(loudly laughing) (softly chattering) (soft jazz music) >>How would I describe Zachary Hines II?

I think there's just so much more to life than what I've experienced personally.

That is really challenging for me, it places simple judgment on my own identity, knowing there's so much more of my life yet to discover.

(smooth bright jazz) I can say that I'm happy to be present.

I could say that I'm blessed to be alive having known beautiful parts about me are the things that I can't explain.

I think I live my life for those experiences that are beyond me, where God makes himself real.

(laughing drowns out words) Hey, man, don't you think-- (crosstalk drowns out words) Let's make it happen.

(loudly chuckling) (crosstalk drowns out words) Win it back, win it back, win it back.

I play the piano.

I taught myself.

Started playing piano when I was, when I was like four or five, six years old.

My grandparents had a piano in their house and I would play whenever I could, I would try to experiment.

But I wanted to hear myself think.

When it comes to playing music and singing and performing, especially playing the piano, it's like I can hear it my heart.

I can hear it in my mind, I can hear it.

I can kinda feel the emotion that I'm trying to express and it's like words aren't enough, my voice isn't enough to really express what I'm feeling.

Especially when it comes to orchestration and different horns and the drums, and all the rhythm.

There's so much more that could be said that I could sing my song and use a few words to express the words of it, but the energy is coming with the horns and the orchestration.

It's able to hit all the undertones and all the different things that I'm often feeling at the same time.

(soft brass jazz music) The band, Fortresses, is a gift from different people every year 'cause it's always changing.

Comes up there, right after the, ♪ Ya-da-da, da Fortress is the reality play.

♪ I cannot I'm going right up to the verse, there's no break.

We're in a time period now where everybody's videotaping everything, they were social media-ing everything.

Anytime I'm performing or I'm on the scene, I'm doing in a show, someone's gonna take out their camera.

You're collecting more footage of people who are being entertained by.

If I'm now, the deep part is, if I'm aware that I'm always being videotaped as an entertainer, then I know there's a slight modicum of continuity that I can pay attention to in my work.

I know that if you were to string all the instances of me being filmed together as a story, a story is told.

I was sitting in my living room and I was like, it's time to make the show.

People have been watching us perform for years and I had a story to tell.

My life experience is a myriad of our evolution.

♪ A vision of love ♪ Brought to life by music ♪ A voice on the wind ♪ That breathes ♪ A ripple in time ♪ Made still for a moment And so I tried to write the script and I started arranging the parts of the song.

Sitting in the room with the band, I'm trying to get their heads into the mess because I want them to be actors in this play, as performers in this life.

People that come to the show, these are actors in these performances.

I need them to be more likened to that.

And just like if it was a scene from the movie, I looked at one of my players and I was like, hey, man, ♪ How do I tell this story of mine ♪ ♪ In a way you can understand (soft keyboard jazz music) ♪ Would you believe a single word ♪ ♪ Or only what you see ♪ It's a vision of love ♪ Brought to live my music ♪ A voice on the wind ♪ That breathes ♪ A ripple in time ♪ Made still for a moment ♪ We start at the end Whoa.

(soft percussive jazz) The Introduction isn't the first song I've written for the band or with the band at all, by a long shot.

It's like the third song on my 13th album I'm working on right now.

I release one out every year.

But I know that this is the best I've been able to come to as far as orchestration goes.

(soft jazz music) And it's a strong enough piece that if someone were to know nothing about me and they hear that, they'd be convinced that I'm still waiting to know in a time period where people are moving too fast.

I wanna create something that's so definitive that it makes you put your phone down, that it makes you forget about all this illusory stuff, that makes you wanna step outta the simulation and remember what God created for us, remember the world that really is that we live in.

(soft trumpet music) We're trying to evolve the creative culture in this region.

We're trying to bring the film industry, 2-4 in this region.

We want all the talent that people have from Virginia to feel home here.

But if no one's treating it like it's home, how does any youth know that it's possible?

>>One, two, three-- >>I'd like to know-- >>When it came to creating Fortresses, it was a time period of my life where my community wanted my help.

I was at Newport News at the Moton Theatre and three, four times a week, I would allow anyone to come and we'd build and create music, create song, whoever was there.

Instrumentalist, dancer, poet, actress, whatever.

When we was in the Moton Theatre, it was during a time period where the elders are the ones that own the building in downtown Newport News, they own that building.

And we did our best to try to create interesting knowledge of cultural viability in the area.

But then the music that we were creating and making at that time, must have been pretty cool because people wanted to hear more of it.

Being able to be in the room with you, even though I'm far away or I'm somewhere else, I can express my love for everyone.

I can express my desire to unify us and it really proves itself to be true when I'm creating instrumental music and a poet can write a poem or same to write a song, and it falls right in line with how I was feeling when I was making it.

♪ Feel ♪ Like I'm still there (smooth jazz music)