World Oceans Arts

    I suppose what has always struck me -- and so many others --the most about the arts is simply the mindblowing beauty that can be achieved. Things happen in music, visual arts, words, acting, movement that seem impossible in any other context. I still feel chills and an inability to speak when I hear or see the myriad miracles which come from artistic expression. The heart-pounding thrill when I heard a Beethoven concerto or watched a thrilling circus act or glimpsed a famous person as a child is still there and it still feels just as overwhelming. Maybe that is why I think we artists are the luckiest people alive. Not only do we get to experience the same astounding highs of the arts, but we get to be an inner part of it.      That is also why we feel the deepest pain, the length of frustration and sadness, the sharpness of division and misunderstanding and jealousy which have wracked the human world since it began. So in times like the present, when the worst public health crisi

Hello everyone, If you are able to read this, we are grateful that you are alive and hopefully doing what is needed to remain healthy. To begin with the most important thing: it is only by the world acting as a community, a family, that everyone will survive and prosper and move ahead of the current pandemic. If we each place the lives and interests of others higher than our own desires, this will succeed. Please consider supporting Artists at the Bottom, Friends at the Top.  This fund helps creative and performing artists who face dire circumstances. At present ALL funds received will go directly to help people who are negatively affected by the corona virus. Just email us if you can make a donation. Bundles  are one way that we at World Oceans Arts can raise funds to help those in need, while also providing work for our own artists, and providing a steady stream of entertainment and learning. Our bundles consist of things like films, music recordings and videos, written poetry an

Hello everyone! I would like to provide you with an update on what has been happening with World Oceans Arts -- and even more importantly, what is going to happen during the rest of this year. This update is the result of many ideas, meetings, communication from our artists and audiences, and more. It is also, unavoidably, an update on where we are as a result of the virus pandemic sweeping the globe. The good news is that at WOA we are moving forward with vigor, new ideas and projects, new resources and new audiences. For those who may be new to us or confused by all our memos and blogs and announcements: World Oceans Arts is the production company sibling to AcquaTroupe, which is a live performance ensemble. James Gibson Arts is an adjunct to both entities which links my own professional activities to both those organizations. Collectively and humorously we are known as JAW. World Oceans Arts is currently in the recording studio and we have been for some time! We began a series o

Every so often it is healthy for people working together to assess where they are and what they have done. We are affectionately known as JAW (James Gibson Arts, AcquaTroupe and World Oceans Arts). For all practical purposes, we are one unit. We are several hundred people in contact with one another, most of us creative or performing artists. We are trying to use artistic expression to make the world a little better, to inspire and fulfill people, to offer our interpretations of life and the universe in meaningful ways. AcquaTroupe is rapidly filling up the calendar with future performance commitments and projects throughout North America and Europe. World Oceans Arts is steadily moving through the huge mission of bringing two new movies to the screen: 1969  and Litany,  both of which will offer broad commentary on our world today and on who we are as people. Our artistic director is finding the time to publish, record and distribute his 300+ original creations and to mentor some of

We are all drawn toward heroic figures, perhaps in part because they teach and impress us in extraordinary ways; and perhaps because they allow us to imagine ourselves bigger and more powerful than we think we are. People who act heroically come in all shapes and sizes. They may even escape our notice until the effects of their heroism spread widely. My spiritual belief is that every human is potentially heroic; but I also think we should praise and emulate those whose heroism is huge and astonishing. Greta Thunberg is an amazing small young woman from what she terms a small country (Sweden), but she has awakened several billion people to the fact that so many still refuse or fail to recognize: we have overheated our planet to a point of real danger. At age sixteen she shows herself to be much wiser and bolder than so many older people who should be leading our way. Stephen Hawking, who passed away last year, was as overwhelming an example of mind over matter as one could ever imag

    Warning: This is a thread of a composer's rambling thoughts......if I make generalizations about people who create music and other arts, it is usually because I learned the hard way that some generalized behaviors are self-defeating. People cannot perform the arts if people do not create the arts. One of my favorite lines in an old movie is from All About Eve: 'When will the piano learn that it did not write the concerto?'      I have always been energized and proud that I could write music and also play the piano and sing. I seem to do everything in multiples: not being satisfied with a film and theatre production entity called World Oceans Arts, my friends and I also created AcquaTroupe. We gave AT the mission of bringing the arts into live performance.The late great composer Karel Husa once told me I was most fortunate in being able to perform my own music. Many composers sing badly and cannot play any instruments. This does not mean they cannot compose great music