“The Pancake Soup” Prodigy

My junior year of high school, an Austrian exchange student visited, and while it was not uncommon to have exchange students, it was uncommon to have one join the band. Patrick H. Hahn wasn’t just any exchange student, in his spare time, he liked to compose music and he is very good at it. In my high school band, he played percussion as well as piano, whenever it was needed.

About halfway through the year, Patrick informed our band director that he had composed a piece for our ensemble. Upon hearing this, I assumed it would be a short piece with a few instruments, but I was wrong. He composed a piece that was about ten minutes long and was completely unique, including all sections in the band. Soon, the band received copies of his piece because our band director wanted to play it in our concert. The piece commemorated his time in the United States and is aptly named, “Ameraustrica”, with the world premiere occurring at Eastview High School.

(The World Premiere of “Ameraustrica,” Hahn is conducting)

What is most amazing about this is that Patrick Hahn was 16 years old at the time of the world premiere. He was born in 1995 and has been involved in music ever since birth. At the age of 11, he began studying piano at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. From there, at the age of 12, he composed an opera called “Die Frittatensuppe” (“The Pancake Soup”) that he conducted with a 30-member professional orchestra.

(The World Premiere of “Die Frittatensuppe”)

Today, Patrick conducts numerous ensembles, writes commissioned works, holds rehearsals, and gives concerts. The piece that he wrote for my high school went on to win 2^nd prize, out of 170 submissions worldwide, at the 2013 Penfield Music Commission Project Contest in New York. Additionally, “Ameraustrica” was a compulsory piece for the competitive concert season for Austrian Wind Bands in the 2013/2014 season, chosen by the Austrian Wind Band Association. Patrick Hahn currently studies Orchestral Conducting and Piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in Austria.

Creating Minds, by Howard Gardner highlights many essential creative minds in the early 20^th century and I can’t help but compare Patrick Hahn to Stravinsky, whom Gardner features as an exemplary creative. Gardner’s description of Stravinsky includes the detail that music was not a huge part of his family, which is similar to Hahn’s childhood, and despite this fact, both composers ended up in the music industry. Stravinsky even went outside of his father’s wishes because his dad wanted him to become a lawyer (Gardner 177). However, one major difference between the two is that Stravinsky was no child prodigy, while Hahn appears to be one.

According to Andreasen’s article “Secrets of the Creative Brain,” creative people are usually very persistent, even when they are confronted with skepticism (Andreasen 20). Despite the fact that Hahn was only 12 when he composed an hour-long opera, he continued to persevere and ended up conducting the piece in front of professional musicians. While Andreasen wonders whether creative people have more ideas or just more quality ideas, it seems to me that Patrick H Hahn has both (Andreasen 20). He continues to compose in a variety of musical genres, even composing pieces for concert choirs, which is especially important because his career is only beginning.

Patrick Hahn definitely appears to be on his way to becoming “Big C” creative because the pieces that he composes are no small feat. Furthermore, even as his career is just beginning, he has shown ample promise in the music world. Kaufman and Beghetto differentiate between different types of creativity in their article “Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity” and highlight that “Big C” creativity involves “eminent creative contributions” which Hahn has shown definite promise for, and continues to contribute to the music industry (Kaufman and Beghetto 2).

While Patrick Hahn’s music career is just beginning, he has already accomplished a lot for his age. The fact that he started composing at such a young age demonstrates his commitment to his future career, leading me to conclude that Hahn is definitely a composer that you should keep your eye on.

Sources:

http://www.patrickhahnmusic.com/about-patrick/

Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: Basic, 1993. Print.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/secrets-of-the-creative-brain/372299/

file:///Users/Mark/Downloads/0fcfd50cb7f1261553000000.pdf

Creative Solutions to Unique Problems

We’ve all heard of Facebook.  Regardless of how you feel about it, most people either have or have had one, and many people who claim to not care about it still have a Facebook page that they occasionally check.  Though we are accustomed to the idea of Facebook now, ten years ago it was a new phenomenon that no one expected to become as popular as it did.  However, though the product was revolutionary, the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg, really exhibits signs of unique creative thought.  

