Peter Kiesewalter creates at the divergent edge -- at the intersection of art and science. In this case, he's working at the edge of ecology and biology along with music and location-based entertainment with The Moth Project. It's a live experience in beautiful places with the stories of moths and their lives to music. Over his varied career in music, he has worked to keep evolving . . . from clarinet to klezmer to ABC News music to all sorts of arranging and composing. He shares his journey and invites us to think more expansively about what it means to create music, take risks, and grow over time in a creative career.

Guest: Peter Kiesewalter, Artist and Instrumentalist, The Moth Project

Peter Kiesewalter studied clarinet and saxophone performance at Ottawa University. He moved to New York City in 1997 and has worked as a touring/recording musician, composer, arranger, Music Director, and producer ever since, most notably with his East Village Opera Company project which signed to Decca/Universal in 2005, garnered much acclaim (“highbrow and brilliant” – New York Magazine Approval Matrix) and a GRAMMY nomination for their modernist take on classic Opera repertoire. He splits his time between Brooklyn with his three children and an upstate NY 18th-century farmhouse that he bought and renovated with his partner Whitney La Grange.

What are you most passionate about with your current work? : The message that the simple act of "paying attention" to the natural world can have a profound impact on our planet.

Links:

• The Moth Project - https://www.mothprojectlive.com
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-kiesewalter-062a7a8
• East Village Opera Company - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063550578140

Find The Show at our Website and on Your Favorite Players

• Apple Podcasts 
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• YouTube
• Amazon Music
• Overcast

Want to be a guest? Enjoy more information at this link. 

00;00;05;12 - 00;01;02;22

Gigi Johnson

Welcome to Creative Innovators. This is Gigi Johnson, your host. Today's episode is with Peter Kiesewalter. Who . . . oh, goodness gracious. He's working on The Moth Project now, which will be a multi-year project combining art and science, connecting location based entertainment and music about the lives of moths. But his and his long career, combining clarinet and klezmer with ABC News music, with being an arranger and composer for intriguing acts, he picks up different projects, and his goal is to keep evolving, enjoy the story of how he's put together such an unusual career, and think about what this might be for your career.

00;01;02;22 - 00;01;10;22

Gigi Johnson

So we're going to get to talking more extensively about The Moth project. But can you give us a 62nd burst about that and other things you're working on right now?

00;01;10;22 - 00;01;30;06

Peter Kiesewalter

Almost 100%. The Moth Project, I mean, it's still in its infancy right now, so it's not a self-sustainable thing yet. It's been my experience in my career that it takes a couple of years for something to get off the ground to the point where I can actually live off of it. We're rolling this out this this month, so it's about a year and a day old.

00;01;30;25 - 00;02;01;17

Peter Kiesewalter

I'm doing other work more as an arranger and a composer these days. I was a resident composer at ABC Television for many years. I still do odd bits of scoring for television or syndrome or documentaries. I'm also hired as a music director from some events. There's an annual event at Lincoln Center. Bob Woodruff. The journalists. His foundation has an annual thing that goes through the comedy festivals, that is for comedians hosted by Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen as a musical guest.

00;02;01;17 - 00;02;27;04

Peter Kiesewalter

But I am in charge of the music, The Big dance. I put together a 17 piece big band and do all the arrangements, and that's an annual cake that I do. There's someone upstate who I won't name right now, but I'll do some work for them. I do some production work for some singer songwriters, but these days it's about 90% of my time is going into the MOD project.

00;02;27;04 - 00;02;39;05

Gigi Johnson

Sierra Multi-instrumentalist You're a producer, you're arranger, you're a composer, and what what do you not do? Well, I.

00;02;39;05 - 00;02;59;24

Peter Kiesewalter

Mean, who isn't, right? I mean, anyone with a phone or or a laptop is a media mogul, right? So, I mean, the multi-hyphenate thing, you know, musician, producer, composer, it's all kind of vague. Everyone will say they are. So that's just and everyone everyone's also a filmmaker and an edit editor and a designer, right? Like every who doesn't do multiple things these days.

00;03;00;28 - 00;03;22;24

Peter Kiesewalter

00;03;23;02 - 00;03;24;17

Peter Kiesewalter

So I've been here 25 years.

00;03;24;18 - 00;03;46;25

Gigi Johnson

Let me back you up even further. I want to of course, I want to know how a clarinetist ends up at ABC News, but I want to back you up as too. So young kid. Peter, growing up in Canada was just doing music from the get go. Are you from a musical family? Did you how did you get a clarinet in your hands?

00;03;46;25 - 00;03;48;18

Gigi Johnson

Did you actually start with something else?

00;03;48;29 - 00;04;17;00

Peter Kiesewalter

The clarinet, thanks to the school system and at that point, still a robust investment in music in all the schools, right? So it wasn't until I got into grade seven did I get a clarinet in my hand. I have been sort of informally taking piano from my father, who was an amateur musician, and I had a bit of a gift for he taught me himself and a very sort of unorthodox kind of kind of manner.

00;04;17;00 - 00;04;43;12

Peter Kiesewalter

And then when it came time for me to take a vocation, they my folks were both aghast that I wanted to study music and in fact, did not allow it. I had to study economics for two years before I said, Enough of this, I'm out of here. But I couldn't leave my parents house to study music because for two German immigrants coming from postwar Germany, music was a fine hobby, but not a very responsible thing to do to make a living, right?

00;04;44;01 - 00;04;44;12

Peter Kiesewalter

I mean.

00;04;44;23 - 00;04;53;06

Gigi Johnson

So they thought you were going to study economics and be a banker. I mean, what was kind of the narrative vision that you're walking through?

00;04;53;16 - 00;05;19;13

Peter Kiesewalter

The narrative vision was living by Kerry like, you know, my dad living vicariously through me. We're in Ottawa, which is sort of a civil service town, the capital of Canada. There's a a great business school at the university there. And of course, it's it's the seat of the central government there. So I think he felt he wanted to go into political science or, you know, social studies, economics.

00;05;19;13 - 00;05;39;27

Peter Kiesewalter

And that was what he did. He suggested for me I wasn't strong enough at age 18 to say no way. So I complied and I hated it. And right from the get go, I was already playing in cover bands. So my mind was not in the school at all, but I stuck it out for now.

