The Paul Wells Show - Encore: The symphonic Joni Mitchell with Sarah Slean

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Singer-songwriter Sarah Slean talks about Joni Mitchell’s enduring influence on music and women in the arts, as she prepares to perform orchestral versions of Mitchell’s songs with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Audio sources: Glenn Gould, Joni Mitchell, Sarah Slean This episode originally aired on October 5th, 2022

Hi, it's Paul Wells. I'm almost certain you missed this the first time, so here's your chance to try again. Welcome to another Encore episode of The Paul Wells Show. Music It's a big world out there and sometimes it seems like it's breaking. Some people try to help fix it by singing. This week, singer Sarah Slean on the symphonic Joni Mitchell. Sometimes it seems like it's breaking. Some people try to help fix it by singing. This week, singer Sarah Slean on the symphonic Joni Mitchell. So many of her albums escaped me in my 20s because I was like, what?

Like, huh? And then you listen in your 40s and you're like, oh. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. I'm a big classical music fan. I mean really big. Every year when the big orchestra has announced their concerts for the coming season, I take a look at their schedules to see whether I can plan some travel around a concert somewhere. And I've been kind of blue lately because I can't be in Vancouver at the end of the month to hear Sarah Slean, the great singer-songwriter, playing a concert of Joni Mitchell songs with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The thing is, I'm also a late blooming

Joni Mitchell fan. This is only something that's been happening in the last 10 years or so. Sometimes I'm slow to catch up, but I know a little bit about the music that Sarah Slean is going to be singing in Vancouver. It's drawn from two of Joni Mitchell's last albums. In 2000 and 2002, Joni was in her 50s, slowing down a bit, and she recorded two albums with a string orchestra, Both Sides Now and Travelogue. The arrangements were by this guy Vince Mendoza, a leading writer of pop and jazz for orchestras. That's what Sarah Slean is going to perform in Vancouver at the end of October. Vince Mendoza's arrangements, Off Both Sides Now and Travelogue. A few of these songs are Joni Mitchell classics, but a lot of them are deep cuts from her weird

70s and 80s albums. Collaborations with musicians like Jaco Pastorius and Charlie Mingus, sometimes almost punky albums or new agey albums. You almost have to be Sarah Slean to tackle this material. She was classically trained. She's written for orchestras, which is not for the faint of heart. She's been nominated for three Juneau awards. Honestly, I'm not sure why she hasn't won one yet.

And she's a lifelong Joni Mitchell fan. I decided if I couldn't go to these remarkable concerts, I could tell you about them and I could talk to Sarah about them. I'm glad I did. I've never met her before, but she understood right away why I wanted to talk about all of this. We're beginning to understand as a society

what Joni Mitchell means to us. Sarah Slean gets how powerful a musical force she's been. What an inspiration and an example for women in the arts. We talked about all of that. And we talked about longevity in the arts. What happens when music goes from being a career to being a life. An artist sees and hears things in the work

of another artist that the rest of us might miss. Talking to Sarah Slean was a privilege and a tremendous pleasure. And after the break, I hope you'll join us to listen in. ["Skinny Pantsy"] Sarah Slean, thanks for joining us. I hope you'll join us to listen in. Seriously, and thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Paul. So let me tell you why I called.

I'm a big orchestral music geek and every season when the various symphony orchestras come out with their seasons, I check out what they're going to do and sometimes I travel to hear them. come out with their seasons, I check out what they're going to do. And sometimes I travel to hear them. And I was so bummed that, uh, you're playing Vince Mendoza arrangements of the Joni Mitchell songbook, uh, at the other end of the country. And I can't, I can't make it out, but I thought I could at least ask you about it. This is the second time that you have done this program. You did it in Saskatoon in Joni's hometown in 2018.

Is this in fact the fourth time I've done this program? So let me tell you how this started. In Saskatoon, there is, you know, orchestras, it's a great big cruise ship that someone amazing needs to steer, right? There are lots of moving parts. There are all kinds of different audiences to appease and appeal to. It's a huge undertaking.

It's kind of like opera in that effect. And then it's like, it's such an ancient, amazing tradition, but it's very expensive. It's resource rich. It's such a draw on staff. And like, there's so many moving parts. So you really need someone dynamic to kind of drive the bus. And when institutions like orchestras find that person, they really blossom and thrive.

