Bush Foundation Artist Fellows Program 2001
Music Composition due November 3, 2000

What I find most interesting in re-visiting this are:

1. How grown up my children are now

2. How I accomplished everything I set out to do after writing this grant, (since I did not receive money to do it).
I learned much from the writing of it.

All answers from the Application must fit into a specific space.

Page One

Application Summary (name, address etc.)

Page Two

Please list the relevant accomplishments by type (e.g., commissions, education, performances, etc.) and in chronological order, beginning with your most recent.

List of Accomplishments

Music Releases

11/2000 Video of Original Yule Show released on VHS and on the Web

10/2000 Inclusion on MCR Compilation vol.2

12/1999 CD and Songbook: A Yuletide Celebration. Original music to honor the Winter Solstice. Sold on-line, in local stores and at gigs.

10/1998 CD Faith in Me sold on-line, in stores and at gigs.

1/1994 Thorn Live and a variety of demos, soon to be on-line.

1991 and 1992 Rose Absolute and RA: Some Kind of Mecca

2006 complete discography

Performances - partial listing

Currently creating and performing in: A Yuletide Celebration 2000 December 22 and 23, Patrick's Cabaret in Minneapolis. New original script and music honoring Winter Solstice and our community.

August and October 2000 Minnesota Coalition Records Showcases

11/00, Ralph Nader Rally including improvisation and spoken word

December 1999 wrote, directed and performed in multi-media performance: A Yuletide Celebration - Discovering Origins and Building Traditions.

I've been playing out in Minneapolis and the surrounding area for over 10 years and have played in England and Paris, France.

I have sung in choirs, madrigal groups, as a soloist, and played in orchestras and bands all my life. I won awards in College, High School and through 4-H in music and theater.

Internet Activity

www.karitauring.com launched in December 2000, over 17,000 hits.
MP3.com/artist/karitauring launched in October 1999. Statistics include # 2 Folk rock song, top 10 in Minnesota, CD's sold globally.
Minnesota-music.com - co-creator and contributing essayist.

Teaching - partial listing

Fall 2000 Created and implemented Curriculum for Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Rhetoric and Persuasion.

Spring 2000 Created and implemented Curriculum for MCAD in Learning and Teaching

Taught private voice lessons 1997-1999

Workshops on Dream Work, Writing, and Lakota Medicine Wheel
Mothering

Home birthed Jack in April 1997 and Oskar in February 1995
Volunteering in PTO, Community Council and School, constant feng shui

Education

1996 Master of Arts in Teaching from U of St. Thomas, St. Paul

1988 BA in Philosophy and English from St. Thomas

Private voice, guitar and violin lessons (all my life)

Page 3

Please describe the main concerns ofyou work. For example, you may discuss your style, subject matter, working process, or other aspects of your work.

I will call myself a Philosophical Entertainer. My concerns are for community and social issues, Earth-based spirituality, and the process of heightening human consciousness. My music has been classified as pop-rock, urban folk, and pagan spiritual. Diligent self-examination and the continual process of learning and growing give me lyric content that is at once personal and universal. Like Plato, I believe that absolutes such as Truth, Justice and Integrity exist and are able to be remembered by all of us. My Taoist understanding teaches me that I must explore all aspects of the Universal…yin and yang, negative and positive. By honestly searching them out in myself and striving to maintain balance, I can be an example for others and my words and music can inspire others to maintain the balance in their lives.
I journal, converse, write essays and poetry, read, and record my dreams. Lyrics come to me through these means. Tunes come to me constantly through messing on my guitar or piano. Sometimes they start with a rhythm when I am walking. Often I create songs of gratitude while I am doing the mundane tasks of life. I have a constant flow of creative ideas. Mothering was something I needed to do to help me decide which of the thousand ideas sparking and flitting through my head are really important. It takes time to manifest these songs in the physical world. Time for my own thoughts…that is something rare and wonderful and it is becoming more available as my children enter school.
The Yule shows let me focus on one project. It is a show that explores our pagan origins so my lyric content has a seasonal and mythological focus. The music is not confined to a particular genre and I have been able to reach into my past experience with choirs and orchestras, composing and arranging music for many voices and instrumentation. I have also been able to work in new areas such as drumming and chanting with traditional call and response techniques. (Manifest - HULDRE!)

New ideas for this show continue to well up in me. I began the process of writing an operatic confrontation between Tiamat and Marduk that will change the outcome of the original mythology to one where the respect between mother and son is maintained. I chose opera for this piece because of the quality of dialectic available in this style. I would like to write songs for the other seasons as well. (DONE AND DOING!)

