BJ Robinson: In this edition of "KPBS Arts," from sports to the stage: a San Diego singer who gave up football to chase his music dream.

Jelani Aryeh: I got some livin' to do, and so, when I came up with that kind of sentiment, I was like, "The title feels right," and it almost feels like you're just young, 21 years old, and figuring out how to, like, live.

BJ: We visit with a bona fide jazz legend.

Chick Corea: Composing music and performing it, to me, are kind of one piece.

I mean, it's two separate actions.

The audience thinks they don't see you composing 'cause I'm playing, but, actually, I'm composing when I'm playing.

BJ: Join a transformative Art Crawl.

Jeff Seymour: I tried to do something that would help the entire community, that would help to create a central place for people to gather, and the Art Crawl became an opportunity for that to happen.

BJ: And a look at the wacky world of balloon art.

Sam Guy: A balloon artist is someone who is skilled in the balloon craft.

It's someone that can, you know, just morph all these balloons together and really make anything a kid wants.

BJ: It's all ahead on this edition of "KPBS Arts."

♪♪♪ BJ: Hi, I'm BJ Robinson, and this is "KPBS Arts," the show that explores art of all kinds.

His life changed in high school when he switched from playing football to playing music.

Now this San Diego singer is getting national attention.

Meet Jelani Aryeh.

♪ Fall for every woman on my set.

♪ ♪ I tend to play out what we'd be like in a sec.

♪ ♪ These words don't, these words don't like to leave.

♪♪ Jelani Aryeh: I just want people to connect with the music, and I want them to feel something.

That's really, like, my main goal at the end of the day.

I feel like just have to listen to my music, having a better sense of what you're going through or just--yeah, I don't know, a better sense of self at the end of the day.

♪ Probably why I tend to space and carry this barren ♪ ♪ look on my face.

♪ ♪ Hey, dad, I don't wanna play 'cause it makes me heartless ♪ Jelani: So the title of my new album is called "I've Got Some Living to Do," and it kind of just--it came to me when I was driving back from Los Angeles to S.D., and I was thinkin' about the next album, "Let Us Have Our Time," and I was like, "What do I wanna say with that album?"

And I was like, "I've got some livin' to do."

And so, when I came up with that kind of sentiment, I was like, "The title feels right," and it almost feels like you're just young, 21 years old, and figuring out how to, like, live and navigate life, and I'd say, like, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, it's kind of where I've been at since 2019 to early 2021, and I'd say, a lot of my inspirations are just a lot of indie rock, a lot of folk rock, a lot of psych rock, and then some ambient and electronic things there.

♪ Playin' your stereo loud, flauntin' your taste ♪ ♪ blazing the space around you with love ♪ ♪ light, and marigold sounds.

♪ ♪ Pray we live long lives, seeking our futures out.

♪ ♪ When the world's still hollow of sound ♪ Jelani: I feel like it spans from, like, little journal entries to, kind of, bigger realizations that are just bigger experiences in my life, but it's kind of, just, like a fast--I think I'd like to say a Sonic movie.

♪ There wasn't even a hum 'round my place.

♪ Jelani: I'd say, my favorite video from the album, so far, is probably "Overexposed."

♪ Do the things I do?

♪ Jelani: It's my favorite because we got to travel kind of far.

We went up north, San Francisco and West Marin, and it just felt like an adventure and a vacation, and it was cool 'cause, like, I'm working.

This is, like, my job, but I get to see all these, like, different--what were they calling it, like, microclimates.

♪ Down without a clue.

♪ ♪ Try to find the closure in a tune.

♪ ♪ Overexposed and so confused.

♪ ♪ Lie awake ♪ ♪ and learn that the love you crave ♪ ♪ so far away.

♪ ♪ Please bring the dawn and I will light the way, ♪ ♪ and learn that the love you crave so far away, ♪ ♪ but I've been waiting.

♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Overall, I'm under the weather.

♪ ♪ Overall, I'm small as an elephant.

♪ ♪ After all, I'll keep it together.

♪ ♪ Nothing's wrong, I hope.

♪ ♪ Why do I do the things I do?

♪ ♪ Dwindling down without a clue.

♪ ♪ Try to find the closure in a tune.

♪ ♪ Overexposed and so confused.

♪ ♪ Why do I do the things I do?

♪ ♪ Dwindling down without a clue.

♪ ♪ Try to find the closure in a tune.

♪ ♪ Overexposed and so confused.