And that's happening in Saskatoon. There is a guy there by the name of Mark Turner, who has all kinds of great vision for his orchestra. So he got the idea for Joni Mitchell's anniversary. I believe it was her birthday, like it was like a 75th birthday or something. It was in 2018. He wanted to do a big celebratory show for her and he's like, why can't Vince Mendoza conduct it? Let's do that music. Let's get Vince to come and do it.

And, you know, most people are like, what? Saskatoon? No way he'd come to Saskatoon. Mark made it happen. And he was trying to make it happen for many years and it finally ended up coming together and Vince insisted that Pete Erskine join him, the incredible drummer at Livingston on bass, another incredible American musician, and Mark called me and said, would you like to sing this program? And I fell off my chair and when I recovered,

I got to work learning all of the music again. But I know this music so well because like you, I absolutely adore these albums and I just think the music is so special. It's very unusual. It's a really fitting mix of Joni's influences because Vince is such a respected figure in jazz. It's the perfect marriage of two geniuses really and a perfect way to honor the breadth of her career.

It's so beautiful to me too that the voice she has singing these tunes is like a woman who has lived a remarkable story and has lived a lot of life. And the sort of shadow it casts or the perspective it gives to the earlier versions of those songs, some of them iconic treasured songs that she wrote when she was in her twenties. Like it's just really, really unusual and original in the sort of musical landscape. So yeah, that was the first time. That was Saskatoon in 2018 and then recently Regina, Calgary and Niagara. My motivation is revealed. I'm hoping that we can drum up enough publicity so that some orchestra will bring you over the lakehead to do it in

Toronto or Montreal or Ottawa so I can actually go and check it out. I would love that. I've got a long history with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, so hopefully that will happen. But Toronto, I haven't played with Toronto in, oh, probably 15, 18 years, 19 years. So word to the wise, if anyone's listening. It's an unusual thing for us. Well, it's not an automatic thing for a singer-songwriter who's made so many albums from a fiercely individualistic perspective to essentially lend your voice to someone else's music

and someone else's context. Does that feel like you're stepping down from a pinnacle or you're simply operating in another environment or? No, I'm paying tribute to the absolute guru of an individualist musical career. I mean, that is Joni in a nutshell. She is the quintessential iconoclast. She is to me that she is the poster child for that mentality of like I especially being a woman in the crazy time of the music industry that she lived. I mean,

she was in the ring with all of these male bands, all of these male songwriters, male legendary jazz musicians making an album with Mingus. Like in the time that she did these things, they were unheard of. And people were, you know, there were a lot of raised eyebrows, like who does she think she is, or how dare she, or you know, like, everybody wanted her to stay the long haired, like, angelic folky that she started out as.

And she simply adamantly refused. Her only allegiance was to her own inner artistic compass. And, uh, I just think that takes a really huge helping of audacity and courage and strength to do that in that particular era and being, and being a woman, I really, I just, I admire it so much. It surely helped her back in the day when she was hanging out with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Dylan and Leonard Cohen,

that she brought just astonishing musical chops to the table. She went through that scene because she was so pretty, because she loved men and because she was very many of them. She went through that scene like a, they pretty, because she loved men, and because she was better than any of them. She went through that scene like a, like a, they didn't know how to deal with it. They didn't. They didn't. And you know what, like when you say that, it's, it's so true.

Like had she looked slightly different, would we be talking about the, the icon that she became? Like it's just so, it's so unfortunate that that even played a role. She is a genius. She's not a quote unquote female genius. She is a straight up genius. Every aspect of her art to me is leagues beyond all of her contemporaries, male or female, in songwriting, in making albums, in production, in singing, in playing, in every aspect. And I think it's just like, it's an absolute crime that Dylan and Neil Young and Leonard Cohen are all talked about so naturally as, you know, of course they're giants when not the same was true over the decades when people were

talking about Joni critically. It's only now where people are like, whoa, she's a stone cold genius and she's like in that league. Of course she's in that league. In fact, she had to be like better than all of them to be in that league. See, I have a feeling that those guys know, even if they might have been slowing down in that game at the moment, right? But they know now and they have never quite recovered. That's 100% true.

