To Hum is Human

The Sound of Purpose: How to Discover Your True Calling

• Donnabelle Casis • Season 1 • Episode 2

Share episode

What does purpose sound like?

Meet Michi Wiancko—an accomplished violinist and Juilliard graduate, an imaginative composer, devoted educator, and Artistic Director at the groundbreaking Antenna Cloud Farm. In this inspiring episode, Michi shares her journey from concerto debuts with the LA and NY Philharmonics to creating music for Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among others. She shares how intuition, creativity, and community have shaped her evolving path—and why purpose isn’t something we find once, but a hum we return to again and again.

Find me on Instagram @ToHumisHuman and www.sonorouslight.com

SPEAKER_01:

Hello friends, it's me, Donna Bell, your host of another episode of To Hum is Human, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of tuning into our intuition to express our passionate purpose. In today's episode, The Sound of Purpose, How to Discover Your True Calling, we delve into what it means to attune to your inner voice and how collective creation and alternative approaches to education may open the door to greater artistic freedom. Whether you're a musician, a seeker, or someone simply longing to live more aligned with your truth, this conversation is an invitation to listen inward. I am so thrilled to introduce my next guest. Michi Rianco is a multifaceted, imaginative composer, violinist, educator, and collaborator whose work bridges creative exploration, community resilience, and social change. A Juilliard graduate, an acclaimed soloist, she has performed with the LA and New York Philharmonics and toured with Silk Road and Rhiannon Giddens. Missions include works for Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle and Boston Chamber Music Societies. Michi is also the artistic director of Antenna Cloud Farm, a Western Massachusetts-based music festival, artist retreat, and educational initiative. There, she also leads the Experimental Institute, a tuition-free youth summer intensive focused on creativity, mental and deinstitutionalized learning. Welcome, Michi. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. It's an honor to have you. Michi, your work spans so many worlds, performance, composition, teaching, social impact. When did you first begin to sense that music would lead the way for you?

SPEAKER_00:

I started my musical journey from a very young age with the violin, but I did have very, very musical parents. I started playing the violin around the age of three and kept at it through thick and thin as a youth. And then I think in high school, I realized I wanted to pursue music professionally. At that time, Having taken private lessons and sort of come up in the classical pedagogical culture, even though I listened to lots and lots of non-classical music, it felt like there were only a few options for a violinist who wanted to become a professional. You could go for that elusive dream of being a soloist. You could try to join an orchestra. You could maybe start a chamber ensemble. You could teach. I never could have imagined where I ended up now. And I think it was really a journey of listening to little voices kind of tugging at me along the way. So I went to the Cleveland, I did my undergraduate degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was loving what I was doing. But I just had this feeling of like, there's some creative thing happening. I want to do with music. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what this feeling, where it's coming from, what it means. All I know is that that feeling just will not, it will not go away. There's some kind of music I want to be making that I'm not making, and I don't know what it is. So I, and it kind of bothered me, you know, it made me feel like self-doubt, like, am I in the wrong place? Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I impatient? All this stuff. So I started improvising. I started exploring different ways. I sat in with a band or two. I kind of like just experimented. And that led me to really starting to expand my focus outside of the classical realm. And that's just an example, I think, of how my life and my career has been formed. I would say like the short version would be that whenever I felt that voice or some feeling tugging at me, no matter how small, I learned to really try to listen to it. I learned to recognize it as some kind of thing that was trying to get my attention. I learned to pay attention to it. I learned to like carve out intentional time and energy to really try to get what is at the bottom of this voice, you know? Like, am I just hungry or? Well,

SPEAKER_01:

it's funny because you're speaking about these sensations. And when I think about music and how that vibration that you're producing through an instrument, through your voice, through other means of making sound, it sort of fills the space, but it also resonates within your body. And I wondered as you were composing or as you were playing music, Do you tune into how that sort of resonates within your body and directs you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely. I think I wasn't focused on that or I wasn't naming that or acknowledging it until later in life. You know, I think as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult, I sort of took that all for granted. And it wasn't until... I don't know, maybe my 30s or even 40s that I started to really name it. I think the more teaching I do as well, and the more I realize like if we are not fully embodied while we do this, if we are not listening to ourselves on just a physical level, then we are not properly grounded. to do any of this, you know, any, anything technical, any of this like difficult passage work with the left hand or whatever, you know, young artists or young performers are trying to accomplish with their instruments. You have to be fully embodied. Yeah. And so I think that this is a relatively new endeavor for me or, or area of exploration that the, the way that sound works, It resonates in our bodies and the benefit that it has for our bodies, especially in recent years, realizing that anybody who's performing, whether they like it or not, are kind of in the business of healing, kind of in the business of physical therapy, sound therapy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. As a sound therapy practitioner myself and understanding how sound frequencies work in healing sort of entrainment and resonance, there's something obviously to that because people have shown that it does in fact have palpable results within the body. But I'd love to go back to how you called your inspiration for when you did compose music? Where did your inspiration come from?