Zuckerberg displayed signs of creative thought from a young age.  When he was only twelve years old he created a messaging program that his dad used in his dental office, and that his family used within the house.  He also used to create games on the computer based on things that his friends would draw.  He attended a private preparatory school and after graduating he went on to Harvard.  It was while he was at Harvard that he came up with the idea for Facebook, and he launched the website during his sophomore year.  It started as only being available to students at Harvard, then to Ivy League students, and then it continued to expand into the international organization that it is today.  

Something unique about Zuckerberg is that when creating the company of Facebook, he was sure to make himself the primary shareholder with 57% of the stock.  This caused many problems when the company Facebook finally went public, and shareholders were upset at dropping stock prices.  However, Zuckerberg insisted that he has never been interested in short-term profits.  His only interest was in the long term good of the Facebook site.  He wanted to continue to connect people all over the world, regardless of if that meant making money or not.  He set up the company with himself as the primary shareholder so that any major decisions would always be up to him, and so that he would not have to listen to the requests of those shareholders who were only interested in turning a profit.

Zuckerberg is a prime example of the sort of creative thinking that Weisberg was describing in his article ”Creative Problem Solving”.  Zuckerberg saw the lack of available communication between people as a problem, so he came up with something that he thought was a valid solution.  Though his idea started on the smaller scale of simply connecting students at his college to one another, when the site began to expand he noticed that if it continued to rapidly expand he may have issues with shareholders in the future.  In much the same way, he came up with a creative solution to this problem as well by having the foresight to organize the company in a way that would give him the power that he wanted no matter what happened to the company in the future.  

Today, it is often said that Facebook is on the decline.  There are now so many different ways for people to interact with one another, that Facebook is no longer the novelty that it once was.  However, with Zuckerberg as the CEO, it seems likely that he may come up with another creative solution to keep improving the site, and accomplishing his goal of connecting people across the world.  

 

http://socialleadershipdevelopment.com/leadership-qualities-1/mark-zuckerberg-ce

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stock-letter-shareholders

http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402#early-life

Weisberg: Weisberg, R.W. (1993).  Chapter 4: Creative problem solving. Creativity: Beyond 

the myth of genius.  New York: Freeman. 

Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein. Relatively alike?

This is Carl Sagan. Charming looking fellow isn't he? But beholder beware, he's much more than a Mr. Roger's spin-off character. No, this man is one of the most influential, iconic, and inspirational physicists of the 20th century. Although like most great minds in history, say Einstein for popularity and professional relevancy's sake, he too has a fascinating rise to genius. Carl Sagan was born on November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York to Sam Sagan and Rachel Molly Gruber. 

Similar to Einstein's upbringing Sagan's was also one that involved liberal Judaism. Also similarly both Einstein and Sagan's family were both socioeconomically less than well, especially since Sagan grew up during the Great Depression. Although, both geniuses did not want for intellectual stimulation. Einstein had family friend and medical student, Max Talmey, bring him books about on philosophy and physics. Sagan had experiences such as attending the World Fair which sparked his curiosity and his parents bought him gifts such as a chemistry set, as well as reading materials.

In terms of schooling both men were geniuses of self-schooling. Einstein rejected the rote learning methods of German schools and chose to tackle advanced geometry alone, eventually studying at the Polytechnic Institute of Technology in Switzerland. Sagan entered the University of Chicago at the age of 17 to earn a 4 year degree. Both men could not get not get enough of academia, Einstein was obsessed with theoretical physics and Sagan obsessed with exploring space.

Both Big-C creatives  had early intrinsic motivation and high IQ which placed them as likely candidates for this path of formal apprenticeship, to Pro-C, to greatness, and finally legend status. Considering both had to face hardship personal and professionally, it makes sense that these qualities are needed for great figures to attain their glory. Both Einstein and Sagan neglected their families in favor of their work which led to marital problems. Einstein had to disprove Lorentz's equations and Sagan had to combat the existing notion that Venus had a pleasant atmosphere. Both these tasks required incredible technical expertise as well as the tenacity to disagree with the existing greats of the time. 

Einstein's greatest achievements are well-known including his contribution to the construction of he unclear bomb and his development of the theory of relativity. Sagan left his mark by discovering the heat of Venus, the dust storms of Mars, and working with NASA on innumerable projects. One of these projects happened to be writing a radio message to send into space to alert extraterrestrial beings who stumble upon it to the existence of life on Earth. Sagan also authored a television series called "The Cosmos" using his talent for explaining complex physical phenomenon to average people. This show was geared to dazzle, inform, and inspire audiences. The show was produced after his death hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, another space enthusiast, and the awe of watching it on Netflix is what spurred me to write about Sagan.

