Everybody comes from somewhere

"Everybody comes from somewhere" explores the interaction between storytelling and music and the synergy that arises from this, with the aim of developing methods to seek out, understand, feel and communicate one's origins through music.

The aim is to develop a personally relevant platform for the individual artist's creative work and to experiment with concert forms that allow both artists and audiences to relate emotionally to their own stories and share them with others. Music is not only about the artist, but also about the stories lived and experienced by the audience and how they relate to the music.

The focal point of the project will be narratives based on the artist's and the audience's family history and the ability of music to address the associated emotions across time, space and cultural affiliations. It is thus music's ability to convey especially the basic emotions across cultures and, perhaps more importantly, music's ability to awaken these and more complex emotions in people that occupies a central role in the project. Both in the research phase, where the artist uncovers his or her own narrative and identifies the emotions associated with it, in the composition phase, where the artist must consider which emotions to convey and how best to do so, and in the concert situation, where the audience recognizes, relates to and, for some, feels the emotions conveyed through the music. Through music, the emotional common denominators that are beyond the reach of language and recognizable across people's personal narratives are sought out and activated, making it possible for them to mirror and in some cases feel each other's stories. The goal is for artists and to some extent audiences to gain a deeper understanding of who they are, and as a result, a greater understanding of who their fellow human beings are.

The project is currently in an iterative dialog between its initial research phase, which includes research on the history of the Bernstein family, uncovering artistic practice and artistic development activities relevant to the project, as well as research on the interaction between music and emotions, and a development phase that includes artistic experiments in the form of composition work and workshops, based on the knowledge gathered about the project's subject area.

The project is communicated in a series of videos and texts, as well as the album release "Everybody comes from somewhere"

The project is funded through a grant from the Danish Ministry of Culture.

Videos, lyrics and music can be found here:

Everybody comes from somewhere

The maturation process began by identifying existing theoretical and practical work in the field. Based on this, a series of interviews were conducted with key international players in the field. The aim was to uncover different methodological approaches to composition work based on genealogical narratives, as well as to identify relevant issues and new potential fields of investigation within the subject area. In addition to different methodological approaches, the interviews revealed, among other things, interesting issues concerning the encounter between a traditional approach to musical heritage and new interpretive practices based on it. Uncovering knowledge about the project's subject area, including existing research and development work in the field, as well as collecting the genealogical narratives constitute the basic material of the project.

Based on the collected knowledge, a replicable process was developed for composition work based on family history. This was tested and further developed in an iterative process that included
research on Marc Bernstein's own family history, a music theoretical approach informed by the family's geographical and cultural context, composition of new works, and rehearsal and orchestration of new musical material. This resulted in a methodological approach that was subsequently introduced to and tested by students at the Danish National Academy of Music with satisfactory results.

The compositions of Marc Bernstein and the students involved have been presented in various concert formats and performances. Feedback from the audience shows that the special personal narrative behind the theoretical/compositional approach in the newly written works significantly contributes to the listeners' immediate empathy and emotional engagement with the music, which like other contemporary jazz can otherwise be described and experienced as rather abstract by a wider audience. The recording of the material on 180 g. vinyl LPs links the personal and the personal significance of the project with physical and tactile weight, just as the graphic format of the LP cover also seeks to reach the recipient on an extra-musical level. In this way, a conscious effort has been made to create a connection between the works' deep personal roots in the composer's family and musical history and the weight and momentum chosen in the forms of communication.

The experience of the project's deep process (family history, music theoretical development based on cultural and personal "DNA", newly written compositions) in combination with the broad instruments in the chosen communication universe (concert format, storytelling, Youtube videos, 180 g. vinyl LP) gives rise to Marc Bernstein's desire to explore the further potential of working with the project methodology. A broader and deeper field of investigation can be based on music in conjunction with other art forms that can evoke and crystallize several facets of the project's emotional, mental and physical universe. These parameters especially point towards exploring the methods of "Everybody Comes From Somewhere" in interaction with a bodily and spatial form of expression such as dance/choreography.