SPEAKER_00:

So there is a tradition of, you know, like the Baroque era of classical music had a lot of performers who were also composers, performers who would also improvise on the spot. And that was really common. And I think it has now had a resurgence. It's more now more common, you know, in the classical world or the violin performance world for performers to play a little solo that they've written or improvise a little a section, but there was a period of time there where it was pretty strict. pretty structured. The idea of a classical music improvising would just melt some people's faces off. It caused a lot of deep anxiety because everybody's trained to just try to execute what's on the page as perfectly as possible and to uphold these old, old Eurocentric traditions and cultures just kind of mindlessly in some cases without really thinking about it. And so it was that trying to break out of those what felt to me like confined spaces. So I think starting to improvise, not within any kind of genre, but actually like what kind of noises can I make on the instrument? What happens if I go and collect a bunch of twigs and pebbles and tap them on the bridge or the scroll or how can I free this whole thing up? And so that's what sort of opened up a big creative door for me, which eventually led to composition. with the final sort of push that I needed coming from a friend who asked me to write her a piece. I was like, what now? You want me to what? I'm like, me? Are you sure? She was like, yeah, oh my gosh. I heard the stuff that you're doing with your violin. I heard what you're doing when you play with bands. Can you write me a piece? So I did. And that sort of was, that started it all. Sometimes it just

SPEAKER_01:

takes a little push from an outside influence to kind of get you out of that comfort zone. You're like, can I? Yeah. And of course, and you did. So it was just a matter of, of, um, sort of attuning to that and aligning to that. And, you know, Michi, you've collaborated with an incredibly diverse range of artists and groups in various genres. How has working with others shaped and refined your understanding of how you express yourself?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think working with others is where my real passion lies. There's so much commonality between I think embodiment is first and foremost, that commonality, knowing that somebody else is also working with sound, you know, as their medium and appreciating those vibrations. And I think musicians have a way of really connecting. Like we're so used to connecting with each other without having to use language, verbal language. It's just second nature. So I think, yeah, collaborating with other musicians is, for sure is just pure fun, usually. I also love, I think, collaborating with non-musicians, with visual artists, with filmmakers, dancers, choreographers. That's also been incredible just to see, just to learn about other people's relationships to their own practices, the ways in which a filmmaker would describe something musical that they want you know they're going to use like just a whole completely different language than what how a musician would would talk about it and i find that so incredibly fascinating yeah but i think ultimately connecting with others and exploring that connection and then sharing that connection with an audience i think is one of the most important functions of art

SPEAKER_01:

I'm absolutely with you there. But I'm curious in terms of, say, when you're performing. So there must be a very different feeling when you're performing as a soloist versus performing collaboratively with other artists. Do you sort of tune into a different aspect of yourself or is it sort of the same part?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think I do tune into a different aspect. It feels like I'm collaborating with myself, I suppose. And it's changed very dramatically for me because for a while I was playing the role, so to speak, of a violin soloist for my career. And I'm very fortunate to have been in that position, even though ultimately I did not find it satisfying. I found it lonely. I found it like very, it's very, very, very high pressure. It's very high stakes, high pressure. Like you miss a note. you miss a couple notes or you play something slightly out of tune and you're like, okay, that, that, that might've been it. You know, that might be my career. Like that's that kind of pressure. And I was, I was meeting those challenges for a really long time. And then I discovered like, wow, this is actually beginning, even though I love the repertoire, I love the violin concertos. I loved playing with symphonies, but something was a miss for sure. Because it was, I was so stressed out all the time. about it, that it was really blocking me physically from being able to like gain the benefits of the sound, you know, and of the music making. But what I've, so in sort of a therapeutic effort to be able to play solo violin without that kind of, you know, challenge, that level of challenge and pressure attached to it, I started Using effects pedals and using an electric violin or at least plugging in an acoustic violin electrically and putting on solo shows where I combine pre-written material that I've made for myself with just pure improvisation that stems from the energy I'm feeling in the room. I haven't done it in a little while, but it's definitely on my, it's percolating that that is something that I would like to do more. more so when i'm doing that that that is i've discovered one of my happy places where i feel the most free especially if there's no written music in front of me then it just feels like kind of pure communing with other people

