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Do You Like Flowers? (Seeds, Part 2)

9/3/2023

If so, then you might enjoy this song I wrote for the Radioactives (and recorded in demo form):

Do you know the Teddy Pendergrass song, Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose? The vibe of the music is lighthearted, but if you listen closely to the words, they’re deadly serious.

What is Teddy deadly serious about? Partying. He is singing this song for a purpose, and this purpose is to let you know in no uncertain terms that he is here to party, and he is going to party come hell or high water, and if you are in Teddy’s general vicinity you had better get down to business and start partying too. (Threats are never specifically issued but, I believe, are implied.)

So I wondered: what if a Teddy-like funkster sang with equal seriousness about their passion for the delicate, many-splendored beauty of flowers?

Please note that I wrote this song for Will Hammond, Jr. to sing, but this is me singing on the demo, and I am not half the singer that Will is. I am just trying to point the way for him. Someday I hope you’ll get to hear it the way it’s meant to be, but I got impatient and wanted to share it with you.

I hope you like it as much as I like flowers.

The Radioactives: Funk Revival

8/26/2023

If you go way back with me, you know that playing electric guitar, preferably in a band, is my bread and butter. From age 13 through 26, I was rarely without a band, culminating in Stand Up Eight. That was a good band, and sort of ruined me for playing in any other band. After we amicably dissolved in 2004, the closest I came for the next fifteen years was playing with Zac in Duo Symphonious.

Mo bass in yo face.

That finally changed in the fall of 2019 with the formation of the Radioactives: a funk band where I am actually not the guitar player, but for the first time ever in my musical travels, the funky bass player.

Radioactives on YouTube
Radioactives on Facebook

We got together at my kids’ school, Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, where our music teacher is named Madame Kuhry (pronounced like Curie...get it?). After Mme Kuhry, an excellent keyboardist and vocalist, arrived at school, I realized that there were quite a few excellent musicians amongst the ranks of teachers and parents. And I remembered that a band does not have to conquer the world or write life-changing songs—it can just be fun. So I invited some of these excellent musicians to get together and play some classic funk tunes with me—just for giggles, no big whoop—and to my surprise and delight, they all accepted.

Fast forward nearly four years, and we have indeed had a lot of fun (and plenty of giggles) playing soulful tunes—from Stevie Wonder to Jamiroquai to Adele—at a number of school shindigs, plus one very cool gig at the Cowell Theater in SF last year. And there are Radioactives originals on the way (stay tuned for some sneak-peek demos).

As far as the funky bass goes: four years in, I think I might finally be getting the hang of it. But let me know what you think: check out my post on collaborations with Radioactives singer Will Hammond, Jr.

Will Hammond, Jr. appears to be having trouble hearing the audience as the Radioactives play the Marché at Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, June 2022.

Radioactives Originals: Seeds, Part 1

8/25/2023

Cowell Theater selfie by Will

World Parade
My bass guitar debut on the wider interwebs! Penned and produced by Radioactives vocalist Will Hammond, Jr.:

World Parade on Spotify
World Parade on Apple Music
World Parade on YouTube

I played guitar on this one too. Will wrote the song for a Ukraine benefit at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. Though Will and I are the only Radioactives on the studio version above, the Radioactives did give the live premiere of the tune at the Cowell Theater—and we got a video!

World Parade Radioactives live premiere - Cowell Theater, San Francisco, June 2022

Can You Feel Me
This one really is just a seed, but I think a tasty one. Following the World Parade premiere, Will sent me an instrumental idea and invited me to flow with it. Starting with the initial keyboard and drum track Will provided, I added bass, electric guitars, and a synth lead. Will it ever turn into a real song? Who knows! Enjoy the sound of two Radioactives playing in the sandbox:

Can You Feel Me (sketch)

Duo Symphonious: As Heard on TV

7/27/2023

How’s it going, friend? It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update on my musical goings-on. So…happy new year! Chalk up my silence to my musical life looking quite a bit different in 2022 than in previous years, with 2023 looking more differenter still. (Not on the docket: grammar.)

More on that soon. But for now, please join me for the first in a series of posts on 2022’s greatest hits, starting with Duo Symphonious...utterly transformed!

Also, happy 4th of July.