00;05;39;27 - 00;05;45;19

Gigi Johnson

Did you have siblings? Do you have siblings that that could do that? Performative stuff for your family?

00;05;46;20 - 00;06;08;11

Peter Kiesewalter

The one I was one of four that my youngest brother, Toby, who is also involved with this project, he's an environmental biologist now. He was actually the most talented of the family. He was a recorder prodigy at age four or five, six. He was doing recordings with the CBC, which is Canada's NPR, with with, you know, Baroque orchestras from Toronto and Montreal.

00;06;08;11 - 00;06;32;05

Peter Kiesewalter

As a ten year old, he's a phenomenal Baroque and Renaissance music specialist. And people don't understand what that what baroque a Renaissance music is. It's there's not really that much of a scene here. There is in Europe. But he was really the gifted musical one of the family. But I'm the only one that chose it as as a vocation.

00;06;32;05 - 00;06;39;06

Gigi Johnson

And your family's probably thinking at the time, what did we do wrong that we ended up having these fabulous creative artists in our family? Is is there I know.

00;06;39;09 - 00;07;12;28

Peter Kiesewalter

I can see where they're coming from. You grow up in a in a country like, well, anywhere where there's been war and there is nothing. And I think fiscal responsibility was certainly not uncommon for for German immigrants to want that. So I think initially they thought or my dad thought that studying music was was maybe frivolous and maybe something he resented not being, having been given the chance growing up as a kid during World War Two.

00;07;12;28 - 00;07;19;25

Gigi Johnson

So you're saying cover bands, but you're a clarinetist. What were you playing? What was the music that was calling to you at that age and start, well.

00;07;20;14 - 00;07;39;22

Peter Kiesewalter

Cover bands. So I put myself through university playing keyboards and rock bands, country bands, always a robust country music scene. I was a musician at country music studio there. I played a jazz bands. I played a cover band in the eighties. It was we called it Top 40, whatever it was on the radio, the top 40 hits that were on the radio.

00;07;39;22 - 00;07;57;12

Peter Kiesewalter

Well, we did as many of those as we possibly could. And for a band that plays music that is on the radio currently, like you get a lot of gigs, you play all the time and it's a great way to get your set up together, to learn ear training, to learn how to lift parts off of your singing, your playing.

00;07;58;08 - 00;08;12;09

Peter Kiesewalter

It was it was a great musical education to, to, to play. I mean, whatever it was on the radio in the mid eighties, Tears for Fears, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, wham name. It was when it was on the radio we were playing it.

00;08;14;11 - 00;08;18;28

Gigi Johnson

And that's still big now. Cover bands, multi-billion dollar live show business.

00;08;19;07 - 00;08;51;24

Peter Kiesewalter

Yeah, I mean, this is might be part of it later, part of a discussion. But it seems to me after a period of about 12, 14 years of of not playing the performing arts centers, I sort of stayed at home and to raise my kids. But I'm going out there again and and because I used to play that circuit, the Performing Arts Center, the theaters and and in the States, and more and more these days, it's, well, for lack of a better word, cover bands.

00;08;51;24 - 00;09;10;11

Peter Kiesewalter

It's tribute acts that are that are getting a lot like I can't tell you how many tribute acts there are to to the Eagles Hotel California how many out there to Chicago. At the last music conference I went to again, I hadn't been for 15 years. So it was a shock to me how much the paradigm had shifted.

00;09;11;09 - 00;09;17;15

Peter Kiesewalter

There were three three tribute acts to Michael Bublé. Think about that, Mike.

00;09;17;29 - 00;09;18;25

Gigi Johnson

Oh, why did.

00;09;18;28 - 00;09;39;11

Peter Kiesewalter

Blaze already a tribute act like? Although he's doing a lot more, but there were three Michael Bublé tribute acts, countless tenors groups, countless Hotel California, countless Chicago tribute, countless Rat Pack things. And these are the people that are that I'm in competition with to get these gigs at these places that I used to be able to to get shows at.

00;09;39;29 - 00;09;58;28

Peter Kiesewalter

And of course, because the music is familiar and people are more and more reluctant to leave their their houses these days. I'm not sure if you noticed this, but the pandemic sure turned a lot of people into couch potatoes. Nah, I'm not going out for one. I don't want to risk death in a concert hall. But but also, this is so much to watch as.

00;10;00;08 - 00;10;25;15

Gigi Johnson

Well that and music is actually separate and can wander all over the place on some of the stuff. But music, live music because actually suffering from this less than other live performance that across California I want to say the number for last year was down 10% and the folks who were doing life, regular theater, other live events were finding a much bigger draw.

00;10;25;16 - 00;10;45;01

Gigi Johnson

So people really and it's really a demographic issue to, you know, what do you go that you're comfortable with and all of that stuff. So so I want to backtrack, though. So you ended up college in clarinet. I keep coming back to the clarinet part. I'm a clarinet player when I was of that ancient ilk as well, though definitely not doing it in a college level.

00;10;45;17 - 00;10;48;21

Gigi Johnson

What did you think you were going to be doing?

00;10;48;21 - 00;11;18;29

Peter Kiesewalter

Great day. I went to high school. It was small enough where, but also top notch teachers. So Ottawa being that that capital of Canada, we have the National Arts Center Orchestra up there. It's a federally funded orchestra, incredible players, pretty light performance schedule. And in terms of when compared to other orchestras, my teacher was really top flight clarinetist and I had a great relationship with him.

00;11;18;29 - 00;11;40;15

Peter Kiesewalter

He knew that I had no illusions of being of wanting to pursue an orchestral career on the clarinet. I told him right from the get go, my interests are too much like this. He said, That's fine, but where you study with me, you have to do this. This business, you have to play in the orchestra, you have to play orchestral excerpts, you have to enter the concerto competition.

00;11;41;28 - 00;12;07;13

Peter Kiesewalter

And so you check off all the stuff that I teach. Any clarinetist, and we're going to be fine. Where he gave me tremendous leeway and flexibility was in my recitals. I could diverge a bit and do, for instance, in my final year of an independent research assignment on clarinet techniques in folk music from the Middle East, from East Europe, which is a very different style of playing than than classical clarinet.