Sagan and Einstein's strikingly similar histories, many years apart tell the same story of an unprivileged young man with a passion for science so strong that it isolated him from the rest of society, but whose intellect collected from years of labor carried him through to discovery and the admiration of future generations.   

A Controversial Pick For A Genius

The most recent person I referred to as a genius, and a creative one at that, would not be received as such with resounding agreement by many.  In fact, the statement did not even find much agreement with the small group of friends I shared it with.  The man I named was Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy.  The incredibly spot-on way in which MacFarlane captures some familiar human interactions in his adult cartoon caused me to blurt out the word genius.  Here is an example below.  Of course, when I made the "genius" claim I was not conducting a scientific cognitive study.  So let's see how MacFarlane stands when compared to some researched indicators of genius.

Phenomenal Achievement:

Seth MacFarlane has absolutely never won a Nobel Peace Prize nor will he ever be known as a person who left an impact on the world.  He has possibly left an impact on American culture, but not the world.  However, he did not set out to do those things.  MacFarlane can only be measured by achievement in his field - television.  Even there, I don't believe his achievement is phenomenal.  Family Guy was not the very first cartoon with adult-level humor (The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead).  It has been one of the most popular and successful television shows of the last decade or so.  Still, it certainly does not tower above the rest, even in the comedy genre.  So, ultimately I do not think Seth MacFarlane has reached a level of phenomenal achievement that would work him into the genius conversation.

Superlative Intellect:

Unfortunately for our friend Seth MacFarlane, this vertical is where he seems to fall short from the genius category.  There is no evidence that MacFarlane is extremely intelligent or has an incredible IQ.  There is little to suggest that he has an unusually high intellect at all.  Then again, maybe this is the category where his true creative genius is hidden.  Possibly, as the text suggests, there are bits of genius which cannot been measured or tested.  In Family Guy, viewers find themselves presented with certain social anomalies and perspectives of famous celebrities which they have never seen before; yet they somehow immediately and humorously click.  Watch the clip below.  Though this human reaction to pain had never so much as crossed my mind, I recognized it in this scene as soon as I saw it and could not stop laughing.  Perhaps there is some sort of superlative cognitive ability to recognize humor in the inane which MacFarlane holds similar to Jackson Pollock's ability to find beauty in chaos.  This is why MacFarlane is a creative genius by my standards, if not by scientists'.

General Intelligence:

This portion of the genius discussion should pique some interest in the case of Seth MacFarlane.  He has shown a reasonably wide range of talents in his television and film career.  He provides the voices for many of the cartoon characters which he has created in his writing.  He has also given a shot at directing, to some success.  Here is the interesting one though: recently Seth Macfarlane released an album of vocal swing jazz.  The album was successful and demonstrated his vocal talent as well as his legitimate knowledge of the less-than-modern genre.  This may just be the peak of MacFarlane's interests which reveal his general intelligence.  Possibly in the years and projects of Seth MacFarlane's future we will truly determine whether to let the word "genius" slip out around him.

The Method and Madness behind Foxygen

Jonathan Rado (left) and Sam France (right)

The band Foxygen consists of Sam France and Jonathan Rado as a powerhouse of creative talent and unrelenting spirit. Many have joined and left the roster over the years, but France and Rado survive as a team. According to interviews, the two have been playing together since nursery school, and recorded a thousand albums before graduating high school, but the human record of the band begins in "2004 or 2005, we aren't really sure". Rado says that the two left a band called the Fionas together after Sam's experimental vocal stylings didn't go well with the band, but caught Rado's attention. " He did the vocals and all these crazy sounds. I listened to it and thought it was genius. " Rado said in an interview with Andrew Lawrence. A few EPs exist in various places around the wep, such as "Electric Sun Machine," which was recorded the week of Foxygen's formation, but the first album with an official release from the band (although the release occurred online years after the recording, only after the band gained traction) is titled "The Jurrassic Exxplosion Phillipic," and it is here that I start my examination of Sam France as a creative.

