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Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Smoke Coming up, a singer heals through songwriting and good vibrations.

burning String players heal others with the power of music.

And a painter portrays his love for music on canvas.

Williams is so sweet.

Hello, and welcome back to another round of applause.

I media stream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

Let's start with a quiz.

Can you name the state flower of Ohio?

It's this the red carnation.

And every summer in Stark County, they crowned the greater Alliance Carnation Queen.

Jessica Shetler Jones is from Alliance, and she honors her late mother, a carnation queen herself, in song for applause.

Performances.

She shared her story and her music with idea streams.

Amanda Rabinowitz.

It's impossible to tame the spirit.

She on eyes from the sea.

Carnation.

Queen.

It's about your late mom, Cindy.

And you talk about that?

Yes.

So I grew up in Alliance, which is known as the Carnation City.

And every year, there's this really big festival that the town gets really excited about.

There's lots of events going on.

But one of the biggest events is the Carnation Queens pageant.

And my mom was a contestant back in 1975, and she won the crown.

So she was a carnation queen.

And I grew up, you know, idolizing her and going to every pageant with her.

So when I wrote the song, I really wanted it to capture her energy and her spirit.

Things that made me think of her whenever I would see them or smell them.

She always smelled like patchouli oil.

So yeah, I kind of tied it all together.

You, you know, she goes, well, she presents you with the list of approved cheese floats with the green day something blue cheese.

And if you listen quietly, I can still hear it.

So you is.

She's standing up on that mountaintop watching over everything with feathers in hand.

Tell us about the next song you're going to play.

It's called.

That was all.

That was all.

I wrote basically, to my parents, for my parents and about them, but it's also focusing on me, navigating through grief.

I lost both of them.

And, you know, it was really difficult for my family, obviously.

And my brothers and I, but I, I, I picked up my dad's guitar one day and, just kind of was plucking around at the strings, and I was feeling very overwhelmed and, just kind of down.

And so when I found this little melody that I started humming over, it really resonated with the the feeling that I was having the tone of it.

So it's honestly probably the most honest song I've ever written.

It's very raw.

I never went back and edited any of the lyrics, which is a process that you typically do is going back and saying, oh, you know, I could make this better here.

I didn't do that.

So I wanted to keep it as natural to the feeling of when I was sitting on my couch and I first wrote it, published you will never be you, me trying is I fell asleep.

Lay me lay in vain.

If you say how your life feels so far away A channel for one.

For living within.

Oh, my knees buckled with every step.

The other call a long time ago.

You love me.

Let us all.

You've been able to find healing through music.

But you've also been able to lean into crystal singing bowls.

You've learned how to use these so can you talk a little bit about that?

And what is sonic healing?

Yes.

So I recently got certified in being a sound healer.

So I focus on using the crystal singing bowls and sound therapy and sound healing is is something that's been around for thousands of years, a lot of different, cultures use it, but it's using specific frequencies that are said to be in alignment with our energy centers or our chakras within our body.

Playing these specific notes and frequencies can help you to relax, reset your nervous system.

It can reduce stress and inflammation within the body.

It's a really great way to aid in other wellness routines that you have.

It's not supposed to replace any kind of medical treatment.

It's really supposed to just be that mind body spirit to bring it full circle.

So I really fell in love with it.

And I'll just host like little sound baths, which is basically you just show up with a yoga mat and a blanket and a pillow.

It's best to lay down in the dark or have your eyes covered, and just really allow the sound and the frequency of the notes being played to just kind of bathe you in sound.

And when, when that happens, you can have a lot of different experiences or responses to it.

But the main goal really is to just help you feel like you're more in alignment and in harmony with yourself.

We often think that sound is just noise, but it's really not because our bodies are absorbing everything that's around us.

We're, you know, made up of 70% of water and sound, travels five times faster through water than it does through the air.

Before we say goodbye.

Tell us about the last song you're going to play.

It's called Scorpion.

Scorpion is one of my newest songs.

I'm hoping to release it.

In October, the end of October around Scorpio season.

I am a Scorpio myself, and, Scorpio sometimes get a bad rap.

And, there's the Zodiac astrology world because we can be intense.

But we're a water sign, and, water signs are known to be emotional, just at a different depth than I think most people are sometimes comfortable being.

And so I was inspired when I was writing the song, just understanding, you know, what's the scorpion?

Why, that's the symbol of a Scorpio being a water sign.

So it's kind of just honoring that, I can be emotional and intense at the same time.

So it kind of inspired me to write that song in.

Who do?

Should be no surprise.

You know, I find, I can get them by.

Like myself.

Oh, I. I keep name sharp.

To collect some skills.

Yeah, I think it's cute.

When I you pretty.

