A pandemic year has passed since Creative Tech Week was acquired by NEXT Festivals LLC. The festival, rebranded as CTW, did not take place in 2020 and will not take place in Spring of 2021 due to pandemic considerations. As founder, while I'm still committed to CTW as a concept and as a festival, I'm in a holding pattern for CTW and live events in general due to Covid19.
Instead, over the past year, I've taken the time to develop a long-standing interest of mine, singing jazz vocals. I've been taking lessons, writing songs, and performing virtually, working with several different amazing musicians. Naturally, being who I am, I've started thinking about a new event series with jazz as a focus. I'm thinking about releasing some singles, I'm supporting my colleagues during their single release, and I'm considering ways to incorporate my love of creative technology and software art into cover art for my own songs.
Also, I never really told anyone this, but I went to a private party a couple years ago where Maroon 5 played, right around the time that their genius Sugar video passed 3 billion views on YouTube. They were the hottest band in the world at the time, I knew every song because my kids listened to them constantly, and it was one of the coolest concerts I've ever attended. I was blown away by how talented Adam Levine was. As a side note, his first band's album only sold 5,000 copies and was deemed a failure; the band, Kara's Flowers, broke up. It was only after Levine moved to New York City and heard Aaliyah that he started getting into hip-hop, R&B, gospel and soul, and started emulating Stevie Wonder. That's when he started Maroon 5. Not coincidentally, my friends Russell Kranes and May Cheung are putting out a song next week with similar influences, so I'll post a little about their endeavor here as well.
Thanks for following along with my endeavors. To get in touch with me, reach out to isabel at draves dot org. Thanks!
