JT has collaborated/performed with Chicago’s Fulcrum Point New Music Project, the Flauto d'Amore Project, Festival Napa Valley, Aspen Music Festival, Sunset Blvd Brass, and the Georgia Symphony Orchestra. In the episode, we talked about JT's philosophy of practicing...

Our guest for this episode is the double bass player Keenan Zach. We've known Keenan for years, and we've seen him perform countless times—he's a fantastic musician and an overall inspiring person. Keenan plays both jazz and classical music, and he's currently pursuing his doctorate at Stony Brook University. So we begin the conversation by asking some deep questions about jazz, especially the fea...

In this episode, we talk to friend and trumpet colleague Stephen McLean. Stephen is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts at Stony Brook University, and he's also beginning his teacher certification for Alexander Technique this year. And like us, Stephen is also an avid meditator and is geeky about philosophy and psychology. So our conversation centered around the intersection of music, me...

Wim Hof, also known as "The Iceman", is a Dutch man who's set many world records in the area of cold exposure. These include swimming under the ice of a frozen lake 57.5 meters, running a half marathon on ice and snow without any shoes, and climbing Mount Everest in nothing but shorts. And through his method, he has taught thousands of other people to accomplish similar feats. In fact, he claims t...

Our guest for this episode is our good friend Joe Labriola. His main job is teaching writing and rhetoric at Stony Brook University, but he also spends countless hours walking up and down the local beaches to pick up trash. This type of beach cleaning is helpful to the local environment and to ocean health in general, but it also fits in perfectly with the ethos of kodawari . This is because no ma...

In this episode, we were joined by our good friend Kevin. Kevin is one of those people that gets good at pretty much whatever he puts his mind too. He's an amazing jazz saxophone player, he roasts and sells coffee from his garage, and he cooks insanely delicious food. But his main endeavor for the past number of years has been craft cocktails, and he's become quite the expert at it. So we picked h...

Our guest for this episode is someone who definitely exudes the kodawari energy . Her name is Kris Kwapis, and she is an expert in early music and the baroque trumpet. She appears regularly as a soloist and principal trumpet in period-instrument ensembles across North America, and she teaches baroque trumpet at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Her bio is way too long for these episode...

In this episode, we were joined by our good friend and accomplished composer Nathan Hudson. He holds a BM in Trumpet Performance from the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, an MA in Composition from Stony Brook University, and a PhD also from Stony Brook University (read his full bio here ). We talked about what it means to major in music composition, and how a composer goes abou...

Welcome to the very first episode of Exploring Kodawari! In this particular episode, we work through the definition of kodawari and our motivation for starting a podcast. The short version is that coronavirus rendered us stuck at home , and as classical musicians, all of our concerts and performances were canceled. It's now three months later and it's still unclear when we will get to perform agai...

Welcome to our new podcast Exploring Kodawari! We are two classical musicians, and we feel that the open conversation style of a podcast is the perfect way to think out loud, make new connections, and continue on the path of self development. We will be deep-diving into various topics as well as interviewing others who approach their life with the kodawari energy. Kodawari is a beautiful concept w...