Emotional Intelligence: understanding what just happened

Dear Reader,
If you haven't yet read any of this blog, you won't know that the composer-performer-producer for FunnyMeanHappySad (Randall Davidson, me) hosted the "first" and maybe only one of the series of the concerts that invite audience members to feel, observe, analyze, document, and share their emotional responses to music.
The event took place yesterday afternoon at the Lakeville (MN) Area Arts Center in front of a full house and an assembly of online visitors. For the composer-performer-producer, it was a thrilling experience although the producer (me) had a number of ideas to improve the audience experience (see below).

Emotional Intelligence
In researching this approach, I found a number of disparate sources that provided guidance, precedent, and perspective but it was a matter of finding readings in unusually wide-spread places and authors. Here are just some of them:

• "Theory & Contradiction": notes on conduction by composer Butch Morris as found in the booklet in the boxed set of his recordings.
• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and thee Language of Human Experience by best-selling author, Brené Brown.
• Comparing notes: how we make sense of music by Adam Ockelford.
• InsightOut: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and Into the World by neuroscientist Tina Seelig.
• The Weapons of Rhetoric: a guide for musicians and audiences​ by Judy Tarling.
• "Six Healing Sounds" from the T'ai Chi Chih Joy Thru Movement by author Justin Stones and shared with me by Minnesota singer/conductor/movement coach Linda Zelig. 

And let's not forget wikipedia and all of it's benefits and shortcomings! I found the definition of emotional intelligence on wikipedia.
I quoted the language in my dear friend's press release about the event a number of times: 

"Music is about feelings –
obvious or implied,
coaxed or unleashed,
subtle or overwhelming."

The premise of the entire concert was based on the unqualified primacy of emotion as central to the experience of every audience member. But that feeling you have when you hear that thing that made you feel something is absolutely unique, powerful and personal. No one can discount or criticize or judge your feelings. And comparing your feelings is a little like calibrating two people's reactions to one another; seeing if it's possible to see the same color of green. Impossible, in my opinion. 

Listening

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During a corporate training I learned about researcher/business consultant Julian Treasure whose definition of listening seems to me to be most applicable to music but even more helpful when it is applied widely to how we hear: 

​LISTENING is making sense of sound.

My next few posts will focus on the ways I use composers' tools to intentionally shape experiences for listeners and how that intention is received and interpreted through performers and, ultimately, delivered to the intended individual: you. ​​
And then I'll share what the producer (me) learned and whether he (me) pushes the composer (me, too) to do FunnyMeanHappySad 2.0.