Flo continues to speak from the heart http://www.examiner.com/music-in-los-angeles/flo-anito-speaks-from-the-heart here on Los Angeles, Wesleyan, jazz legend Anthony Braxton and more while relaying some good vibrations.
W.E. If one song of yours were to describe your feelings about Los Angeles, which song would it be?
F.A. Probably one of my two songs which are about struggling in the industry, trying to keep up, and create, and compete. When I think of LA, I think of the music business and how many people are working so hard to do exactly what I am trying to do. I wish us all the best of luck and extra energy.
W.E. How would you describe your impression of the Wesleyan University music culture and how it impacted/impacts you as a musician?
F.A. Oh I loved the Wesleyan music culture. I had never been exposed to so much world music, so much experimental, so much avant-garde music. It was at Wesleyan that I first learned about African music which I love to no end. I was able to play the balafon in a Mande ensemble and performed a Pygmy piece that consisted of blowing on different bottles. I had this great class called Performing Emily where we deconstructed Emily Dickinson poems and made performance pieces about them. I got to take Jazz Improv with Anthony Braxton and we performed his opera that took place in an office building but he never gave us a starting pitch so we had to rely on this one kid who had perfect pitch and then sight read til the end of class. And my favorite teacher at Wesleyan was Alvin Lucier who ran my Music Major seminar. We had to compose about 12 mini pieces on different instruments - I remember one of the experimental musicians wrote a song for the koto player to play where she was supposed to use different tools to play her koto. One of them looked a whole lot like a vibrator and I thought the poor girl might faint. By the end of that class, we had all written a sting quartet and seen it performed by a professional group - pretty amazing. Thank you, Wesleyan.
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