And you know, the thing I love about Joni too is like, she's unapologetic about that. She's like, I knew what I was doing. And she'll go on Instagram and say things like, well, I'm so delighted to see that people are really enjoying the album Blue, you know, 50 years later, you finally get it. She'll just, she'll say things like that and we don't want, we don't want women to behave that way. We don't want women to be self-assured of their own talent. We don't want them thinking they're really good. We don't, we don't like that. We don't accept it in this culture and Joni doesn't care, you know,

and she's album after album. You know, even the stuff in the 80s where I was like, huh, what is going on here? I don't even understand this. You know, she just was constantly pushing her own envelope, pushing her own limits, expanding constantly. And I mean, like, I don't even think Dylan did that after a while. How did she find her way into your ears and into your life? Was it since time immemorial or was there a moment when you started to check Joni Mitchell out?

My teens. So I was classically trained and I was really, you know, deeply in love with classical music until the flowering of adolescence when suddenly you have huge emotions and songwriters start to speak to those huge emotions and Joni Mitchell's Blue was my gateway drug into her universe. I think that's true for a lot of people. And I just remember thinking, first of all, how aesthetically beautiful it was, how on every level, how catchy, but also how profound,

but also how memorable, and how at times unexpected chord shadings, and like just loving the album, playing it over and over again, letting it sort of sink into me. It was so palatable at first, right? It's so easy to listen to, it's so enjoyable, but then it really lands in your soul, I find. So then I explored the rest of her catalogue and so many of her albums escaped me in my 20s because I was like, what? Like,

huh? And then you listen in your 40s and you're like, oh, you know, because you have to have gone through some things in life or matured or, you know, just had some experiences to really understand her perspective then. Like that's, I think that's also part of her genius. Were there specific elements of some of her songs that you tried to incorporate into your own work? You know, I think when you're young and you first start writing songs, you are so unabashedly imitating your heroes.

Like you can't help yourself, right? Because you're so unformed. You're still, you're still such a seedling. You know, there's so much Tori Amos all over my earlier recordings and there's so much Sarah McLaughlin and the folkier side of Joni. But I was never a guitar player, so I never really hooked into that part of her aesthetic. But I did try, it wasn't a conscious decision, but I did really respond to the immediacy of her lyrics and the imagery and the real skill with words that she possesses, the real creative,

beautiful way she has with words. So I've always admired that and always wanted to be that. So I could say that would be the extent of her influence. I was never really directly imitating her because I don't think it's possible with someone like Joni. Almost any way you get into her music, almost any angle you approach it from, she's got such a large concept. She crams a hell of a lot of words into a lyric. She's got rich harmonies that you don't normally hear in folk music or pop

music. She puts a lot on the table. She does. She's so clearly a painter to me. That's another thing about her that I just, I think is so unique and really truly informs her process and why it's so special and so like unusual and interesting and grabs us is because she's a painter. She's not a trained musician.

She absorbed all this stuff in her early folk days and she absorbed jazz. She just absorbed it so instinctually. It was really her ear and what her ear wanted to hear was responding to the different tunings and things like that because she was literally painting. She was painting with sounds, with chord extensions, with her lyrics. The whole thing was so very visual. That's why you get all these like unexpected turns of harmony and the shading of it. It's so

it's almost like Debussy to me. When I rehearse these these pieces, I play them and I look at the scores and half the time when I'm playing I'm like, I didn't realize she did that. Like, whoa, like I would never do that. As a person who like started day one in Western harmony, learning that system and that system embedding itself into my ears. She's got all this stuff that moves around, so many pastels and so many, you know, rebellion kind of effects that are so artistic, so coloristic. And it's not like she's deliberately doing it. This is just the way her mind and her creativity and her ears are.

These two albums that are the basis for these concerts, Both Sides Now, Travelogged, based on arrangements by this Vince Mendoza, who's a prominent sort of jazz influenced orchestrator, they come at a really significant moment in her career, which is when she's trying to get a record contract off of her table. So she, you know, we'll do these two albums, but also she's not sure that she's going to be performing again.

