Coming your way on Art Rock saying North Louisiana percussionist who's keeping the cultural beat in his college town contemporary artists finding inspiration in the biblical sounds and the tantalizing tastes of Tuscany.

These stories are up next.

On Art Rocks Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art Rocks with me.

James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

There is no force like music to soothe this, to awaken our spiritual inclinations or to make us get up and dance.

Gregory Lyons holds a doctorate degree in music and he teaches it at Louisiana Tech in Ruston, where he specializes in percussion instruments, instruments that generate sound when they are shaken, struck or scraped.

So here's Dr. Lyons to pick up the beat of his story.

I got excited about the marching band Drumline when I was around.

Elementary school age, junior high school age.

One of the stipulations to join the drumline was that you had two years of piano lessons.

I took that clearly because of our keyboard percussion instruments, which are the same layout as a piano.

So the reason for learning piano is you are actually touching the piano keys when you're playing, and then when you can bring that to your percussion training and you've got a mallet, you you can't touch it, but you can have an approximation of where things lay.

And that makes it a little easier to do Percussionists are the only instrumentalists who don't touch our actual instruments, like violinists.

They're holding their instrument or clarinetists or flutist, vocalists their instrument.

It's their voice.

But in our case, we're always separated by a mallet or a stick.

And so the connection that we have with our instruments are very different because there's not that tactile sensation of what a note sounds or feels like.

In high school.

Like a lot of programs, we had a concert band a marching band and a jazz band.

I had the experience of playing concert percussion instruments in the concert band, which would include snare drums, bass, drums, cymbals, all the keyboard, percussion equipment and tympani behind me.

All of that started in junior high school, and then the jazz band had the drum set and the piano, and because of my piano background, I actually play piano in our jazz band.

And then the marching band, I played the marching snare drum.

But marching bands, competitive marching bands have snares, tenors and bass drums and cymbals and sometimes a front ensemble with keyboard, percussion equipment.

It's the common practice at the college level when you go to study percussion that by and large, we always try to learn everything to make ourselves more versatile when we're then on the job market.

And if you need to play a jazz gig and you can cover drum set, or if you need to go play with an orchestra and cover symbols and other percussion instruments, there My training at all the institutions that I studied, that was the overriding philosophy of my instructors.

And so they really ingrained that in me.

And I do love to play all of the different instruments.

There's just always something to learn.

There's always a new instrument.

They each have some unique particular technique and sound you can use percussion in a variety of ways.

It can be an extra color, an extra shimmer of sound.

It might sound empty or cavernous without that on top of the melody that might be in another wind instrument or the vocalist.

So providing that extra color the main area from drums, that's just the rhythmic support.

It's providing that driving rhythm, which is going to be different from style to style.

If that's not there, then it just doesn't work.

It usually works best when the performer has studied and has a deep understanding of the style necessary for that particular genre.

I think that's another part about being a percussionist.

We naturally like to play with other people because we're usually not the center of attention.

Our contribution is in rhythmic support, but there are solo opportunities to play as a percussionist, which I had in my training and which I've continued here at Louisiana Tech.

So I performed solo faculty recitals where I perform on as many instruments as I can get on stage.

Typically, I try to have something from each of the main areas You can also play a classic works from the percussion repertoire.

But the thing about solo percussion is compared to pianists or violinists or vocalists in even brass players, the number of pieces that are solo that we have at our disposal are significantly fewer because it really didn't take off as a thing, solo percussion until the early part of the 20th century into the 20th century.

So our repertoire is only about 100 years old compared to some of the other areas.

Why pianists, you see them perform with symphonies and they're playing pieces from 800 and in earlier.

So that's just different for us.

I also perform with usually about two to three symphonies per year.

I'm fortunate to play the principal percussion position with the Rapid Symphony Orchestra in Alexandria.

That is a wonderful group of musicians who are comprised of other faculty from around the state.

Musicians from really all parts of Louisiana.

Also in Monroe, the Monroe Symphony, and then with the Shreveport Symphony.

I've also played with the Texarkana Symphony a couple of times.

Each of them are just fantastic.

Organizations and and do two wonderful presentations of their music.

In addition to that, I have some smaller groups and chamber groups that I play with.

So several percussion quartets.

This is my 13th year here at Louisiana Tech.

I'm Associate Professor of music, and when I first arrived.

One thing that I missed was an opportunity I had in some other states in participating in new music festivals or contemporary classical music festivals with my colleague Mel Mobley at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

We had the idea in 2016 to create that here.

And we thought by taking the resources from Louisiana Tech, where I teach and Ulm, we could combine our resources and involve our local musicians in performances of living composers.

The musicians are faculty members, largely from Ulm and Tech, but we also have faculty from Northwestern State, LSU, Grambling, Southern We've had a variety of wonderful professional musicians come up in and then work together, which we don't often get to do, unfortunately, because we're siloed sort of in our own institutions.

So that's a real treat.

We invite anyone, though, young or old composers, they have to be living, and we invite them to submit works.

They can submit up to three pieces.

We had over 100 composers submit over 220 pieces.

