The Story
The Story
As the flagship of the Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure series, the Tropical Sweets® Adventure is an immersive, variety-driven listening oasis. Every visual image has been carefully sequenced in order to keep the music in the foreground, and this artistic process enables the music to inspire its own themes of the imagination as it generates all of the visual action. By anchoring one’s eyes on beautifully flowing Nature and space imagery while perpetually keeping the art of listening in the foreground, Tropical Sweets® ensures that each individual listener will experience infinitely repeatable, deeply relaxing, and educationally inspiring musical adventures.
In “a visual world” (Naisbitt, Mindset!), the listening-based Tropical Sweets® Adventure places the ears in a unique leadership role where they can provide sorely needed relief for the eyes. Essentially, the eyes become a musical instrument for one’s imagination by enabling the music and imagery to transform each listener into a unique “listening artist.” Each listening artist is empowered to explore and interweave the wonders of timeless classical music and Nature. One’s eyes, while fully engaged, will never quite experience the same thing twice as the ears enable the music to take charge and inspire fresh moments of deep relaxation, stress relief, peacefulness, learning, creativity, and rejuvenation.
As Emerson so eloquently writes in his first essay entitled, Self-Reliance, "The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also."
Due in no small part to the genius of innovators like the late Dr. Amar Gopal Bose and Steve Jobs, today’s audio-based technologies enable Tropical Sweets® to enrich each listener’s experiences virtually anywhere. A noisy aircraft can become a fully engaged listening environment (FELE) where Tropical Sweets®, combined with noise-cancelling headphones, can flow through a mobile device, a larger portable computer, or a portable DVD player enabling anyone to experience a fully-engaged listening environment that fills their world with amazingly intense, inspired, and immersive relaxation (“FELE the AIR”).
On the ground, the same technologies can make any room or office into a Tropical Sweets® launch pad, and the DVD edition is equally at home in the classroom, the living room, or the media room. (Rooted in the age-old saying that “classical music puts me to sleep,” the Tropical Sweets® DVD also features a special Relaxation Loop for anyone seeking a more effective way to drift off to sleep in the bedroom; a great way to use your TV’s sleep timer.)
The Artist
The Artist
A Quick Overview
As a classical concert artist, my violin enables me to travel deep inside an inexhaustibly stunning universe of beautiful music. I created the Tropical Sweets® Adventure so that you could use your eyes and ears as a powerful musical instrument, too.
The profound visual beauty of Nature will enable you to effortlessly explore an infinite spectrum of nuances deep inside classical music. As the wonders of music, Nature, and outer space fill your mind and open your heart, the Tropical Sweets® Adventure will bring an entire oasis of inspiring music to the foreground of your life.
Your ears will always guide you as the music creates fresh pathways of inspiration, and your heart’s eyes, under the constant guidance of your ears, will perpetually grow into a rare Stradivarius for your imagination.
The Rest of the Story
Here I am elementary school.
Here I am today.
As a native of Michigan, amidst the snow and ice of my childhood winters our family would drive to Daytona Beach, Florida, for what seemed to be miraculous “summer” vacations. I think the essence of Flight of the Sandpipers, which was shot exclusively at Daytona Beach, may have originated when I first saw those tiny birds running amidst the surf.
In the fourth grade, I began studying the violin at McKinley Elementary School in Battle Creek, Michigan, “The Cereal City.” As a child I sang in several marvelous choirs, (Miss Dooley’s all-city elementary chorus was by far my favorite), and I played a variety of instruments, including the trombone, clarinet, drums, cornet, and euphonium.
I had the great privilege of finishing high school (junior and senior years) at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan, and I also completed my violin performance degrees at the University of Michigan, where I served as concertmaster of the University Symphony and Associate Concertmaster of the Toledo Symphony.
After serving as a founding member of the DeVos String Quartet and concertmaster of the Grand Rapids Symphony, I enjoyed over a decade as a concert and recording artist while serving as a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New World String Quartet. Our quartet was granted the great privilege of serving as artists-in-residence at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.
I still enjoy my role as a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which gives me the opportunity to vote for the Grammy Awards every year. Several years ago, I wrote the interdisciplinary Microsoft Composer Collection Companion Guide for Microsoft Press, and I have been honored to receive numerous awards for video production including “Best of Florida,” Telly, and Intercom Awards.
Back in the mid-90s, diverse educational interests naturally drew me into the dynamic field of higher education instructional digital media production and faculty enrichment, where I spent the past twenty years in a progression of leadership roles at both the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, and the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa.
In my most recent role as USF’s Senior Director for eLearning Innovations and Entrepreneurial Partnerships, I led my Media Innovation Team in a successful quest for over forty international design awards. In January of 2013, I resigned from USF in order to fully dedicate myself to launching the first-ever digital editions of the Tropical Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure, and then to finally developing and launching the entire Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure series.
My goal is to create and release the Alpine Sweets® Classical Music Video Adventure by December of 2016, and then to release at least two new Sweets® Adventures in every subsequent year.
Wish me luck!