00;12;07;13 - 00;12;45;23

Peter Kiesewalter

Right? He was cool and allowed me to do that as long as I as I did all that stuff that I had to do, which is play, you know, books have all the tricky parts, the orchestral excerpts sound and all the regular lessons. So that and simultaneously doing a minor on jazz saxophone with another fantastic teacher. So I think I thought I was kind of like the big fish, small pond kind of situation up there and I, I didn't hit a wall, but at some point I thought, if I'm going to keep evolving, I need to go and get my ass kicked a little bit.

00;12;45;23 - 00;12;50;24

Peter Kiesewalter

And I came here initially as a as a musician.

00;12;51;01 - 00;12;52;03

Gigi Johnson

To the big time.

00;12;52;08 - 00;13;12;02

Peter Kiesewalter

00;13;12;27 - 00;13;34;03

Peter Kiesewalter

00;13;34;03 - 00;13;54;10

Gigi Johnson

So where did you think you were going at this stage? I mean, you're commenting that you'd like to diverge a bit. Where was that? I'm in New York. I'm in the big pond. I'm playing with a at least monthly with a big a big band player. Where where was the aim at that point in time for your evolution?

00;13;54;10 - 00;14;18;23

Peter Kiesewalter

At that time there was no name, and that's there never is. I mean, I can only see a week in advance. I don't have really a name. I didn't at that point. I'm just going wherever doors might open, including with this right now. I mean, I'm 50, I could turn 57 and I will go whoever picks up the phone says, Hey, you guys want to come with the Mark Project to the Santa Fe Botanical Garden and play, you know, for our show down there.

00;14;18;23 - 00;14;38;21

Peter Kiesewalter

And if that if they can cough up our performance fee, I'm there. But I don't have really I never have had a master master plan. So I came just thinking on stage for a few months and, and just sort of check it out and see what happens. And I kind of slipped into a scene on the Lower East Side, a singer songwriter scene a little bit.

00;14;38;21 - 00;14;57;12

Peter Kiesewalter

Because of my work with Jane, people knew Jane so they invited me to play with them and it was certainly wasn't enough to live on. And that's where the ABC thing came in. Had I not got that gig, I never would have stayed here beyond the first couple of months. I just sort of fell in my lap.

00;14;57;26 - 00;15;01;26

Gigi Johnson

So how did you end up at ABC News? I find that a kind of.

00;15;01;26 - 00;15;03;16

Peter Kiesewalter

Crazy gig.

00;15;03;16 - 00;15;03;28

Gigi Johnson

Shift.

00;15;04;20 - 00;15;37;24

Peter Kiesewalter

00;15;37;24 - 00;15;58;14

Peter Kiesewalter

Can you put some music to this? You know, so this guy, John Holding was so busy there, he needed help. And he asked, is our mutual friend if she knew someone? And she turned to me and said, Have you ever done this kind of thing before? I said, Of course I have. I'd never, never done a TV scoring before.

00;15;58;14 - 00;16;22;27

Peter Kiesewalter

00;16;22;27 - 00;16;24;24

Peter Kiesewalter

And in in music.

00;16;26;29 - 00;16;30;09

Gigi Johnson

Were you gigging also was kind of absorbing.

00;16;30;18 - 00;16;47;20

Peter Kiesewalter

It was a lot of a lot of bandwidth required to maintain that. And at the same time, I was also working for Disney doing this, this new version of Winnie the Pooh that they had put up with puppets. So I did four seasons of that and all the stuff that ABC could throw at me. And then again, mostly gigs in town.

00;16;47;20 - 00;17;09;06

Peter Kiesewalter

I was not on the road with my own team till I stopped working at ABC. But yeah, for those five, six years it wasn't intense here, we need this yesterday, you know, while I'm doing other stuff. But yeah, it was, it was lucrative. I don't say that lightly. I made money.

00;17;09;06 - 00;17;11;00

Gigi Johnson

So did they turn off the tap or did you?

00;17;11;00 - 00;17;46;20

Peter Kiesewalter

The whole industry changed. I went from using life composers, composers to using city libraries. It was a real shift, so editors would start cutting to CD sound libraries. And there was this whole thing where the producers wanted a more of an MTV style of music kind of thing. Quicker cut, cut to the beat, lots of different music examples, which became unsustainable for one composer to put a hundred different cues on a on a 45 minute documentary kind of thing.

00;17;46;20 - 00;17;55;03

Peter Kiesewalter

So it went that way pretty quickly all at the same time.

00;17;55;03 - 00;18;04;20

Gigi Johnson

So you then had a shift to make, and at the time I think that's when you ended up with the Brooklyn Rundfunk Orchestra, or what was the shift or is there is there a.

00;18;04;28 - 00;18;28;14

Peter Kiesewalter

Score and soundtrack to one movie? It starred Ernest Borgnine as a mafia don, and there was a Canadian actor in it who was the star of it, who plays someone from like an Italian-American neighborhood who wants to study opera. Ernest Borgnine is a mafia don who takes this kid under his wing, pays for his lessons and gets enmeshed.

00;18;28;26 - 00;18;48;06

Peter Kiesewalter

Long story short, the whole soundtrack had to be kind of opera music. The problem was the actor was not an opera singer. He was a great singer. He's a pop singer. So for me to do the music in the traditional sense, out of the score with him singing over it wasn't cutting it. It sounded like a bad student recital.

00;18;48;06 - 00;19;09;22

Peter Kiesewalter

And again, this guy is a great singer. He was like, he was on Broadway. He was in the lead in Tommy and Miss Saigon. He's a great singer, but to do legit opera, he didn't have the voice for it, right? So I went to the director and I said, Let me make turn these opera arias into like, imagine if Mozart and Puccini were alive today.

00;19;09;22 - 00;19;41;26

Peter Kiesewalter

What would they do? They would use drums and samplers and electric guitars. I did the whole score using modern instrumentation, and that soundtrack ended up becoming a project I did for about a decade called the East Village Opera Company. And people got wind of it. There was signed a record deal with Decca Universal, made three records traveling around the world with a lot of people, went to the Grammy Awards, got an Emmy Award and that that that was that that, that, that happened right when I was leaving ABC.