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and you're in essence having a concert with yourself like sort of your multidimensional selves when you're playing the layering. I can only imagine the depth in that performance, even though there's only one you on the stage.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Yeah. And I think that the, for me, you know, playing with time, utilizing silence, which I'm a big fan of as a musician, you know, like are the rests in between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves. I tell my students that constantly. So to kind of be able to Yeah, to shift time and to have that happen in a collective space with other people, I think can be really, I've had some pretty powerful and emotional experiences, just feeling it's almost, it almost feels interactive. Even though the audience is just sitting there watching, I can feel energy happening that makes it feel like this is a definitely an interactive situation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I just love how you're sort of creating these spaces. And I would love to talk about how you were pulled to create the antenna cloud farm.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. This idea came to me randomly while I was pumping gas at a gas station. I remember the exact moment. I think the It was done. The tank was done filling and I just kept standing there. My husband was like, are you okay?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm getting a download.

SPEAKER_00:

What's that? I'm getting a download. Hold on. I'm not available to talk right now. We were kind of in a transition of moving up here gradually. kind of inching our way up to Franklin County from Brooklyn. Wow. Yeah. Where we had lived for a long time. My husband's from New York. And I really wanted to leave the city. We wanted to come to Massachusetts. We were really drawn to this part of the state, just gorgeousness and really cool stuff happening, really cool arts, really cool cultural stuff, farming, agricultural stuff, which we found really amazing. And I was fearful of leaving my artistic community in New York. I was fearful of feeling lonely, of feeling isolated as an artist. So I thought, well, what if we found a space that we could bring people to? And we can bring our friends to, or our colleagues to, to enjoy the beauty of Western Massachusetts, have a retreat from the city, and have like an artistic retreat. And what if we stuck a concert onto that? And then what if we sent those musicians into like local schools to hang out with the music class or, you know, give a performance at the school? So it just kept growing. It actually grew quite fast. I say it grew incrementally, but by year two, I was giving like 10, you know, concerts every other weekend for like three, four months straight. It was crazy. And yeah, it's just, It's a labor of love. It's now grown into something where we have, you know, it's not just our friends. It's a combination of artists that come from near and far, hyper-local or sometimes international, and artists who are really doing something powerful and interesting and innovative and different with their practice, with their instruments, with their mediums. And yeah, it's a, it's a labor of love. It's a work in progress. And I think it's always going to be, I think it's always shifting. And that's become something I'm, I'm pretty proud of that is just constantly in evolution and constantly in a state of growth and responsiveness to the world and to artists needs to our local communities needs. So we're quite a robust partnership organization, lots of, various types of programs now that are stemming from Antenna Cloud Farm and lots of different kinds of engagement. Could

SPEAKER_01:

you tell our listeners just briefly what Antenna Cloud Farm is? First of all, I want to know where the name came from because it's

SPEAKER_00:

just

SPEAKER_01:

so compelling. I'm like, oh, I'm

SPEAKER_00:

so curious already. I don't even know what it is. Well, we're located on a hill in for any geologists out there, it's the Drumlin, which is a hill that's, you know, the result of some big glacial movements. But we, it's a former dairy farm and we have, we're lucky to have this gorgeous view of the valley. And I think I kind of dreamt up the word antenna because a lot of our, I think when people, especially our New York friends, when they're like, you're going to move where? New Yorkers are just, most of them can't fathom ever living anywhere other than New York. It's tough to leave. It's a city that very much draws you in. And we still love it. New Yorkers don't get mad at me. But they were like, oh, you're kind of going, you're going to move somewhere. to the middle of nowhere to raise a family and just kind of, you know, we're like, actually, we're coming out here to be even more expansive and to be more outward facing. It's not a retirement plan. You know, this is a very intentional, you know, community facing. And so I have this old black and white photograph of a person who's got huge headphones on and is holding a little satellite dish. I think it's a it's a microphone. It's like from the 60s or something, 50s. And the person is, I believe, an ornithologist or like a bird, is listening to birds and capturing those sounds. And it's a really cool photograph of this person just sitting, you know, standing on the edge of a hill, holding this antenna out to the valley. And so that's really where the word antenna came from, this idea that the outward facing, community facing, expansive antenna. Receivers. And then clouds, just because we feel close to the clouds up here. And watching the patterns of weather and clouds come in and out is a big activity for anybody who's up here. How big is it? How big is your property? We're on 100 acres.