A committee will evaluate each of those works and we'll actually select about 30 to 40 of them for performance at the festival.

It's a treat to have all of the visiting composers here in our area working with us, talking about their music sharing that with the public where we make everything free.

We go out and we perform in art museums.

We've performed at the Dixie Center for the Arts here in Ruston in Monroe.

We performed at the Strauss Theater Center over there, and we also perform at the Black Bayou National Wildlife Refuge, and that's why we call it that new music on the bayou.

The audience members coming to the festival not only are invited to be at the concerts, but they're also encouraged and invited to attend our rehearsals, where the composers will talk about why they chose a certain thing to do in the music and what the purpose is behind the piece.

When we surround ourselves with the artistic creations of others, life gets a little bit richer.

So here are some of our picks for notable exhibits and events in the arts coming soon to museums and galleries in your part of the world.

For more about these and loads more events in the creative space, visit LBB dot org slash art rock.

There you'll find links to each episode of the program.

So to see or share any segment again, visit LBB dot org slash art rocks for upwards of 1000 years, artisans have been using the naturally occurring dye known as Henna to create colorful and mystical designs Henna is still a favorite medium for Detroit artist Lydia Hannah Wilson, but this ancient substance is just one of many tools in Wilson's kit She also works across many genres, using everything from fluid based acrylic to intricate calligraphy on her canvases.

I think any field, any art, it has to give hope, a sense of living to the person who is seeing it, not depressed them, but encourage them I grew up in a place called Who Believes and Cannot Go South India.

In India, that's not really common.

The people study fine arts, but for me, I always loved design.

Empty any empty space.

Me designing was my thing.

Later it taught me so much more than what textbook stopped me the way.

How, when was the way?

How actually, Summers describes nature really well in the Bible, and that really moved me.

I mean, if he was able to make songs out of it, why was I not able to do something with paint that really triggered my brain Hannah is an ancient art from an Indian culture all the brides like up to here.

It's really crazy, but it takes about seven to 8 hours just to work on their hands and their feet.

The reason why they do it is they think it's it enhances the bride.

It's just like an adornment yourself.

And it has a lot of health benefits, too.

It cools down your body temperature and it's more like a spa treatment because of the oils and all the beautiful aromas you get in there.

Hannah.

There's a chemical reaction that happens in the paste.

After five, 10 minutes, the steam starts releasing.

So it reacts with your skin, which is perfectly normal and organic.

It's nothing to be alarmed of.

So the longer I keep the henna paste on my skin, the longer the dye releases.

So I started doing Hannah when I was ten years old.

My neighbor was a Muslim and it was her wedding, and she got her hands all decked out, both of them here.

And that amazed me.

And after two days, her stain was still there.

And I was like, Oh, this is cool.

I mean, this doesn't go off.

And I want to do that, too.

There are different applications.

Also, people use needle based tube to do henna here.

I prefer cotton corners, nothing but a plastic roll that you roll and then you tape it with the pin.

So the pin gives a proper diameter like that for the thickness and thinness.

I like to work with a fusion of Ben and the client, so it gives a lot of depth.

I feel there are a few traditional designs for brides, especially they do a lot of portraits and henna like the bride with ado pardon her head.

The Rich Heritage and the rich culture, which is in India.

Many people don't know in Detroit.

So when I do those designs, they're like, Oh, what is this?

What kind of design is this?

What kind of an art form is this?

So when I explain them, they're aware of the culture.

They are aware from where it came.

Other forms are like the big forms, more like contemporary forms.

When I do, brides I used the embroidery, which is on her dress.

So I use those as my inspiration and the love story of the bride and how the bride and the groom where did they meet?

What is the common thing between them?

I sit with them for eight, 9 hours and they explain me their entire story.

And as they explain this story, I on the on the spot, I build the story up in the henna.

I think that lightens them and they feel good about it.

For me, the time has to stand still.

When I paint, I want people to see hope.

When they see my paintings I recently learned some fluid based acrylic, so I wet my entire canvas and I play soft music.

This is therapeutic to me.

I just put a lot of water on the canvas and just release a little bit of paint and let the paint move in the way it wants to move.

It creates its own form, and that's not bound by any thought or any imagination or something.

It just moves freely.

And I love the freedom of it.

I like all painting faces of people just to capture that emotion, just to capture what they feel at that moment.

Capturing that story.

It's challenging to me, and I love to think that.

Silence.

There are a lot of new things I've seen and that really saddens my heart.

I was inspired by the persecution that's happening in China.

So that's like a lady.

She is tired.

She's fed up of all the chaos of this world and all the disappointment and heartaches everywhere.

And she is longing for a place which is it's a city in which is pure.

But she's not finding it, and she's just wondering one day, will there be one day?

So I like to capture that.

Will there be one day on her face in India, and not many people know about fonts.

And so in my fine art college, I came across this beautiful 100 day and it was calligraphy that I thought I would say, it's so gorgeous.

I would want to learn that.

But I never found the supplies to learn how to do calligraphy.