00;19;41;26 - 00;19;47;02

Peter Kiesewalter

So it was just kind of a smooth transition from that to that.

00;19;47;02 - 00;19;51;24

Gigi Johnson

She became a single focused person or you take the opportunity to plant many seeds, do.

00;19;52;06 - 00;20;12;15

Peter Kiesewalter

Anything except but my planting always happens in the work that I put out. Like when I do something, it doesn't necessarily always pay immediate dividends, but further on down the road, this happened time and time again. Someone here's something I did seven years ago or a decade ago, even though I didn't even release it or didn't make any money.

00;20;12;15 - 00;20;33;06

Peter Kiesewalter

And they'll say, You're the guy that did that thing. Like, I'm looking for something that's kind of like that. So yeah, the East Village Opera Company took up 100% of my time at that point. It was it was, yeah, we made records and we toured and and, you know, made radios as a slightly before the social media time came in.

00;20;33;16 - 00;20;39;15

Peter Kiesewalter

But, but we were out there and we did what we could.

00;20;39;15 - 00;20;53;13

Gigi Johnson

So you have over time, it had a whole buffet and vocabulary of projects before you've got to the mines. Recently. What are the other things that you might want to call out from the other work that you've done as a clarinetist?

00;20;53;13 - 00;21;20;10

Peter Kiesewalter

I was really one of the reasons I came to New York was because I think New York was a real center for klezmer music, which features the clarinet. You know, I mean, I came here and one of the people in a jean series band at the time she was doing this residency at the bottom Line was this guy Frank London, who is probably the foremost klezmer, one of the foremost klezmer historians and musicians in the world.

00;21;20;10 - 00;21;41;20

Peter Kiesewalter

It's not definitely New York City. He's got a band called the Klezmer Attics, and at the time he was writing a klezmer opera. And I kind of again, it just this all just happened and I happened to be there at the right time. And I worked with him a little bit. I learned a lot, of course, as a student of the jazz saxophone.

00;21;41;20 - 00;22;13;17

Peter Kiesewalter

I mean, there's no better place to be than New York City. So I just kind of immersed myself in what was happening at the time. And so I was definitely very much into it. And I was spent intense periods of time focus on my sort of one record or one artist. I mean, there was five years of my life where I listened to nothing but Miles Davis and what everyone in his band did kind of between the years of 57 and 62, just absorbing all of that stuff and klezmer music.

00;22;13;17 - 00;22;34;05

Peter Kiesewalter

I was deep into Cajun and Zydeco music because I played accordion as well, and I had a band called the Stones that I fronted with an accordion and clarinet. And so anything that featured accordion, Cajun Zydeco, I was deeply into that stuff as well. And like I say, I put myself through school playing keyboards and rock bands and country bands.

00;22;34;05 - 00;22;57;27

Peter Kiesewalter

So I always felt I had a pretty broad scope of musical understanding. But I, I realized that I was never I have too much respect for classical and jazz music to to to call myself either one of those. I'm not a classical musician and I'm not a jazz musician because I think either of those vocations, it's you have to dedicate a life.

00;22;58;09 - 00;23;32;07

Peter Kiesewalter

You got to dedicate a life just to just to maintain the technique, to to be on top of that in that world. So I will say I'm informed by them and you'll hear it on the project record. I mean, I love it. This is Claude Debussy. Here's Aaron Copeland. Here's Bach. So yeah, and I did win a concerto competition when I was in university, but I just I don't play jazz or classical enough to to to keep to keep it up at that level where it's like, that's amazing.

00;23;32;07 - 00;23;55;17

Gigi Johnson

You are possibly the least vanilla performer I've run into in a long time. The fact that you don't just take one anything that you blend and merge and morph instruments, types of music, but then you deep dive into it, which is an interesting combination that you're not just picking from a buffet, but you're really drilling down in space.

00;23;56;06 - 00;24;17;06

Peter Kiesewalter

I think being in New York, I discovered what I was good at by just by finding out what I should not be doing. I found out very quickly that, no, I'm not a jazz musician. No, there's probably a million players in the city who are better than I am. But I did find out what I was very good at and just the East Village Opera Company alone.

00;24;17;06 - 00;24;46;18

Peter Kiesewalter

But maintaining that balance between taking these songs that were written 100 to 300 years ago but with a modern sensibility that that that's a that's a that's a high wire balancing act that requires a profound understanding of the tradition that you're pulling from and the musical references and settings that you're putting them into. You can't you can't you have to you have to understand at a certain level, both idioms that you're that you're mashing up together.

00;24;46;18 - 00;25;14;01

Peter Kiesewalter

Right? Which is why most the classical crossover stuff is just so horrific. You know, like the hooked on classics kind of approach where they just put a sweet beat underneath like, you know, like classical hits, you know, the hits from Carmen or something like that. I think to do a deep dive there has to be you have to have a bit of an understanding or a lot of an understanding of what it is that you're plundering before you do something like that.

00;25;14;01 - 00;25;32;24

Peter Kiesewalter

And I think that's what I do with the MOD project as well. Like I, I take but I don't, I don't do it lightly. I don't just, I, I think I do a lot of research and a lot of practicing before I, you know, I played something on, on, on a record. If I answered your question, I'm sorry.

00;25;34;14 - 00;26;00;22

Gigi Johnson

Yeah I know. I was just sort of thinking cause a lot of people really need proof before they move out into the next space and that they oftentimes need to see somebody ahead of them doing that or see evidence that there's a market or it sounds like you live the opposite life, that you will step out of the curb into traffic without even knowing what the concrete looks like.

00;26;01;00 - 00;26;07;05

Gigi Johnson

But learning as you go to put things together and you have faith that the risk will deliver.

00;26;07;05 - 00;26;31;06

Peter Kiesewalter

That's so beautifully put to easy because I do that all the time. And my family, you know, my my dad passed away a year ago, but he thought I was reckless. I mean, he came to understand and appreciate and be proud of what I have accomplished. But he thought my way of life was a little bit reckless, which will at some point tie into the whole mask thing.