UNKNOWN:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. With some of it wooded, some of it open, some of it we're putting into conservation. A lot of it hosts a large flock of sheep. from farmer friends who practice regenerative and sustainable agriculture locally here. So it's been wonderful to learn, really inspiring. And we're really grateful to have learned so much about the local agricultural culture here as well. And just so grateful to know where our food comes from. Yes. Well,

SPEAKER_01:

so, you know, aside from inviting, you know, highly accomplished musicians, but you also invite people of all levels sort of within their practice, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_00:

um nature of what we're doing you know we're very much rooted in um bartering and mutual aid and very much like we do not operate in a transactional purely transactional way you know we try to approach everything as holistically as possible um So but the there's also an institute, the Experimental Institute. I wanted to talk about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So there are lots of different. One of my dreams is to have a youth like a youth music camp for, you know, junior high age or high school age students. musicians to come up here, but for now,

SPEAKER_01:

all these bubbling ideas, like it's just, they're percolating, but you're there. Like, it sounds like just from the get-go from the idea at the gas station that you knew you were onto something because it just started growing all of a sudden, it's almost like you tapped into this sort of vein that just became like this living thing. project and it sounds like it's constantly evolving. Now, I'm curious because you were mentioning sort of the agricultural aspect of the location itself, but I know that you do partner with several organizations and you deal with sort of social, racial, food, and climate justice. How did that become a part of sort of the vision of Antenna Cloud

SPEAKER_00:

Farm? I think I think we're first of all so lucky to be in this part of the country and this part of the state where it's rich with people who are out there using their mediums or their crafts or their organizations or their focal points, whether it's climate activists or farmers to really kind of revolve their work around community health, community wellness, community resilience. There's so much of that happening from so many different angles. And so I think finding that common ground with other organizations and other entities outside of music has been, first of all, very gratifying just because I love to learn. And so I've learned so much about other areas of work and of life. But it came about in just meeting people and hanging out and making connections, noticing when there's kinship and following up with that, just building community, which can mean so many things. And, you know, that's a term that's used so much, but it really is what it feels like. Building a community, building a network, connecting. That's not for just like, you know, the sake of bettering or furthering one's own career, but a network that is grown and sustained in order to provide resilience, to be a place for us all to find support when it's needed. So

SPEAKER_01:

valuable, especially around these times to be in sort of a safe space. You speak about community. What have you witnessed sort of on the individual level when others step into a space like

SPEAKER_00:

Antenna? Yeah. I don't want to brag.

SPEAKER_02:

Please, please. This is

SPEAKER_00:

the place. This is the place, yes. I'll talk about the Experimental Institute because we're entering our fourth season this coming summer. And this is an early career... activist performers or young musicians or composers or music creators who are passionate about using their art for the betterment of society, really, is what that is. People who are community-oriented and who have a vision, not just for themselves and their own careers, but a vision for their communities and So those are the kinds of people that we are inviting into the cohort here. And because of that, we thought after year one, we thought it was a fluke. We were like, first of all, that was too good to be true. It was as soon as everybody stepped foot here, the energy was just electric. And it was because we had fashioned the application process towards, you know, artists like the ones I just described, as opposed to what's more standard, which is how impressive is your resume? What are the big institutions? Did you make your debut at Carnegie Hall? This kind of stuff. And so I think the moment, representation is very important here. So the faculty and the mentors and the people who are helping behind the scenes or whatever. It's like a very, very, very diverse group of individuals. The cohort itself is very diverse in literally every single way, every single definition of that word. And we tried very mindfully to curate the time together in a way that opened up the space, allowing for people to feel safe and to feel vulnerable. I think one way we did that was by being vulnerable ourselves, you know, as the so-called faculty group and to make it really clear that being vulnerable is a really powerful, productive, generative space. to be in if it's truly a safe space to do so. So I think that all of that, plus this idea that when we're all here, it is a sort of communal living situation. For the most part, we take turns getting ready for meals. We take turns cleaning up. Ideally, you know, on day three or day four of a 10 day session, we're trying to facilitate enough comfort and familiarity and sort of individual empowerment that the young artists or the, you know, the fellows understand. start feeling empowered to curate something themselves or to run a class. It can be experimental or run some kind of embodiment session or movement session or something that they want to play around with. So yeah, it's quite multifaceted. And that's also something that's changing and growing and evolving each year as well.