♪♪ BJ: To learn more, visit JelaniAryeh.com.

And now here's a look at some of the arts events happening this week in our community.

BJ: Chick Corea lives and breathes his art.

With a career spanning more than 50 years and accolades that include 22 Grammys, the jazz legend offers insight into his creative process, his career, and his life in Tampa Bay, Florida.

♪♪♪ Chick Corea: I grew up in a musical environment.

My dad was a musician, and he had a band.

When I was growing up, we had, like, a three-room apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

We were right outside of Boston, and we were up above a grocery store.

There was a pharmacy on the corner and a barroom across the street.

And, you know, my mother was working in a candy factory, in Schrafft's, in Boston, and my dad was gigging at night with his band, so he would bring his musicians back from the gig often, and my mother would cook up some pasta and some potato and eggs for everybody, and I was always interested in hangin' out with them because they were all real relaxed, and my dad would take me to the gigs sometime, and I'd see them play, and I'd play with them, and so I grew up in an environment of musicians creating, and I always, just, felt a part of it from the very beginning.

Began to play piano.

Never thought of doing anything else.

And I liked to play drums.

I'd play a little bit of trumpet.

I'd fool around with the guitar a little bit.

You know, you wanna learn the tools of your trade.

I've even picked up a violin and scratched it a couple of times.

It's music.

All of it is music, and I got interested in every aspect of it.

I moved from Boston to New York in 1959.

In New York, at that time, was all of my musical heroes: Miles Davis's band, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver's Quintet was there.

Sonny Rollins was in town.

Ornette Coleman was playing, Tito Puente's band, Eddie Palmieri.

That was a rich time, so I scooted down to New York to live.

Being a composer, an arranger, it's all a part of being a musician.

Composing music and performing it, to me, are kind of one piece.

I mean, it's two separate actions.

The audience thinks they don't see you composing 'cause I'm playing, but, actually, I'm composing when I'm playing since improvisation is kind of like that, you know?

In composing, you kind of piece the ideas together so they get fixed into a piece that you can repeat, and then that becomes a song.

As a band leader or as a organizer of the group, I like to try to choose musicians and put 'em together to see what happens.

It sounds--it's like an experiment.

So, well, let's see, put this guy together with that guy, and see what happens.

I've been living here at the Clearwater, Tampa area for 20 years.

I came here to relax and kind of get off the beaten path because my life has been basically touring.

I perform.

I'm on the road ten months a year, so when I come home, I'm not lookin' to travel too much, you know?

I'm lookin' to hang out, and, of course, the attraction down here is it's a beautiful area.

The weather is great.

It just works for me, you know, 'cause when I'm on the road, it's a particular grid every day, you know, a schedule every day.

When I get home, I'm able to practice, write new music, relax, say hello to my wife.

Recently, one of the things that I was invited to do locally, which was great, was this new society that a great bandleader, Chuck Owen, from Tampa, he and some friends put together an association for jazz arrangers and composers, and I thought that was a cool thing.

They invited me to go to their first opening which was last year.

It's the first time I've ever heard of a society being put together for especially jazz arrangers and composers.

There is a legacy of writers, music writers, that are jazz writers.

This goes back to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, but us, the jazz writers, are not paid-for-hire writers, if you know what I mean, like movie-score writers.

We--I go home, I write my music, and then I bring it out on stage, or you hear it on my record, you know, so this is--was a beautiful effort.

There's no rote way to create.

Input is always coming your way, but if you only accept input and use that, then you're a robot.

If you only use what you think you should do, then you're not associating with anybody.

So there's a balance in there, to me, of how to create something.

It's a communication.

So one person does one thing, or I'd have an idea.

I put it down, right?

Right, have an idea, and then do something with the idea.

Then I might bring that idea to someone else, and they'll go... ♪♪♪ Chick: And put somethin' else to it, and then it comes back, and then it gets developed.

I think we're probably raised to think that how you are and how you communicate is fixed, that it can't be changed, and in actual fact, I've discovered that just like playing the piano or skating or any skill that you wanna develop, that the act of communicating and getting your idea across and then receiving ideas from others and working with them, it's a skill that you can develop.

You can actually work on it.

You can see what it's all about.

Just like you take apart a chordal structure, and you investigate it, and you see what is it made of, right, you can look at it and work it out.

In that same way, you can work out how to communicate and improve your ability to do it.

To me, that aspect of how you get your idea across successfully is very important.