Aside from this, I have written songs about my life as it is now, mothering and struggling to maintain my relationships with my mate, myself, my family. I would like to write a full CD of songs that reflect this and are not part of the seasonal focus. (Sould be done recording Sept. 2006)

Page 4

Please describe how you would use a Bush Artist Fellowship. You may describe the general directions you plan to pursue or specific activities you intend to undertake. Your comments may be as brief as you like but please limit them to this page.

The rarest commodity in my life, something I haven't had in six years…Time. Specifically, time alone, uninterrupted sleep and dream-time, work on my music time, being as loud as I like time…
This is a description of what a week could be like with a Bush Fellowship:
Sunday I drive to Wisconsin and nest at my Grandmother's Farm now belonging to my sister. I write, read; walk in the Sugar Maple groves…there are 160 acres of alone time to be had here! I sleep and dream and write it out. I wake on Monday morning and there is dew too thick to walk in. Sometimes I plunk away at the piano, which I have hooked up to the computer so I can document everything I write. Sometimes I plug in my fiddle and mess with the foot pedals…eerie. I record everything and keep meticulous notes here…it was my Grandmother's way.
Monday night the music tears through quiet sleep compelling me. I can move on it…I can wake no one but the dead…I am alone! I write like a mad thing and the connection from my head to the heavens is clear and uninterrupted by matters of mothering. This night I work for the cherubim, the old ones and myself, my laptop, keyboard microphones, pens and feathers paper and bark. All the implications for the future are present and all the problems of the past are present because I am in the moment, clear and clean in the fresh air, carrying on the work of all my relations. And now, in silence un-interrupted, I clip my nails.
Tuesday is food and beverage day. Creation is hungry work. I am in the woods, in the barn, in the old broken-down silo…I don't worry about children following me. Tuesday night I will browse through the books that have collected in this house since the 1800's. I will search my Grandmother's old side notes for a lyric. I scribble and do a painting; I pace and wonder about things…I sleep alone and get a full night's rest…ah what a joy, but lonesome because I miss my family.
Wednesday I use my existing web-site as a database to document my work. I print, fax, save, and back up, down load, up load, pack and head home. That is a week's work.
Thursday through Sunday I am Mother, lover, gardener, house keeper, cook, writer, doctor, teacher, other parts of me…once again.
I would use the Bush Fellowship for this, for travel, for computer upgrades, new gear, and to put together two CD's of newly written songs. But mostly, the Bush Fellowship could buy me some time. Instead of spending 28 hours a week temping and teaching, paying bills, I could be writing, composing and producing music. I could get a lot done!

2006 complete discography yes, more than two cds of original work.

Page 5

Additional information

Other than media reviews, and response from family, friends and fans, my work has only been evaluated before based on how much beer it could sell in a bar or whether a record company could make a buck off of it. I have never had my work evaluated for compositional merit and lyric quality alone. This excites me to no end!

So I send you the songs that mean the most to me as a composer and on a spiritual level rather than the most polished, produced, or "sellable" work I have done.

I hope you enjoy it.

2006 - since then I have had so much professional critique and I do not support my family on the trickle down affect from the sale of beer, though most venues appreciate it. Both boys, now 11 and 9, sleep through the night - so do I. Since my boys are in school I have the time as stated in my Fellowship Application for Multimedia Performance Art in 2005, I have the gear I need. All of these things are clipping right along (as this website attests to!)

Page 6

Work Samples

Track One - running time 3.33

"Remember Me" Copyright 1991, Kari Tauring/Rose Absolute
This is the first song I recorded describing my path to the Feminine Divine through the statue of Mary at the church across the street from my childhood home. It was a risk, at the time, to release it. Coming out of the "broom closet" so to speak. I re-recorded it for you.

Track Two - running time 4.54
"Faith in Me" Copyright 1998

Track Three - running time 3.21
"Starlight Yule Bright" Copyright 1999, Kari Tauring
A close second for best winter holiday song on MP3.com.

Track Four - running time 4.50
"Winter's Come" Copyright 1999, Kari Tauring
Written while visiting my grandmother on her farm. Performed at Yule 1999 with a live band and three dancers representing the three aspects of the Triple Goddess (Maiden Mother and Crone) Video footage available upon request (or on the web at karitauring.com)

Track Five - running time 2.43
"Mother, mate, myself"
(Also known lovingly as The Stressed Out Mom Song)
Written June 2000 - recorded for the purpose of this Fellowship Application

Page 7

Artist profile

Questions here pertain to references, education level, income bracket and ethnicity. The answers are not seen by panelists and so do not influence their opinion of my work.

2006 - Hmmm...what will I write this time?!