These are very kind of autumnal recordings. How do you think that influenced the process of making them? And how does that, how does that influence the way that you hear them? I think that the collaborators she chooses, she's very deliberate about that. I mean you can't work with Herbie Hancock and people like that and you know just go like, I'll just crank out an orchestral record and then we'll call it a day. She is always interested in making something exquisite and

up to her standard. And I think Vince is that choice. Like he did a beautiful job with this stuff. And Travelogue, like that's a double record. There's so much material on that. And I think he's really, I mean, not only her, not only the new treatment with the full orchestra and these jazz influenced stylings, but also where she is in life and where her voice now sits. Like we're talking 2000 and 2002. I think those two pieces really make these records interesting to me.

Specifically, the comparison I always call to mind is the Goldberg variations with Glenn Gould. And when, you know, he made that, the first recording he made when he was, you know, I think 20 or 20 something, it was like the 52 recording or 51. And it's dazzling, it's sparkling, and it's all of the like the energy and effortlessness of youth and his genius, you know, leaping out into the world stage. And Joni, of course, made that record too, you know,

like whether it's Lady of the Canyon or Clouds or Blue or whatever you want to call it, but like she had the same thing where like everyone was suddenly like, wow, who's that? And then you have the same piece where everyone was suddenly like, wow, who's that? And then you have the same piece, in Joanie's case, it's specifically the song both sides now. That's the comparison I think maps so beautifully to Gould, is his 1982 version of Goldberg Variations was slow. It was almost a parody, right? It was like so slow, so bittersweet, so poignant, so full of the decades he'd lived before.

Like, it was a man, like you say, autumnal, like later in life, reflecting. And all of that is in his playing. We have these perfect comparisons, you know, a one-to-one comparison. And we have the same with Joni. And I feel the same feels when I listen to that later version of like, isn't this just life? You know, you have some triumphs and you have some disappointments and you have all the beauty and heartache of living is

there in that later one. And that's why I think they're, you know, so it's so special to have that almost as a time capsule, you know? It's funny because she writes both sides now. That's the whole point of the song, right? Is that you see things differently, uh, from the other side and she can't have known when she wrote it, how true she would be able to make it later. That's a hell of a trick. Isn't that incredible?

It's very moving actually, especially the content. Like you say, the lyrics in that song. Oh, like the later version just makes me fall to pieces, especially with Mendoza's orchestration, which is so... It hovers very nebulously in the beginning. The violas are just doing this sort of, they're making a fog. ["Mendoza's Orchestration"]

And Joanie's low, low voice emerges from that fog. Rows and flows of angel hair. And it's just, yeah, the layers of meaning are really, really poignant and felt. See, I asked you what your path to Joni Mitchell was. That was mine. That actual later recording, because I spent more than 30, 40 years wasting my life listening, like I was a real jazz head. And then in 2010, at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics, I'm sitting there in BC plays and

this recording of someone singing both sides now comes out and I wasn't even sure who it was. It was like well, is that Shirley Horn? Is it Diana Krall? Then Wayne Shorter, the wonderful saxophonist who played with her for 20 years and is still close friends of hers. I heard him and I thought, oh, it's Joni Mitchell. And the funny thing doing my research this week is that those albums, and especially the Travelogue album, which is more of her original material, mostly got lousy reviews at the time. And it was mostly because of that voice. The people who'd grown up with young Joni

were not that interested in hearing her with a coarser voice in a lower register and I find that astonishing because that's the Joni Mitchell that I fell in love with. I mean I don't want to sound like a broken record but it's like I know there's a theme of people like falling in love with an artist at a certain point and not wanting them to evolve. I understand that happens. But I find especially with female artists who are super gifted like Joni Mitchell, like

it is so clear, right? People do not want them to change. How dare they? How dare they explore artistically? Be what you are. Be grateful. You know, and it's like, you know, men are allowed to evolve. Men are allowed to take risks and to explore. I mean, Leonard Cohen was never a singer. Ever. Ever! It's not even part of his gig, right? Like, nobody cared that he couldn't sing. But, you know, I think Joni's low voice delivers the truth of those lyrics even more powerfully.

You know, like when you're singing about both sides now and the content of that lyric, it's almost more convincing from an older person. It's less convincing from a 20 something. I've looked at clouds from both sides now. From up and down and still somehow. How do you know? You're only 25 or whatever. And you have not experienced an arc yet. You may have little narratives going on, but you don't have a grand arc yet. You don't have the perspective.