How I balance myself between my own creations and other people's creations, that's the delicacy of life, I think.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ BJ: To hear more, visit ChickCorea.com.

And now here's a look at some upcoming arts events around San Diego.

BJ: The city of Waukesha, Wisconsin, has evolved into a hub of art activity, especially during its seasonal Art Crawls.

Meet the people who felt inspired to change their community with the gift of art.

♪♪♪ Jeff Seymour: In a lot of communities, the arts are a big redevelopment tool.

Artists are very giving people, and they like to come into places where they can make a difference.

My name is Jeff Seymour, and I'm the founder of the Art Crawl.

An Art Crawl is an event that we have five times a year that is an opportunity for people to come to downtown Waukesha, gather, meet friends, purchase art, and really celebrate life.

Lynn Gaffney: My husband and I discovered Jeff Seymour.

We would take walks through downtown, and we noticed something cool happening in that building at 378 West Main.

Jeff: I was trained as a fine artist, and I was from the Milwaukee area, and, whereas, in the Milwaukee area, there was a lot going on in the arts, Waukesha didn't have much going on.

What I was looking to do was come to Waukesha to open up a dream of mine, which was a restaurant and a cafe that would also have a gallery component to it.

I thought that might be a good opportunity for me to come to a community that needed help because Waukesha was pretty depressed when I came here, and there wasn't a lot of businesses open, and there certainly wasn't the presence of the arts.

I tried to do something that would help the entire community, and in the early days, the Art Crawl really was what we call Waukesha's Art Party.

We wanted it to be something that everyone could enjoy, and that's really what the first Art Crawl was.

It was a celebration of the arts.

We wanted people to come downtown to celebrate downtown and to meet their neighbors and walk around and view the different places that had creative spots.

Lynn: I attended the first Art Crawl.

I'm fourth-generation Waukesha, but it took somebody from outside to come in and see what potential Waukesha had, and we've been forever grateful to Jeff Seymour since then.

We would have as many as 50 to 75 visiting artists every Art Crawl.

We have every medium that you could imagine from oil painting, watercolor, photography, acrylic.

We have sculpture, fused glass, multiple kinds of jewelry, clothing, affordable art for everybody.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Bob Fesser: Well, we're gonna get started with our 100th Art Crawl Centennial Proclamation Celebration.

Jeff: It's our 100th Art Crawl.

Shawn Reilly: Twenty years and one hundred Art Crawls, that's somethin' to be very proud of.

Lynn: I am proud to say I've been to all 100 of them, and it's fun just to meet up with old faces and to educate people about the art and so they're not afraid of original art.

Jeff: Cyndy Baran is a talented artist who is located at The Springs Gallery and Studios.

She was a business professional and came from the corporate world and is now exploring her creative side with her painting in the window, over at the Springs building.

Lynn: She does some great abstract art.

Jeff: Rose Lange is another artist who's a very talented artist.

She has a teacher background.

She does a lot of pieces that use recycled materials, and she creates these upcycled art pieces that are sculpture on mosaic.

They're beautiful pieces that are kind of paintings with objects.

Lynn: And she also does these crazy little wire sculptures that she uses snack bags.

Puts the snack bags in the microwave.

It crinkles up, and then she forms them into little dresses and whatever, and she's got these big shoes on 'em.

They're just very comical, whimsical creatures.

Calls 'em "Chip Girls."

Jeff: Nancy Wilson is another talented artist that comes from the professional world, and she does weaving.

She teaches weaving classes.

Lynn: She also spins yarn, and she can spin this wool, and then she can make beautiful weaving blankets.

It's a very basic and old art, and she's very involved in it and does a really great job.

Jeff: What's terrific about the Art Crawl is that it is a celebration of the commitment of the community to promote the arts.

Lynn: When people say, "Art Crawl," they coincide that with Waukesha.

It's now we're known for having an arts community.

♪♪♪ BJ: Learn more about the Waukesha Art Crawl online at WaukeshaArt.com.

♪♪♪ BJ: Balloon animals delight children of all ages, from the act of twisting the balloons into colorful shapes and creatures to the squeaks of the latex.

It's not an easy craft, but a couple of friends learned how to do it and discovered how a balloon animal can bring out the child in everyone.

♪♪♪ Sam Guy: I go by Sam Guy, The Balloon Guy.

Daniel Sorensen: And I'm Daniel, The Balloonatic.