00;26;31;06 - 00;26;50;26

Peter Kiesewalter

Why? I'm doing the Mark Project because I'm sitting around the campfire watching them fly into the fire, thinking, I know there's a scientific explanation for this that that some scientists hypothesize about, I can tell you about. That's called transfer orientation. But to me, it looked like this, Mark was like that thing is just that desire and reckless spirit.

00;26;50;26 - 00;27;11;27

Peter Kiesewalter

I kind of like that I that resonates with me, that that's sort of why I did this. But yes, you're absolutely right. I will do things without knowing what it's like. I'm not going to make a living off the MOD project for three or four years. And yet here I am with three kids, one of whom is starting college this year, and I'm doing it.

00;27;11;27 - 00;27;34;20

Peter Kiesewalter

It probably cost me my marriage at some point, to be honest with you, that was not an acceptable way to live life. Not knowing how next month's rent is going to be paid and I was not going to change. So it's much better now. We have a great thing. Figure it out. But yes, I will do things without really knowing how I'm going to pull it off or or if there's a market for it or what.

00;27;35;21 - 00;27;40;13

Peter Kiesewalter

I'll just do it. I will say sorry to interrupt that.

00;27;40;13 - 00;27;41;03

Gigi Johnson

I do take.

00;27;41;13 - 00;28;04;20

Peter Kiesewalter

It some cues from musicians that have come before me. Like I looked at a musician, this guitar player, Bill Frisell, He's he's some master guitar player in the jazz circle, but in this Americana kind of vein. And he made a record many years ago called Have a Little Faith, which basically looks like the history of American music on one.

00;28;05;14 - 00;28;24;28

Peter Kiesewalter

And America's got the greatest inventions of all time, right? The music of the last century. I mean, the blues, jazz, bebop, R&B, rock and roll, country music, bluegrass music. Are you kidding me? Like, all this comes from the United States, which is why a lot of foreigners love the United States, by the way, because of its music and why I came to New York.

00;28;25;17 - 00;28;45;00

Peter Kiesewalter

But I got this record and he's playing with a small four or five piece ensemble. He's playing an Aaron Copeland suite, the Billy the Kid suite. And he taught me just by virtue of that record, wow, you can take an orchestral score and reduce it for four or five people and still have room for self-expression in that. So funny.

00;28;45;00 - 00;29;05;05

Peter Kiesewalter

Quick story. East Village Opera Company got nominated for a Grammy one year for one of our records, and on the red carpet he was in front of me because he was nominated for Best Jazz record. That and I got to tell him this. I said, I know you don't know me, but I got to tell you, I'm here because that record you put out in 90, whatever it was really, really changed my life.

00;29;05;17 - 00;29;28;26

Peter Kiesewalter

And you showed me that you can play classical music, which with electric guitar accordion, a drum kit, an electric bass and a clarinet. It's so I do take my cue and I do borrow liberally from masters that have come before me. But I often do it without knowing how it's going to turn out or who might want it, or or if I can even possibly make a living out of it.

00;29;29;05 - 00;29;30;00

Peter Kiesewalter

I have no idea.

00;29;30;29 - 00;29;41;08

Gigi Johnson

So. So before we get deeper into the moth, have any of these things caused you to fall flat on your face? And did you have learnings from those type of.

00;29;41;08 - 00;30;08;16

Peter Kiesewalter

Well, just what I'm doing right now, I'm not this interview, but but I mean I've played well what I'm putting a finger on it but more money than I have into this just to get this to a point where people might not be interested, people might not care about this, at least in terms of the numbers that I need for this to be a viable way to pay the rent here in Flatbush.

00;30;08;19 - 00;30;37;14

Peter Kiesewalter

00;30;37;14 - 00;31;20;26

Peter Kiesewalter

I had a group of 12 people. There was a repertoire, and that first show was our first public performance for 12 people that in some circles that's that's a that's a horrible business model. It just isn't what you had to do that ain't going to work three years and 12 people are going to pack it in. Fortunately, the guy who was booking Joe's Pub at the time, Dope Dragon, who now heads up the NYU Arts Department in Abu Dhabi, I think he was one of those rare gatekeepers as a cultural institution who said, Hey, you're doing something really cool.

00;31;20;26 - 00;31;38;17

Peter Kiesewalter

You got to come back immediately. So we came back four weeks later and then four weeks after that. And at that third show already there were record companies there. And it just we never looked back. But had there not been someone like Bill Bragg in there booking the place, I never would've even got the second gig. We only sold 12 tickets.

00;31;38;17 - 00;31;56;24

Peter Kiesewalter

And unfortunately it's how much in the clubs is how much alcohol you sell is if you're going to get invited back, you know. So I mean, that was probably a failure. But there was one person who said, I think you should come back. Tons of failure.

00;31;57;04 - 00;32;03;07

Gigi Johnson

It's the right doorway being open. It's back to the doors again. We have the desire. And so there's.

00;32;03;19 - 00;32;04;00

Peter Kiesewalter

The moth.

00;32;04;00 - 00;32;24;05

Gigi Johnson

Project. The moth came out of the back door contract, not the moth pictures. That's confusing because there's at least one other moth, if not many other moths. The Moth project was born out of watching him fly into the flames or or sibling issues or opportunities of a conversation. How did those.

00;32;24;06 - 00;32;45;02

Peter Kiesewalter

00;32;45;02 - 00;33;10;26

Peter Kiesewalter

We've had it my entire life. My little brother, who is an interpretive naturalist or an environmental biologist, took his three kids. We quarantined together on the lake that summer and he brought a a black light and his camera and took up morphing, which is the new birding. Right. As a as a hobby. I and I, I brought June and I took unfriending I was like, what am I supposed to do?

00;33;10;26 - 00;33;40;11

Peter Kiesewalter

All of my work had been canceled. And I'm watching him take pictures of these moths and I'm seeing these pictures. And I had no idea in my entire life that there was that much biodiversity outside the cottage, just right outside. And one night he photographed 87 different species of moths, 87 different species, not 87 moths, 87 different species of mass from this being the size of your hand to the micro moss, all the colors of the rainbow.