Scorpio.

Upset you?

They.

Even though I love you up.

I love If you want to hear more from Jessica, check out the full edition of Applause Performances free and on demand with the PBS app.

By the way, you can also watch all of our applause episodes for free on the app and on demand.

I'll devour you Let's go to a place where you might not expect music to be made.

A women's prison at the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland.

Incarcerated women are picking up instruments.

Many for the first time.

With the help of Vara, There are pretty soon.

One of the things that Avari does each week is teach in two different prisons, and we are teaching violin, viola and cello.

For most of these men and women.

They've never touched a string instrument before.

Learning to read music is a new thing.

Learning to play in a group is a new thing for a lot of them.

It's just a joy to be part of the musical communities that are formed, as we are there for more years and develop more of a community and a team together.

I am someone that was always in the heavy metal, rock and roll.

You know, never in a million years when I thought that I'd be playing an instrument like this and actually like in that type of music and everything, but within about 3 to 5 months into it, I got off my meds and I have stayed off my meds, and I really contributed to this instrument.

It helps build my day with energy, it helps build my day with positivity and I'm able to share God's love through his music and that energy that brings me.

Under normal circumstances, you don't get opportunities like this to be able to play a string instrument.

Renova has really given us an opportunity that's truly once in a lifetime, and I am so grateful for all that they did.

Yeah, right.

But it does make a difference.

Being part of Renova, I think really opened my eyes to how siloed we are.

There's all these communities, and it's so easy to stay in your own bubble around people who think and look just like you.

And I'm learning how much that is a bummer.

Like we really need each other and need to, be going to other communities and learning from one another.

So first time I went into prison, I was like, how have I not been doing this?

How have I not gotten to meet some of these amazing people?

And we're seeing all kinds of things I just didn't think about.

We're seeing mental health benefits of women saying that it's changed the way that they maybe use medication or not, or find that they can manage their anger that they might have struggled with.

We're seeing people connecting with their kids, whether it's their child was already taking some kind of music class or learning an instrument, and now they can bond over that, or we've even had kids of folks in our program start an instrument because their parent was playing it in our program.

We've been doing mostly classical, but we also brought in some fiddle tunes just to kind of encourage a little bit of improv love and encouraging them to go ahead and think beyond that genre of I play violin or viola or cello, and it has to be classical.

Some of the ladies have made requests for, things like pop music, heathens or movie music, beauty and the beast.

And so we'll make a little transcription for them and simplify it a bit and bring that in so that they can play some of the things that they listen to all the time.

I grew up playing the cello, and I love making music, and I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted music to be part of my life, but I started to feel this tension inside of myself as I continued on my musical journey, because I was spending so much time in fancy concert halls and in places that felt very removed from most people's everyday lives, and I felt for myself that I couldn't continue on sort of the standard path for what cellists are expected to do professionally.

Performing was the original heart of Runaways activities, and as we've developed our teaching programs and our songwriting programs, we have diversified our offerings.

But I would say performing is still a core piece of who we are as an ensemble and how we're seeking to share our musical gifts and.

Communities like incarcerated communities often get forgotten, like no one thinks to go there and bring the concert or bring, this new experience.

And they don't have the option to go outside and go looking for it.

And so they are always so excited to hear music that maybe they have heard before in some cases, and some of them they haven't heard before.

It helps kind of humanize them a little bit that they're like, oh, we're we're valuable enough as human beings that you think that we deserve this experience just like anybody else out on the street where.

A lot of these women come in broken.

They come in with, with a lot of trauma in their lives.

And to have something like one of our come in to provide them, culturally, something different that they've been accustomed to allows them to really grow in a different way.

I've noticed that the women have really grown as individuals.

They're more confident they're able to do something that they thought they would never be able to do.

And I think it's been a pretty amazing journey for a lot of the women here that have participated in the program.

And.

The name recovery comes from words in Spanish and Latin and other romance languages that means to renew or to restore.

And that's something that we hope that we are part of as we use our music in different spaces, whether it's our own restoration or those of people who are getting the privilege of performing for, or writing songs with, or teaching.

Them.

I think it's nice to feel like, you know.

And you may ask yourself, where do we find great story ideas like the women helping women in prison?

Well, I'm just a talking head.

Sometimes our ideas come from you.

Okay, maybe not you specifically, but it's the royal you.

So send us your story ideas from anywhere across northeast Ohio by emailing Arts at Ideas stream.org.

And thanks.

our next artist spotlight comes to us from Nigeria via Columbus said all day.

Joe Lavelle loves music, but he's not a musician.

He paints, capturing his musical passion with brushes on canvas.

Generally inspiration to be an artist came from my dad.