SPEAKER_01:

It sounds like such a rich environment. For creativity, I think of that movie, the baseball movie, they're like, if you build it, they will come. You're literally on a farm and you're creating this space. But there's something I would love to talk about because you've embraced what you call deinstitutionalized learning and stepping outside the traditional systems to learn and grow. Where did that come from and how does that show up in your practice? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm always playing around with language too. So yeah, so deinstitutionalized learning is something I've just, I might change that. I don't know. I think I added that word to some of our materials last year because I was like, that is, that is, you know, one thing that we are doing. But that came from... A lot of experiences that my collaborators, my co-directors of the Institute, and I have had a lot of experience in institutions, in educational institutions, institutional settings, and still do. And this comes from just hands-on, like lived experience in music conservatories and institutions and seeing people not to be totally negative about it, but seeing and kind of studying really closely the ways in which those institutions were not serving the students in a way that was truly preparing them for the real world to become like for what it means to be a professional musician or even what it means to just be an awake, aware, engaged person in the world. There was a lot of There was a lot of we were witnessing a lot of like institutional failure, I think, and inability to be nimble and responsive, inability to bust out of the rigorous, you know, structures that are so old and so outdated and outmoded. But yet. And everybody knows it. But yet the job requires a buy-in of sorts, even if you're going through the motions. And so what I found so much was just a sort of almost just like a disembodied culture in a lot of institutions. And you have your wonderful gems that, you know, the teachers who are just changing students' lives and doing amazing work despite the structure, despite the system that they have to be a part of. But my colleagues and I, we spent quite a few years, like through the pandemic, we met weekly, talked for hours about all of these kinds of things, about a lot of the issues that we were seeing. And a lot of those issues became more transparent during COVID, right? During the lockdown, a lot of veils were lifted, a lot of smoke sort of cleared. And we were like, wow, it really came down to this, you know, and it was eye opening, very, very educational. And so in some ways, this institute really came out of that. It really came out of like, okay, well, what are we going to do? What are we going to do about it? What can we do? As, you know, quite experienced musicians and educators now, what can we build that would allow us to start to allow us to build some kind of system or structure from the ground up rather than trying to go in and retrofit something that honestly will not change. It doesn't really work for everyone. It doesn't really work. Yeah. So- What can we generate to hold all these ideas? And that's why we called it the Experimental Institute. Some people think it's because we're playing experimental music. And they're not wrong. Sometimes we are. It's more like, can we experiment with a new kind of institution? A new idea of what an institution could be.

SPEAKER_01:

What does that look like? So what is a typical week in the Experimental Institute?

SPEAKER_00:

A typical week, well, everybody shows up in the late afternoon and we have a huge festive meal. We tour the property, we talk, we sometimes get our instruments out and we'll do some I call them musical greetings. You can grab your instrument. You can grab a tin can. We're going to go around in a circle and you can make any noise, any sound that represents perhaps how you're feeling in that moment. It's very, very free and open. So we do a lot of these initial, my colleagues and I kind of each have a bunch of things that we like to do. So we, we take turns facilitating sessions that start generating some feelings of openness and allowing for people to really start to get to know each other and to really start to share deeply about what they do, what they're into, why, why they do what they do. And then for the next few days, it's a very organized process. very carefully curated curriculum that each year is a little different. There's just some ebb and flow, some give and take, just because usually there's way more that we want to do than we end up having time to do because we're also trying to allow for rest. Sometimes we all go on a group hike through the woods or visit the river, but it's a combination of discussion, writing, writing prompts, journaling, playing, playing music for each other, creating music together, having workshop sessions where we talk about the way that music is made, or we talk about what each person is experiencing in their schools or their workplace, or whatever it might be. So there's a lot of therapy involved. kind of sessions end up feeling like therapy sharing a lot of exploration a lot of physical movement stuff and then that interspersed with a social the social aspect and also the respect for alone time and respect for solitude and quiet and and sort of letting everybody's nervous systems reset. So we have pages and pages and pages where we just try to, you know, we really try to strike that balance throughout the week.