00;33;40;11 - 00;34;03;25

Peter Kiesewalter

And I was not paying attention. I had no idea that was a catalyst for sure. I had had already been sort of playing with the idea of a show that had a very strong visual component to it, but I had not quite put the pieces together for it. So every night we sat around the campfire and yes, we watched Moss and I saw his pictures.

00;34;03;25 - 00;34;32;14

Peter Kiesewalter

And in his world of interpretive naturalism, they're going through a massive paradigm shift as well on how they disseminate information. I used to be a biologist gets in front of a group of people following him on a nature hike, right. And saying, Look, that's that's an oak tree. Here's a spotted salamander and you'll see it throwing out a lot of information that they're trying to change that modality of of of interpretation.

00;34;32;14 - 00;35;11;17

Peter Kiesewalter

And one thing that is starting to happen is a well and it's about friggin time scientists are looking to artists who better to share information in an entertaining way than than people who have done that their whole life. Right. So, I mean, this show very much lives at that intersection of art and science. My take on it all and this is after a lot of work and a lot of research and and getting the science right through my brother is how do I relate to this to the natural world, to my ecosystem, to these moths.

00;35;12;13 - 00;35;43;07

Peter Kiesewalter

So my moth project, it's less science and more of a family story, how I, how my family interacts with this environment. So a lot of the songs are not really about the life cycle of the moth, but it's a song about migration and there's metaphor for an allegory and the literal meaning. And it's it's as you sing it about moths right now, or is he singing about his parents kind of thing?

00;35;43;07 - 00;36;01;22

Peter Kiesewalter

You know, moths are sometimes the ones that migrate are born into like in South Texas. They come out of their cocoon, it's 105 degrees and they go, This is too oppressive to survive here. We've got to we've got to get out of here. So they fly north, you know, And my parents escaped their own oppressive situation in postwar Germany.

00;36;01;22 - 00;36;22;23

Peter Kiesewalter

I mean, so there's there's that little parallel. That's just one example. But but but that's that's sort of how it came to be sitting around the campfire all summer with my little brother, who is an interpretive naturalist. And then he handed me a book that Changed My Life by Robin Wall Kimmerer It's been on the New York Times bestseller for years.

00;36;22;23 - 00;36;53;29

Peter Kiesewalter

It's just celebrated its 10th anniversary. She's an esteemed botanist, professor recent MacArthur Fellow from last year and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. And her book is a series of essays which combine Western botany with Indigenous wisdom. And I don't know about you, but I was getting depressed reading the daily Environmental news and okay, 100% of scientists say we're screwed.

00;36;54;05 - 00;37;23;11

Peter Kiesewalter

Okay, next day and drilling rights, gratitude to ExxonMobil and the like. It's every day. The news was bleak and bad and this book literally changed my life. And again, she's just laying out some indigenous concepts, like the concept of reciprocity, which is what am I going to give back to the earth because it's just too late when someone gives you a gift, Well, you say thank you or you give them a gift back, Right?

00;37;23;22 - 00;37;48;18

Peter Kiesewalter

Well, so we the Earth gives us the privilege. And this is her words, the privilege of breath. Oh, the privilege of breath. How can I give the earth for the privilege of breath? Well, I hadn't thought about that. You know, And she has some answers. I mean, paying attention is a gift. Gratitude is a gift. Make transformative works of art when in go, I can do that.

00;37;48;29 - 00;38;19;14

Peter Kiesewalter

That's how I'm that's what I'm going to do. And the book is very hopeful. You know why do my kids know a thousand corporate logos but they couldn't name you ten trees when they saw them? I mean, that's kind of sad, right? It's things like that. So it's it's consciously made me that book her words pay attention to the neighbors, the critters around me that the plants and all that.

00;38;19;14 - 00;38;28;07

Peter Kiesewalter

So that's, again, a long winded answer to your story, but it really did. Was it sort of pandemic kind of project.

00;38;28;07 - 00;38;57;23

Gigi Johnson

So the state of your art on this is you've got a combination of conscious environmental science communication combined with story and emotion, and music is the form of this audio and visual now performative experience all captured in media. What's the state if someone says, I would like to drink from this, well, right now, what are they experiencing and doing?

00;38;57;23 - 00;38;58;27

Gigi Johnson

They are going to.

00;38;59;05 - 00;39;19;18

Peter Kiesewalter

Come in to see a show and it could be in any number of venues. That's the other thing I wanted to do. I wanted to just especially with the pandemic, that I mean, are we allowed to play indoors anymore? So this show, I mean, we just got back from Santa Fe, so we're playing in botanical gardens outside against, you know, I had my own projector screen.

00;39;19;18 - 00;40;06;10

Peter Kiesewalter

Some venues have that, but we'll go anywhere with this. It's a very lean to person type of situation, but with a minimum six foot wide by nine foot high video screen and projections, which are very, very integrated with the music and very much in time with it. So it's a combination of slow motion video of moths in slow motion flight of of macro photography, of moths of motion graphics, of lyrics being displayed of of all sorts of natural ecosystem kind of footage while we sing a series of of 12 songs about and inspired by moths, we wear white, so we disappear into the screen as much as possible.

00;40;06;10 - 00;40;29;21

Peter Kiesewalter

And yeah, it's very it's a very visual. What I'm trying to do is what some of these great books have done for me, which is it's less educate and more instilling a sense of awe and wonder for the natural world. That's it. I'm not teaching you anything about, you know, there's a few facts, but if people can leave and go, that was cool.

00;40;30;03 - 00;40;38;10

Peter Kiesewalter

That was very cool. Then my job's done.

00;40;38;10 - 00;41;06;00

Gigi Johnson

So who come? I'm sort of thinking about the fact that people don't tend to go to music alone. Yeah, And sometimes, though, they don't necessarily go with their multi-generational families, that they're going with their peers and friends and people who love similar genres, etc.. Are you getting people who really are wanting a physical, multi-generational experience together or groups of four of folks at the same age group?

00;41;06;00 - 00;41;13;29

Gigi Johnson

People are already very environmentally oriented friends of the Botanical Gardens. What type of a population shows up for this experience?