When I moved to the U.S., I found the proper techniques of calligraphy and that I loved calligraphy, the thin and the thickness.

It's more like pen and ink dancing.

Calligraphy in handwriting is a value for me.

And it's just beautiful the way it curves from perfect, sleek lines and then the way it's elaborated.

I just love it if my paintings are hung anywhere, even in the window or somewhere on the street.

If one person is walking by and if he's having a hard time in his life, and if my painting could speak life or hope to him that's all I need Sartorially speaking.

There are few items in the well-dressed man's wardrobe that make a fashion statement quite like a really nice tie in Reno, Nevada.

Pasquale of Vanilla makes high quality, handmade ties that fit the bill from fabric selection to patent development to tie construction itself.

Oh, vanilla is involved in every step of the process and puts his stamp on each one of his creations.

We head to Reno, Nevada, to see how it all comes together My name is Pasquale Rinella, and I hand make neckties I came from a small town in Italy called Mortadella.

It's about ten miles from Naples.

Since I was a young girl, I always had an interest in fashion, in particular in neckties.

My mom was a traditional seamstress, so she taught me about this whole weaving with the sewing machine through the fabric.

I learned a lot from her when I decided to do these for job.

I went to school in Rome about five or six years ago.

I start to make neckties.

My ties are Spanish.

Because they are producing limited quantity I make one, two, maybe three of each and pay attention on every move.

The tires My neckties are made there with the fabric from Como, Italy, which is the best silk in the world.

So I only use a silk and present silk every one ear to ear.

I go back to it and then select the fabric Once I choose the fabric, I cut the fabric in three pieces at a 45 degree angle.

Design, create a more elastic and stable so the next day so it doesn't lose its shape The most important step is to make tapes.

They must be perfect.

Then I try know three pieces The next step is to put the lining in and closes all the necktie with the lining the next step, the key person loop Put my Italian flag on the neck two days complete when I am control lead that there is no mistakes.

That means that the next day is ready to wear.

I'm happy when I finish my neckties because my creativity is my design.

In Italy, many people wear a tie every day.

That's the couturier.

Oscar Wilde.

The Save Our Wealth tied tie is the first serious step in life.

My passion is neckties satisfying.

I love dance.

A new farm is a sheep farm.

We have 120 youths and we have some chickens, a couple of dogs and a couple of cats.

We make sheep's milk cheeses.

We make your meats.

Of course, Italian style, everything and we import wines from the maremma.

And we also make our own olive oil in Tuscany and bring it back Everything started with a cheese My husband Judy came to Italy, to Tuscany to learn how to make sheep's cheeses, specifically pecorino Toscano, because after he did some research you figure out that that one was the best sheep's milk cheese made in the world.

And through connections.

Friends of France.

It landed to La Nina Arina was is a farm where I was working at that time, and that's how we met Something happens.

Sparkles came through there and we decided not to give it a try.

And so the next spring, I quit my job at La Guardia not.

And I moved here so the milk gets egg comes into here.

That's where we make the cheese will make some fresh or aged cheese.

And we also make ricotta.

I feel that the the important thing of my style cooking, which is just like, you know, every mother's in Italy or in toast and actually I actually, I should say is the important thing is using few ingredients but very good quality and don't mess up too much with different flavors.

Just keep it simple.

Today, as every Wednesday, we are making cured meats and also fresh sausages.

The farm started with the idea of making cheese.

And honestly, we thought that the sheep we were going to have like 200 sheep maybe, and that was going to be our only focus of the farm.

Then we quickly realized that we needed other things.

The cheeses were great, but we needed cured meats to go along with it.

As you know, our heart and soul are in Tuscany, and then the cured meats and cheeses was a great start, but we needed something else.

Olive oil.

And then the three.

The items were wonderful though.

We needed wine and who knows what the next step would be.

So right now we're just making this the conservatory and into links and with links of six.

So then we can hang them nicely Gotcha.

Torino singular considering plural means little hamsters because they are.

It's the perfect cure.

Meat, as you saw it.

They are age, so they are they can be out of the refrigerator for a while, for a few hours.

And these are awesome.

And the hunters will just put the khachapuri in the on their back pocket.

Of their jacket and then go hunting with it.

And that will make the perfect snack.

So we made the cacciatore really and we made two fresh sausages one is with Rosemary, which we called Rosemary, and the other one is with beer.

And we call it the right stuff.

The important thing I feel with the custodian and both of the source for the fresh sausages and also the other fresh sausages that we make is to use a few ingredients.

Again, so everything is pork, salt, pepper, wine or beer for the Beretta and rosemary for for the rosemary in the one other little bit goes a long way when people come for lunch or dinner.

I think the best comment that I hear is one that they feel like they were invited to our house and to that they create connections with other people that they didn't know before coming here.

I want people to feel that they came to our family and that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But remember, you can always find, watch and share episodes of the show at Help dot org Slash Art Rocks.

And if you're left wanting more Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for discovering more inspiring stories in the arts events and destinations all across the state.

So until next week, I've been James Fox Smith, and thanks to you for watching Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you