SPEAKER_01:

What I'm noticing is it is a very holistic approach to how music is made, the creation of the music, and sort of what that means, what that entails. And it's sort of a living thing. You are sort of bringing to form and expressing something within yourself through an instrument, through sound, through your voice, but also engaging in the landscape. So you're creating a soundscape within a landscape, but also in your mind, which is your body, which is how you interact with the world. I think that's a very... much needed, but right now really a unique approach to learning.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it is unique. And the more we're in it and the more we're building it, the more it becomes normalized for us. So then when I do a lot of sort of guest teaching or guest coaching in different schools and institutions around the country, I'm always kind of surprised like, oh, yeah, that's right. This is unusual. And a lot of what we sometimes don't It's just somebody sharing something that they made that a professor or somebody from their institution told them is not, quote, you know, how things are done. And then having a lot of self-doubt about like, is this okay, what I made and how I made it? It's different. It's unusual. And it hasn't really been done before. Is this okay? I'm being told it's not okay. So then bring us into the picture, you know, and we just dive right into that idea. And it's always because of the people who are coming here. It's always a wonderful, amazing idea. So we're very affirming. And I think we provide each other with that kind of support and affirmation to be like, no, even like the fact this has never been done is a good thing, you know, so follow that, follow that instinct. So yeah, there's a lot of that. It's like a big support group, really. Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

my goodness. And I can imagine after attending this and participating in this that what then they bring out into the world becomes sort of a shift, perhaps, in that paradigm and ways in which they think about themselves and perhaps, you know, what they choose to take in and what they choose to sort of leave behind. After

SPEAKER_00:

year two... I think that the moment I realized really felt deeply how powerful this was, because I think I wasn't allowing myself to fully, I was like, this I think is a fluke, you know? I think it was just happened to be a magical thing. The moment it dawned on me, the moment I really realized it, I just immediately started crying, was when I began to see that fellows who came here who are in different cohorts, different years, we're now finding each other out in the real world and building things together or meeting for the first time and immediately feeling a sense of connection and closeness because of coming from here and having this in common. And they were telling me the same, like the people who, the fellows who have been here have given a lot of feedback that is quite moving about the impact that this has had in their lives. I just get

SPEAKER_01:

chills about that. I mean, it just shows really that the truest creativity is one that inspires even more creativity.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And it just expands even further, far reaching. So, you know, you're doing something, you know, you're onto something and that's just pure magic. And I feel like magic is made at the antenna cloud farm. But, you know, sometimes it's understood that, you know, our purpose is something that just we find one And we hold on to it forever. But your journey seems to be one of constant evolution. How is your sense of purpose shifted or expanded over time?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I love that question so much. Because it really touches on, I mean, it's a weird, you know, it's very personal. It's a very personal thing to share. But I think it's really important. Potentially, especially if there's, you know, younger person listening to this asking a lot of similar questions. I went for decades with, you know, with this feeling that I was not quite doing something right, or that I was failing to stick with just the thing. this little self-doubt, you know? I mean, I'm also a very confident person and, you know, was very proud of what I was doing, but it was this, always this tiny, tiny little voice was like questioning. Is it okay that you sort of started, you know, exploring non-classical realms? Is it okay that you just played with this crazy hip hop band or this country band or, you know, is it okay that now you're, trying to compose music when you didn't go to school for it. And all these, all these questions of like, is, I don't know if that's okay. Like, I feel like I'm failing to stick with the one thing, you know, I'm, am I just failing to follow through the one thing that I maybe was supposed to be doing, which is be a violin soloist. And I see other friends who stuck other colleagues, other people I went to music school with who stuck with their thing and And they're, you know, hugely successful doing awesome stuff, but they stuck with the one thing. And it was a couple of years ago, I was talking to my husband, Judd, who's also a composer and musician. And we were just talking about this and he was like, but maybe the exploration that you is just a regular part of your life is the thing, you know, that the act of exploring is, And the act of searching and the act of responding to, you know, the energies and the voices, whether they're stemming from internally or externally, that act of continuously evolving and growing, like maybe that is the thing. And that just shifted. Something clicked, finally. Something clicked. And I no longer have that voice. I have that voice in other areas maybe, but, you know. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