And yeah, I just really, I think it's like, it's a shame that we don't let artists evolve and change because some people who have little eruptions of success in the beginning, if they keep trying to chase that earlier success, they, you know, maybe they will never replicate it again and they've lost the chance to expand and grow. Whereas, you know, like who knows what's waiting around the corner if they follow their muse and expand and evolve as all artists must, you know.

Are these things you've struggled with yourself as your career turns into a life? Beautifully put, Paul. Dang. And the rights you're living. I liked that. I liked that so much. Yes. Yes.

And this is part of the reason I'm so, I feel such a connection to Joni Mitchell. That's not vanity by any stretch of the imagination. It's more, I look to her as a guiding light. It's very hard in a culture such as ours that, you know, has pretty clear and shallow motivations on the surface. It's very hard to continue to follow your artistic light, to follow your own creativity and to trust it and to not doubt it and to not just fall back on what has worked before. But everything is in constant motion. The times are always changing. If I was to try and make a copy

of my most best-selling record to date, which did not sell tons and tons of like Arkell's level records. If I was to try and copy that, it would be a dismal failure because the times have moved on even more so from then, right? So it's just, I think as artists, we just have to do that. Like I would bust tables before I would make music that I didn't believe in.

And I've always been that way, which is, you know, why I look at someone like Joni and be like, wow, this rare unicorn could do it and actually have a massive career. Amazing, you know? But it's difficult for all the reasons I've mentioned. Hey, what was your best-selling album? Day One. I've been going back and listening to your discography this week and I mean Day One was a, in a lot of ways, a much

more assured kind of production than what had come before. But I'll tell you my favorite album that I listened to this week is Metaphysics, your most recent one from 2017. Oh, bless you for saying so. Did it sell? Does anything sell anymore or does it just stream? Well, this is the thing. I do some mentoring here and there because I get lots of people, young people, how do I break into the music industry? At which point I just kind of go, I don't know because you're asking me how to break into today's music industry

and I'm as foreign to that as you are. I come from a completely radically different time. All I can do is I tell people like it's the whoosh, it's the sparkles, like whatever whatever name you need to put to it, what is grabbing your interest? What is pulling all of the threads of your consciousness into a straight line? You know. And we all have something like that that will kind of capture our attention, pull at our souls and engage us. Maybe it's books, maybe it's certain television shows, whatever it is. For me, it's like when I start creating something musically and it grabs me. That's the most exciting, most fun, wonderful time

out of the whole breadth of musical experiences I have had. Performing is a close, close second. I mean, performing can be elation, but the rush, the sparkles you get when something creatively has come to you and is starting to roll out, I try to focus on how pure that is, how right it is, and how I know that it's what I'm supposed to be following. Whether someone will buy it or not is not my concern. I notice that you and I are the only people I know

who both follow a singer named Jenny Burkle. She's a poet before she's a singer. She's got this album out called These Are The Sounds Left From Leaving. I think it's the best album of the year. And I can't, like, I don't know what to do except talk about it on a podcast because, cause she's not on much music, but because nobody is.

Oh, and you don't see her making reels on Instagram, right? And we have this weird, we can slate these days, like visibility with competence and artistic merit. Like those two things, there's no, you cannot draw a straight line between those two things. Like just someone is like extremely visible Does not mean they're good. It just doesn't and I don't know how you would be a poet and devote

50% of your life to Thrusting your face into the public's eyes Like I it's not possible the only reason we have Leonard Cohen's and Joni Mitchell's at all, and you know, Lorca's and Rumi's and all of these, you know, great minds who write words that, you know, will last over the centuries is because they had all of this white space in their lives. Emptiness with which to let the mind drift, to let the mind think, to absorb the zeitgeist, to be in the world. It's almost like we've been invaded and we have to defend that white space. And I think Jenny does that actually well. Like I don't know how you could write like

she does without it. I want to ask about working with string ensembles and eventually with orchestras. I mean you grew up with that sound in your head but was it a challenge to bring it into your music? It can be tricky, amplified music and orchestras. Well this is the beauty of youth, you don't consider these things. You know like when I was in my 20s I was like I don't write music, I know how to read music and I want these people to play with me so I just write the notes on the page and then they play them. The ignorance is so blissful, right? I don't know how to write music, I know how to read music, and I want these people to play with me, so I just write the notes on the page, and then they play them. The ignorance is so blissful, right?