Duo Symphonious: for your TV news and NFL enjoyment

2012, Portable Nutcracker photo shoot at the Presidio in SF. A simpler time, and 58% less bearded.

Remember how my guitar brother, Zac Selissen, broke my heart and broke up Duo Symphonious by moving to NYC in 2014? (I kid—we’re still homies.) Well, in 2022 we finally reunited—not to play classical guitar,* but to write music together.

Zac has been composing music for TV for years now, publishing short instrumental segments that are made available to music supervisors for use in shows like 20/20, Dateline, and many others. You know when something really sinister is about to happen in a news magazine segment, because the musical underscoring tells you so? Then suddenly the strummy acoustic guitars strike up and you know everything’s gonna be OK? That’s the stuff.

So Zac invited me to write with him. Our first collaboration was an ethereal piano-based piece, Floating on the Clouds, which appeared on the ABC News special 48 Hours That Changed the World (about the early days of the COVID pandemic). I composed and recorded the piano part, which Zac then embellished with orchestral sounds and effects.

Next up: Outlaw Road, a down-in-the-dust, guitar-heavy tune that appeared on 20/20 ("Lyntell Washington: The Barefoot Witness"). Zac wrote and recorded the rhythm guitar and drum tracks, and I wrote/recorded the acoustic slide guitar part.

I've saved the best for last. Remember The Portable Nutcracker? We decided to make the entire album available to music supervisors as well. Did you watch any football on Christmas Eve of 2022? If so, you may have heard our rendition of "Waltz of the Flowers," which was broadcast during four different games on CBS that day.

The Waltz was also placed the TLC show Welcome to Plathville. And our rendition of “Spanish Dance (Chocolate)” was used in an animated PSA for Aunt Leah’s Place, a non-profit in the Vancouver area. (Incidentally, our concert video of this piece is our most-viewed video on YouTube. Totally gone viral.)

It’s been awesome to work with my brother Zac once again. In other good news, Zac and his wife Kellyn became parents last year!

*Oh, I just remembered: I said we didn’t reunite to play classical guitar, but in 2020 we actually did—virtually—with this series of short Portable Nutcracker videos that we posted on Facebook. (Remember Facebook?)

Zac spends his time these days looking cool on the streets of Brooklyn.

To see/hear Fog Theme [for newsletter folks]

5/31/2022

Apologies, newsletter recipients: in order to hear the Fog Theme video and recording I alluded to in my last message, you need to view the original post on my website.

[You see, the way my mailing list works is: I make a blog post on my website, then that blog post automatically goes out to you, my loyal subscribers. And for whatever reason, not all of the content translates. Sorry for the inconvenience! And thanks for listening.]

Fog Theme (at last)

5/31/2022

You may have noticed: the pandemic put a lot of stuff on hold. That was certainly true in the music realm, where many performances were cancelled and many projects were shelved—often indefinitely.

In March 2020 I wrote this post about a commission I was working on for a chamber trio called Noyo Consort, fronted by trombonist Don Benham (whom I’d met through the Mass for Freedom performance with the Oakland Symphony). I wrote about how the piece had blocked me over and over again, but that I’d finally hit on an idea I felt was working well, and the finish was “just over the next rise.”

Yeah. March 2020. The premiere had been scheduled for summer 2020. I did manage to finish the piece, but a summer 2020 premiere? Not so much.

For a while I wasn’t sure it would ever happen, but I’m happy to report that the stars did align at last! Noyo Consort performed their outstanding recital on April 24 in Mendocino, CA, part of the Opus Concert Series through Symphony of the Redwoods.

The above video is just a piece of Fog Theme, from a rehearsal I attended. If you have 6 minutes and 39 seconds of listening time, here is a complete recording:

Fog Theme was inspired by Mendocino itself, and the beautiful Northern California coast it’s perched upon. That promising idea I’d alluded to in my March 2020 post—after months of struggling with how to handle the combo of flute, trombone, and piano—was thinking of those instruments as layers, like the marine layer we experience here on the coast when the fog rolls in: sea, fog, sky. Each seemingly on its own plane, but connected at every moment and constantly interacting, shifting, intertwining. I imagined a day in Mendocino that dawns with a thick layer of fog, opens to bright sunshine as the fog burns away, then ends with the fog rolling back in for the night.