you know, we get all sorts of nudges, you know, and I feel like you took the stronger nudge and it felt very natural. And obviously then it started becoming this other thing, which is now feeling like it's just growing and expanding. And, you know, you're on the right track when something feels so good within you. And then who it affects also feels this sort of beautiful thing. nudge to keep creating. If there's a listener out there, sort of either a young listener who's wanting to maybe I wouldn't say entertain. So someone listening right now who feels the quiet hum of something inside them but hasn't yet found the courage to express it, what would you offer them?

SPEAKER_00:

I would encourage them to to not bury it, to not try to let it go, um, to try different ways of listening to it, perhaps, you know, go for a walk in a beautiful place, move, move your body, go visit someplace you haven't been before. Bring a journal, write about it, try to release it some way, try to name it, um, try to know what it is. Um, trial and error is sometimes part of it. Sometimes you try a thing and you're like, you know what, that wasn't actually it. And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think this idea that we, the idea of trusting ourselves and respecting how we feel personally about, about things, I think that's hard to teach. And I think it's not something that, Society does well for our younger people. I think we have to figure out how to build that for ourselves. How do we trust ourselves? How do we listen to our own voices? How do we let our own internal voices be louder than any external voices that might be planting seeds of doubt or seeds of fear? How do we stay true to ourselves? Those are really tough questions. And I think that my advice would be to not just search for the answers, but just to keep asking the question. I think if the questions can be normalized in life, just keep asking the questions and be comfortable being in a state of asking questions. And let that be the normal. Answers do start to emerge here and there, but maybe the goal is not to find answers to every single question. Maybe the goal is to really explore the questions.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. That's so beautiful and powerful and really giving yourself permission to be receptive. to things that you may not have considered in your path. What's in the future for you? What's next coming up that you're really excited about?

SPEAKER_00:

I specifically, I would like, I have sort of a goal of becoming more connected to my violin. Meaning playing some more shows. I haven't played a show in a while. Developing a solo set. Perhaps recording a new album. All of this I've had to put on the back burner for a few years. Because I'm lucky enough to be commissioned by other people to write music. But I'm trying so, so, so hard to carve out space. A space that I would consider just my ultimate home. space of creative freedom which would be like not a commission just something i'm creating just for the sake of creating it so that's what i'm hoping is in my personal future for my own my own stuff um and for acf there's been so much growth um we're slowly expanding our summer festival so that there's also engagements that happen during the school year We've formed a lot of new partnerships with local schools, local public schools and music programs. And also we're hosting retreats for non-public facing retreats for artists who are working on some really incredible projects. So there's never a dull moment. There's never not anything going on.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Right. Well, how do folks connect with you and what you're doing? Are there particular places you want them to go to find

SPEAKER_00:

out more? Yeah. I mean, they could visit antennacloudfarm.com. I would highly recommend signing up for our newsletter, which I'm very proud of. I think it's really beautiful. It's very, very thoughtfully and lovingly put together in our community. Non-summer season, it goes out maybe once a month, once every couple months, and then during the summer more frequently when things are starting to happen. Yeah, but I would recommend checking out our newsletter. And

SPEAKER_01:

can they check you out personally? Is there a site where they can go to see what you do?

SPEAKER_00:

They can go to michiwianco.com. Mm-hmm. Or they can find me on Instagram, which is where I'm more likely to have updated events and concerts. These days, it's a lot of concerts that are featuring works that I've written. But my website has my works list on it, ways to purchase my music that I've written, some fun videos, things like that. Oh, my gosh.

SPEAKER_01:

Michi Wianco, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your insight, your vulnerability. I mean, I feel like that was such a generous way in which you've told your story today. And, you know, you're basically showing us that the purpose isn't the destination. It's a resonance we return to again and again. And I know that so much of what we spoke about today will resonate for our listeners. And your work just reaches way beyond this area. And I'm so thankful.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. It was truly wonderful to talk to you. I appreciate you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotta support each other.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm so glad you spent this time with me. If something in this episode resonated, feel free to share it or pass it along to someone who might need that little spark. Until next time, keep humming.