My dad was a painter with painted houses which will include interior decoration, got into stencils, doing friezes, you know, borders and stuff.

My dad, he has this writing desk and then nothing I draw was way stashed all his drawings since stencils and, you know, and when I'm in the house and, you know, I would go through the drawers and just look at things and just look at the cards, the drawings and the color swatches.

He had all these, color charts.

You, you know, there were accordion folded type.

And you will look out, look and look and look colors.

So color started registering that early.

You wouldn't think it's going to be useful later in life.

I mean, that's what so colors that I registered in very early.

I paint with bright colors intentionally, you know, with bright colors as there's a school that in artistry that I liked, they call them the forest.

They, they just love painting with colors in their original hues.

They can pick a yellow and just slapped it.

They're red, a blue.

So they grade those colors according to their strength.

And you know, the light and shade yellow becomes the lightest blue.

Ultramarine or cobalt becomes the darkest, and the reds might be in the middle with the orange and stuff.

So marks, you would think that, some artists would not retain because I think it's a mistake on paint over those.

I leave there, and they make the most impact because they trick your mind into thinking the action is still on and on and on and on and on.

Sometimes I do paint in such a way that say I mostly use flat brushes, which are like chisel heads.

When you make a mark with them, they have a square angular feel to them.

I can make those angles into rectangles and squares that can be patches that make up a face.

Make up a painting and you sort of see different swatches of squares and you're like, well, why?

You stand back, everything merges and form the picture.

And yet I also sometimes I'm listening to, say, Vivaldi, which is my one of my favorite four seasons, and you're painting and you feel as if your hand has been moved by the violin and you maybe, maybe not.

But it works, you know?

And I have my fun doing that.

I always intentionally want my brushwork to create the kind of effect that, you know, brings emotion out.

I take inspiration from life, I like music, I don't play any instruments, but I like music.

And I always felt like life, even landscape, even general day to day things that we do.

There is music behind it.

There's a reading, there's a rhyme, there's balance, there's everything in there.

But then when you look at a painting, which is a two dimensional thing, you're wondering how do you fit music into that other than painting the picture of a musician right.

So I started playing around with how to present sound.

I always liked to make paintings that you stand in front of it and you're like, you can feel movement, you can feel damped.

You can just sort of be like, you're in a concert listening to whatever the picture is saying.

In Nigeria, it's a lot of dance.

Technically, we have party for everything.

There's always a reason to dance weddings in Nigeria.

Wow, I miss that.

Colors.

You see the women dress, you see the young ladies dance.

It's beautiful.

I wanted to present the joyful feeling that you find in an environment where people are dancing and celebrating, and there's some certain cultures when you dance in Nigeria, they hold handkerchiefs and that handkerchief moves with their body, their arms and their handkerchiefs, sort of.

It's like a conductor conducting a classical piece, you know, you you follow the conductor's hand, you follow the beat, the riddim and everything.

So, I wanted to show all that, but at the same time be able to show that, you know, in life there are celebrations.

And when the time to celebrate is here, make the most of it.

There are times there are no reasons to celebrate, but who would know?

If you choose to celebrate, you wouldn't do that.

No reason to celebrate.

Who would really, really fault you for it?

Really.

I mean, people might think is awkward and out of place, but that's what you might need for your sanity.

Your world is your world.

What you make of it is yours if you choose to have it all blue and sad, it's still yours.

But if you choose to just yes, in spite of everything, break forth and be the joy you know for yourself and for others.

It affects all others.

It's, it's it's a it's like a reaction that just multiplies.

Gandhi was the one who said that, be the change that you hope to see.

My painting is one of my ways of being the change and presenting the change.

we're putting it together on the next round of applause.

Playhouse square is center stage for big Broadway productions.

Discover what happens backstage before the audience arrives in Beachwood.

An artist shares photographs from the Mexican border.

And in Oberlin, a musical peacock struts his stuff.

Don't miss all that and more on the next round of applause Time's running out, friends.

But don't worry, there's always more applause online with me.

Kabir Bhatia.

Remember, you can stroll down memory lane with me and get applauded with on demand episodes of applause with the PBS app.

If you run into any trouble accessing, just send an email for help to Arts at Ideo.

Stream.org.

In the meantime, here's another song from Jessica for applause.

Performances.

O applause performances are on the app to.

Smoke is rising when she sees fire is burning in the.

Plants and naked me.

Susan Williams is so sweet.

Here's a close call.

And then she's on one knee.

Put it on this to power.

So long.

And I. Pupils in.

Shut your and she'll haunt you.

And to hunt you down.

But she'll be crawling out to you.

And it's me with the watch out.

When the world is full.

She loses all self-control.

She's a woman of spirit.

With us, up Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.