00;41;14;19 - 00;41;38;00

Peter Kiesewalter

The answer is yes. All of these bands where we're playing to and who the promoter is and what kind of reach their institution has. Santa Fe Botanical Garden. It was a $55 ticket, so it was like Friends of the Botanical Garden well-heeled, that they had the money that could buy a couple of $55 tickets to come and see this in this incredible setting outdoors.

00;41;38;00 - 00;41;58;22

Peter Kiesewalter

While, by the way, real masks are flying around on screen. As we were doing our thing, we play in Toronto at a place called the Paradise Paradise Theater. It's it's like a very hip club where they still movie screenings and there's an attached bar to it. But the entire staff there is in there, they're 20. So it was them and their friends.

00;41;58;22 - 00;42;21;27

Peter Kiesewalter

There's it was a very young crowd there in Toronto at that another show in Toronto was, you know, all these museums are doing these after hours events now. They shut the doors, they bring it up, they turn the lights down, have a deejay in this room. They'll have a performance by The Moth project that was a very, very young, very young crowd that was there that come in walking through the halls of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

00;42;22;18 - 00;42;42;19

Peter Kiesewalter

It depends where we and and where we're playing this coming week. We'll play the cutting room in New York. I think it'll be a lot of our friends and colleagues. So maybe people our age and people we sit in the orchestra pits with Whitney, by the way, and there's a lot of Broadway shows and plays, you know, New York City Ballet occasionally.

00;42;42;19 - 00;43;13;20

Peter Kiesewalter

So it's her colleagues and friends. But I again, I've always had a hard time sort of pigeonholing who is your audience? But it really is a pretty multi-generational thing. As you mentioned. And it has more to do with the venue and whoever is promoting it than than with us. I think until we get to the point where people will definitely come to see us because they know who we are, we're not there yet.

00;43;13;20 - 00;43;23;24

Gigi Johnson

And is it largely word of mouth booking of folks who see it, do it, learn about it, hear from friends, and they'd say, Come, come to my venue, come to my show so far.

00;43;23;24 - 00;43;52;28

Peter Kiesewalter

And again, this is we're really just rolling this out this month. But we've done ten shows in the last year just sort of workshopping this, getting up off its feet. I've gone to a couple of conferences, industry conferences. There's one in New York every January called APAP, which is the is is the Association of Performing Artists. Yeah. I mean, I've done it many times in the past, but I hadn't done it for 15 years.

00;43;52;28 - 00;44;15;02

Peter Kiesewalter

But I went last January. So presenters at some of the theaters will go see my booth or see our showcase and say, Ah, that you're doing that kind of thing. That's that's sort of what we're looking for next year. I also went to a museum conference in Denver earlier in May. So all the museums who are now trying to get people out after hours.

00;44;15;02 - 00;44;43;10

Peter Kiesewalter

So anything this plays right into that bat mission statement. And we're also invited to a park ranger conference. It's called the National Association for Interpretation. A thousand park rangers from around North America converged always on in one place for three or four days and talk about how they're going to do their programs, what kind of initiatives, what kind of programing they're going to do.

00;44;43;10 - 00;45;13;17

Peter Kiesewalter

And we were invited to the one last year in Cleveland because their mission statement was the intersection of art and science, and they caught wind of, oh, that's exactly what we we want to do. So they invited us to to play for their opening night sort of gala event. So it's less word of mouth and more need proactively trying to get it out there any way I can, which is that's the heavy lift.

00;45;13;21 - 00;45;18;04

Peter Kiesewalter

The art is the easy part. It's the getting the word out. That's the hard part. These days it's really hard.

00;45;19;25 - 00;45;44;18

Gigi Johnson

But finding communities of practice who have a need, right, so that you are helping them broaden more into the arts, something that might have been a space of science where you're providing additional content, which is very popular now. I'm affiliated with some of the botanical gardens here in Southern California and so many evening and additional events for a premium fee oftentimes are for VIP's.

00;45;45;25 - 00;45;54;12

Gigi Johnson

Are are and I should know this do you have then a recorded element of this for people to take home share experience at this place?

00;45;54;20 - 00;46;17;14

Peter Kiesewalter

Say, wow, I'm just looking around. Yeah. So I haven't released an album in 14 years and I look at my kids and all music comes free on their phone, right? No one's buying music anymore. So I found it hard to justify putting out a CD. I mean, really. CD People are still listening to 16 bit.

00;46;18;15 - 00;46;19;14

Gigi Johnson

No, but they're listening to.

00;46;19;14 - 00;46;52;28

Peter Kiesewalter

00;46;53;13 - 00;47;20;02

Peter Kiesewalter

I could justify charging 30 bucks by also manufacturing a hardcover book, which is an extended liner notes. So the CD comes with a hardcover book, which has a lot of MOS imagery in it. All the lyrics, all the production notes, some extra stuff in it, and that's what I'm doing. Again. Who buys music anymore? I don't know, but I can't imagine it.

00;47;20;02 - 00;47;25;15

Peter Kiesewalter

I'm not going to hang my hat on it and expect to make a living selling CDs like I did 20 years ago.

00;47;27;15 - 00;48;00;02

Gigi Johnson

But they're specialty audio, just like you're finding specialty performance spaces, whether it's, you know, com insight timer. People are finding spaces for their spaces where things that are of of emotional genres, space, you know, sort of cognitive genre. So it's sort of interesting that people are finding an anything. I was sort of thinking that, as some people know, who listen to the show that I've been playing in VR for about a year now, that it could be a very interesting pay for it virtual reality experience to kind of walk through it.

00;48;00;08 - 00;48;11;25

Gigi Johnson

So in many ways, all of these new performance spaces and modalities are where there are some interesting niches. But then scaling gets to be some of the real challenge for us.

00;48;11;25 - 00;48;36;09

Peter Kiesewalter

Yeah, and just to go back to the how am I going to monetize this music? Well, I mean, you've heard the streaming revenue statistics, I'm sure, but the last one I heard, Peter Frampton, one of the biggest records of all time. So what do you think? 55 million streams of of a track off of Frampton Comes Alive netted him in royalties.