You don't know like, oh, there are people that do this very, very well, and you have to know such and such. All of that was completely unknown to me, and I just thought, well, I'm just gonna do this. And I would find the person at U of T in the courtyard with the appropriate case, and I would ask the person at U of T in the courtyard with the appropriate case and I would ask them if they wanted to play on my indie record and they would and I would just I had like

Literally, I would just give them the score that I'd written in pencil on manuscript and I didn't even have parts This is before like notation software and if I wanted to change something I would cut out a piece and tape it, like seriously, scissors and tape. And I just was, you know, simply wanted to hear those sounds on my recordings. Didn't realize the full scope of how well this particular skill could be done. So I started and I listened to those earlier recordings now as a fairly competent

orchestrator I'm like, oh, oh God, shouldn't have done that, didn't realize it, didn't know how to do this, but the audacity of youth was very helpful in that instance. And I, when I look over the years, you have to sort of keep some of that ignorance and audacity alive because as you continue in music, you meet more and more talented people. You sort of ascend into circles of more and more skilled professionals. So I would, you know, meet people that are really, really good at scoring and then to be like, oh, and I would just pick up things and I would learn little tricks and I would listen

to my own earlier iterations and go this needs to do this instead and I would just, I was learning simply as I went along but unless I, like if I was intimidated by all of these people that I'd met or You know becoming aware that a lot of people do this and do it really well. I would have stopped doing it so I was always 100% focused on on trying to translate what I heard in my mind into the world that was always my intention and I I really you know Didn't ask myself if I was qualified to do so, you know. And I actually think that that's kind of the way it should be, you know, for a creative artist,

because it's almost like you, the skill gets developed by doing it. It's like when, I think it's Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet, he was put on trial by the Soviet regime at one point for being unproductive. And in court, one of the prosecution lawyers said, who qualified you to be a poet? And he said, nobody. Who qualified you to be a human being? Bam. That's the attitude. I don't want to put you on the spot.

Are you working on an album these days or thinking about an album or thinking about raising a kid or what? Oh yeah. Well, this is the thing. Like I think as I get older, my albums get, you know, the years sort of stretch in between them. And my last album now was 2017. However, I did release an album with, like an EP with Huxley, and then I did a record with Symphony Nova Scotia. So technically, there are some albums out there with me. And I'm more interested in collaboration these days because my criteria for creating a project that is me,

has my name on it, has always been like, have I transformed in a way that I feel like I need, I need to tell the world? You know, it's not like, oh, gotta make a record. It's been two years, let's make a record. Let's find some things to sing songs about. Like it's, that's never been, it's not the way the muse speaks to me. The muse speaks to me when I have marinated, I guess, long enough on on various things, like whether it is the zeitgeist and there's so much to

marinate on that right now, or it's interpersonal things, or it's like life changes, like becoming a parent and all these things. Unless I've transformed and felt like I have acquired new truths or new shades of truths, I don't write. And for me, it's been quickening lately. It's been kind of starting to roll lately because I'm convinced it's because I have a child and I have such a radically different take on the world at large. But also I've been really busy with collaborative projects and with projects like Mahdi, the musical that I'm writing,

which is just a massive undertaking. It's like 30 plus songs. I'm also working on a classical commission for the Iris Trio. And I'm also on the So Can board and I've also been doing some CBC radio. So I've been extremely busy for the past five years and haven't really had a time to sit with those, you know, marinated ideas and wait for them to kind of germinate into something. But I do, I confess, I do feel that happening now. And I even this in the second year of a master's degree in music composition at York.

Wow. That I've been doing online, which is a blessing. And I think for that, my end of year research paper and composition that I have to submit, that will be the seed of my next recording. Hey, Sarah, I'm glad I called. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for listening to me blather on in my COVID infected voice. I mean, I wish we had twice as much time, but maybe we'll just do it again sometime. Thanks for talking to me. We appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to the Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexta. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. Our executive producers are Lisa Gabriel and Laura Ruggier. Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. The music was written and performed by Kevin Bright. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. you