I was there for the concert with Mindy and Nyx (who helped hand out programs!), and it was truly a delight to experience this Mendocino-inspired music with a Mendocino audience. Along with Don Benham, flutist Mindy Rosenfeld and pianist Jason Kirkman put heart and soul into the piece, and nailed it.

See that church? The concert was right next to it, in Preston Hall. The views: not too shabby.

'Come to Us in Water' on video

1/6/2022

Happy New Year, team!

In case you missed last month’s International Orange Chorale SF concert, including the premiere of my piece Come to Us in Water, you can catch the recorded livestream on Facebook (registration not required).

Not surprisingly, IOC exceeded the high bar they set at the Berkeley concert and performed an amazing show. I’m very lucky to have worked with them as composer-in-residence these past two years.

Director Zane Fiala introduces my piece at 52:15, and the music begins at 55:00. (I recommend you catch at least the last minute of Zane’s intro, where he explains the ritual breathing that begins the piece.)

The program has a number of fantastic premieres, and if you have some time I hope you’ll give them a listen. Fun tidbit: IOC hands out ballots for audience members to vote on their favorite piece; the winner gets a reprise at a future concert. If you watch the show, you will perhaps not be surprised to hear that the winner—by a country mile, apparently—was ‘Pieces of My Heart’ by Lauren Bydalek (starting at 46:00). I voted for it too. It was the simplest piece on the program, and very beautiful, and clearly that’s what we all needed to hear that night.

Can you guess the (distant) 2nd place piece? (Hint: the guy who wrote it is the only one who appears in this video with a mohawk. See 1:23:00.)

Watch the Concert

Thanks for listening/watching. I hope your 2022 is off to a beautiful start!

Mike

Live and streaming from SF this Saturday

12/16/2021

Come out or tune in this Saturday, December 18 at 7:30pm PST to hear International Orange Chorale sing my latest, Come to Us in Water.

IOC will be live-streaming the concert on Facebook! Facebook registration is not required. For you East-coasters who would prefer not to burn the midnight choral oil, I am told the concert video will be made available at a future date.

Live concert-goers: Mindy and I will see you at St. Marks' Lutheran, 1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco! Please note that masks and proof of Covid vaccination are required to attend the concert. (Says the guy who forgot to bring his card to the Berkeley concert and had to drive home to get it. #embarrassing)

I can tell you, it really was a delight to hear live singing again at the December 4 concert. Kind of surreal, actually. Surreal in a good way. What I mean is: you should come if you can.

Live Concert Details
Live Stream Details

If you missed my interview on the In Unison podcast, you can find it here. We talk all about Come to Us in Water, past choral work like O Child, A Prayer in Spring, and Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters, my compositional origin story, what it means to be a Druid, and how I ended up with hotmike.com as my website.

Merry Christmas, Joyous Solstice, and Happy belated Hanukkah to all!

Mike on 'In Unison': the choral podcast interview you never knew you didn't want to miss

11/23/2021

If you woke up this morning with a feeling you couldn't quite place—a subtle, nameless yearning, perhaps—allow me to identify the source:

It might be the lack of having heard this conversation between me, International Orange Chorale director Zane Fiala, and IOC tenor Giacomo DiGrigoli about choral music. I'll let the guys introduce it:

https://www.inunisonpodcast.com/episodes/s04e11

On today’s episode of In Unison we’re continuing our mini-series of conversations with the composers whose works will be premiered on International Orange Chorale of San Francisco's Freshly Squeezed program on December 4th and 18th this year. Today we’re chatting with IOCSF’s current Composer-in-Residence, Michael T Roberts, about all sorts of things, but most importantly his new composition—a prayer for rain of sorts—entitled “Come to Us in Water.” We may also discover whether or not Mike is a witch…! #choir #composer #podcast #singers

Spoiler alert: I'm not a witch (but pretty close).

OMG...Actual concerts (and a livestream)

11/4/2021

The Upcoming Concerts page on my website was blank for a long time. But I'm pleased to announce that the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, with whom I have been composer-in-residence since before Covid was a thing (you might remember them as the Zoom choir), will be premiering my newest piece, Come to Us in Water, in two concerts this December:

Saturday, December 4, 7:30pm at Christ Church in Berkeley, CA

Saturday, December 18, 7:30pm at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco, CA

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