Young Rado (left) and France (right), the only image
associated with "The Jurrassic Exxplosion Phillipic"

"The Jurrassic Exxplosion Phillipic" is a 36 track monster of an album described by Rado as a "space opera." Recorded when the two were only 15 years old, this album is as close as we get to a fossil for theorizing exactly where the sound of Foxygen came from. The album utilizes early forms of plenty of the techniques and stylings that would come to define Foxygen, from incoherant babbling to the inexplicable sampling of droning voices. The tempos shift unexpectedly, the songs run together, all things that make Foxygen who they are, but the album lacks a certain madness. The album's skeleton could easily be the same as that which makes up their "debut" 2012 release "Take the Kids Off Broadway," but where that album shows feathers and fur, "Phillipic" is bare. So what makes "Take the Kids Off Broadway" any better? I argue that is it the madness within Sam France taking the drivers seat in his career. Where "Phillipic" sounds like two 15 year old Beck fans who got into the medicine cabinet, their later career feels like the soundtrack to a descent into madness.

Album art for "Take the Kids Off Broadway"

"Take the Kids Off Broadway"... what an album. Like a war-flashback to a Kinks concert. A horror flick starring The Zombies. An oil spill of 60's influence caught alight by a flicked cigarette. In this album, the systematic Rado barely controls France as he bobs back and forth between madness and genius. The album flows from start to finish pretty seamlessly, with a uniform sound and attitude. At this point in the career, it is hard to tell who is doing what, but it is easy to tell in retrospect where the sanity lied.

Full disclosure: due in part to a near-breakup of Foxygen in 2013, we get to see how Rado and France operate as independent musicians. Rado's "Law and Order" is aptly named, sounding frighteningly similar to Paul McCartney and Wings, offering a frozen form of the Foxygen sound: blockier and stabler, with little to no surprised. France's solo work was worked into their 2014 release "...and Star Power," and shows how much he relies on Rado to get things done. With wonky out of key parts, and repetitive and mildly interesting and best keyboard lines as the main driving force behind France's voice, France completely abandons recognizable song form and structure. For those who appreciate the method and madness of the two, the works are great windows into the chemistry of Foxygen, but I fear they may leave much to be desired from a casual listener.

Album art for "We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace an Magic"

In 2013, Foxygen released an album written clearly within the tight grip of Rado, as he reigned France in to appeal to a more entry-level audience for psychedelic rock (if that is what it is to be called). The album is called "We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic." Here we see the possible potential for the two, as they appear in music videos to be mildly quirky, fun loving 20-somethings. This is when things start to dissolve.

In the tour following the albums, many complaints surfaced. France was climbing stage equipment. France was getting in shouting matches with hecklers, losing emotional control. France was storming off the stage mid-set, never to return. In late July, during a show in Minneapolis, France broke his leg after falling off the stage during the first song of the set, and the show

Album art for "...and Star Power"

Foxygen (after a turbulent period during which the near-breakup occurred) returned in 2014 with an album entitled "...and Star Power". This hour-and-a-half long album is dominated by France's screams, falsettos, monologues, and general chaos. France appears in music videos and on tour wearing makeup, looking strung out, with bleached and colored hair. He stumbles around stage like a marionette doll with a drunken puppet master, singing only when he wants to. The album has been criticized as a step backward for Foxygen when really it is simply France stepping in front of Rado. Noise and dismay rule the sound of the album...listen closely, though, and you just might hear genius. This album flows stylistically well from "Take the Kids Off Broadway," because it is a France-dominated record with Rado just barely holding things together at the seams.

France, in his songs and his attitude, makes direct allusions to Mick Jagger, Black Sabbath, and the general trope of the mad-lead-singer attitude. Is France able to create the works that he does through a deeper understanding through madness, as hypothesized by Andreason, or is he simpy putting on an act? Some say the entire near-breakup of the band was only an act, part of the large-scale performance piece that is Foxygen. Is Sam France slowly slipping into madness, letting us experience it through his music, or is he creating a plot for us to follow? Perhaps only time will tell.

Sam France, 2012

Sam France, 2014

Foxygen Video Interview with KEXP
Interview Magazine with Foxygen
Portland Mercury on Young Foxygen
Leg-Breaking story
N. Andreasen (2010) A Journey into Chaos: Creativity and the Unconscious