Sam: A balloon artist is someone who is skilled in the balloon craft.

It's someone that can, you know, just, morph all these balloons together and really make anything a kid wants.

Daniel: It's just a way of creating art in, like, a really unique 3D-sort of way.

It's a way that's a lot of fun for everyone involved, sometimes explosive but definitely has a lot of potential for all sorts of things.

♪♪♪ Daniel: Well, it all started when Sam told me to come get a job up at Mount Rose, washing dishes.

Mount Rose is a ski resort near Reno, and it was a fun job, but once you're doing it over winter break and you're washing dishes every day, all day, it's not exactly the most fun time.

Sam: Me and Daniel were goin' pretty restless over our job.

Daniel: And Sam, at one point, brought up that he used to make balloon animals a few years ago and, like, "Dude, why are we still doin' this if we can go make balloon animals?"

And that very night, we went back to his place, and then balloon lessons began.

[balloons squeaking] [both laughing] ♪♪♪ Daniel: The first one we made was a monkey hangin' on a tree, and I think I popped about five balloons before I got that one goin'.

It was rough, it was a lot harder than I thought, but it was also a lot of fun.

[balloon squeaking] Sam: It took me a lot of trial and error and a couple months of just popping 'em consecutively, just over and over.

We had a pretty big baseline of stuff that we knew how to make that we just, kind of, like, wanted to get down at first.

Daniel: The dog, obviously.

The butterfly hat.

Got the monkey hangin' on a tree.

Got the T-Rex.

Sam: We have flowers, sword.

Daniel: Flowers, sword, baseball player, a surfer dude.

Sam: Then, all of the sudden, you, like, get all these really random requests like narwhal or spaceships, and, you know, you just give it your best shot, and if it turns out right, then, from that point on, you know how to make it.

Sam: Let's talk about a butterfly hat.

♪♪♪ Sam: You're gonna start with the base of the hat.

It's got three sections that are equal length, and it kind of looks like a banana hat, in a way.

[balloon squeaking] Sam: And so, once that's built, you're gonna blow up two balloons, and you're gonna leave, maybe, like, a four-inch section on the end where it's not blown up.

From there, you're gonna take those two balloons and twist it into the end of this little banana hat that you have and bring these, you know, really big butterfly wings over, and you leave, like, a little nub on the end to, like, make us these little antennas.

From there, you're kind of creasing it into a heart, in a way, to make that butterfly shape, and after that, you're just squeezin' the little nub on the end, creates this little eyeball on the end, and it's a little butterfly hat.

Daniel: Favorite one to make, I would have to say, is the monkey hangin' on a tree.

It's kind of a long process where a lot of it doesn't really look like a monkey hangin' on a tree, but once you put that monkey on there and you twirl that little tail, everyone's eyes just light up as they realize, "Whoa, that really does look like a monkey on a tree."

You put it on their head, and everyone just loves it.

♪♪♪ Sam: I would estimate that we have around 50 different designs.

Daniel: There's definitely countless ways to improvise based on whatever they want-- Sam: Exactly.

Daniel: To varying degrees of success.

Daniel: Well, a lot of the reaction comes when you're makin' the balloon because, at a certain point, it stops being a bunch of, like, straight pieces of latex, and it starts being, like, the creature that they're lookin' for 'cause while you're twistin' it, it might not be exactly clear what it's turning into, but you can always see that instant when it clicks, like, "Oh, that's a butterfly," and that's just a really cool moment 'cause you're, you know, creating this piece of art.

That creative process of, sort of, just improvising and refining these designs on the fly while you're working is something that was really challenging, at first, but definitely has proven to be a lot of fun.

Sam: With creating all these different, you know, types of animals or objects, it's really a form of art because you get to choose all these different colors, you get to choose how you go about it and just how creative you can get with it.

I've learned a lot from being a balloon artist.

I've learned that, you know, keeping your cool in stressful situations is one of the best ways to get through it, and trying something over and over till you get it right is the, you know, best way to do it.

BJ: And that wraps it up for this edition of "KPBS Arts."

For more arts and culture, visit KPBS.org/Arts, where you'll find feature videos, blogs, and information on upcoming arts events.

Until next time, I'm BJ Robinson.

Thanks for watching.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ CC by Aberdeen Captioning www.aberdeen.io 1-800-688-6621 female announcer: Support for this program comes from the KPBS Explore Local Content Fund, supporting new ideas and programs for San Diego.