00;48;36;22 - 00;49;03;23

Peter Kiesewalter

You know it's $1,700. I mean that's what we're dealing with in this in this day and age and musicians, we are our own worst enemies. We've we've really screwed ourselves by by agreeing to do everything on spec or for free. Yeah, I'll do it for free. And if we don't, what did you better believe? There's an artist right behind you who will go and play for three or four foot in the door or for the exposure.

00;49;05;11 - 00;49;18;00

Peter Kiesewalter

I mean, buying books off of my phone. Why isn't anyone buying music off of their phone? You know, it's because we're. We are stupid musicians. We will. We'll give away for good just for someone to pay attention.

00;49;18;04 - 00;49;43;17

Gigi Johnson

Well, more than that, it's that the tools have made it so that I mean, we can debate with the actual numbers are but somewhere north of 100,000 new tracks being searched per day right now per day. So so you end up in this flood. I was talking to people over the weekend who working with current artists who are trying to put out an album a month right now just to kind of get the volume out there.

00;49;43;18 - 00;50;16;02

Gigi Johnson

Some people discover them that they'll discover more songs and being precious even of their own music. But then, you know, people are wanting a premium experience. So I find it fascinating what you are with the math project to create a premium engagement. We're also of the era where people are, you know, the whole Van Gogh exhibit, where people are through projection of an artist who's been dead for a very long time and paying a premium ticket to walk through light and and, and related music.

00;50;16;02 - 00;50;24;08

Gigi Johnson

So I think that the designer experience is one that is in the group designer experience to go in the show.

00;50;24;08 - 00;50;39;08

Peter Kiesewalter

I think I had that in mind when I wanted to, to, to have a very strong and slick visual component to the show that it is an experience that just that can't be documented on a CD or this is an experience for sure.

00;50;41;02 - 00;50;45;26

Gigi Johnson

And people really want emotion. They want if they're going to go out, they want an emotional.

00;50;47;03 - 00;50;48;09

Peter Kiesewalter

Reaction to this.

00;50;48;19 - 00;50;53;20

Gigi Johnson

Or a cover band like we touch, right? I want to go to a cover band or I want an emotional example.

00;50;53;23 - 00;51;21;15

Peter Kiesewalter

00;51;21;24 - 00;51;23;03

Peter Kiesewalter

I get it, I get it.

00;51;23;15 - 00;51;42;04

Gigi Johnson

And singing along, singing along. I this is for me, been a big outdoor concert summer of going to bands that are not my bands. Being with other communities and I've sat listening to so many people sing along that they don't necessarily want the new, they want the things that they've been in their life for a long time that they can emotionally share how they're to blame.

00;51;42;04 - 00;51;45;25

Peter Kiesewalter

Anyone for that, who you know, who doesn't want that. Yeah, I get it.

00;51;46;08 - 00;52;10;14

Gigi Johnson

So I'm excited to experience the math project. I find what you've done fascinating because you have a very high risk tolerance, much more than I. And and being able to sort of step into this space and let it mature and ferment is what a lot of people don't do. So I'm hoping listeners to this are thinking maybe I could build that ground speed as well.

00;52;10;14 - 00;52;16;17

Gigi Johnson

I can build that risk appetite and be willing to let things move into this space.

00;52;16;17 - 00;52;38;07

Peter Kiesewalter

Yeah, if they're okay with not paying the rent for, for a while, then, then go for this, you know? But it's like I said, it's it can be stressful and can be anxiety inducing and I, I do think it probably cost me my my, my marriage.

00;52;38;07 - 00;52;48;08

Gigi Johnson

What have we not heard? You've done so many different things and we can probably talk for another hour. But why did we not cover that? You'd like to mention for this?

00;52;48;21 - 00;53;12;21

Peter Kiesewalter

I don't know. I mean, a bit of everything, I think. I think it's been being extremely thorough. I mean, I hope some people come out. I hope people look for us on the website. It's not just for playing these shows in October. It's it's it's from here on, I'm hoping to launch this and get little bit of traction from people to to come out and see us.

00;53;12;22 - 00;53;18;08

Peter Kiesewalter

You know, but we haven't talked about lots of things.

00;53;18;08 - 00;53;19;28

Gigi Johnson

So who would you like to reach out and.

00;53;21;06 - 00;53;21;18

Peter Kiesewalter

You know like.

00;53;22;15 - 00;53;41;28

Gigi Johnson

Well, I was going to say to me one thing that might be good if people think this is really fabulous to not just say, Ooh, I'd love to hear it, but for people to reach out who have a local community group, gardens, etc., where this might be a fit to connect the dots there to say, I've heard this, Oh, let's bring this into my community.

00;53;42;23 - 00;53;46;16

Gigi Johnson

Are there other folks you'd like to connect with over the years? Yeah.

00;53;46;16 - 00;54;18;00

Peter Kiesewalter

So definitely not just the traditional music people who are, as I call them, the gatekeepers of the institutions like Lincoln Center and and the Public Theater, the dance companies, all of whom I've worked with and most facilities I work at in commission and but also, again, more into the the natural world institutions, the museums, schools, the libraries, the botanical gardens and connected those people.

00;54;18;00 - 00;54;42;23

Peter Kiesewalter

Because I, I think we're on to something and I don't say that lightly. I mean, it's still a big push right now. So that's just like I'm specific sometimes, but I think we're on to something and it's resonating with people. On, as you mentioned before, on an emotional level, it's a lot more of a personal story than people might think.

00;54;42;23 - 00;54;43;27

Gigi Johnson

Peter where can they find.

00;54;43;27 - 00;55;13;11

Peter Kiesewalter

You at MothProjectLive.com and that'll have all the info on where we're playing. It's got a lot of videos there, all shot from live shows so they can get a sense immediately on the video page. Click on one of the six or seven videos. Oh that's what it looks like this pictures. It's a little bit of science on their description and I would say that's the place to go check it out and see when we might be playing and where.

00;55;13;28 - 00;55;20;20

Gigi Johnson

Great. Peter, thank you very much for joining us and I'm looking forward to enjoying the project in a wonderful space.

00;55;20;20 - 00;55;26;07

Peter Kiesewalter

Thank you so much for having me today. That was great. Have a lot of fun.