Luke Jeffery - The Sea in Between

A few weeks ago, I attended a show in Virginia Beach that was put on by one of my favorite artists, Josh Garrels.  I've been following Josh's work for over five years now and have just now been able to go to a show of his.  Recently, Josh's music, which is a unique blend of folk, hip-hop, electronica and singer-songwriter,  has been getting much more popular and he's received nationwide notoriety for his incredible work.  This is mainly due to the fact that he released his last album for free and it went viral across the nation.

After this giveaway album had spread, a man in Canada called Josh, asking him to come up to the island that he lived on to write and record with a group of musicians known as the Mason Jar Collective.  Josh agreed, not knowing what was in store, and set off on a weeklong journey to find out what creativity could produce amongst them.  In the midst of planning, they decided that the best way to document this experience was to make a movie out of it, and thus the documentary, "The Sea in Between" was produced through this experience.

At the show that I attended in Virginia Beach, they showed this documentary.  I couldn't help but marvel at the wonder of this situation.  A group of people had decided to get together and allow their unique creative expressions to coalesce as they recorded on surely one of the most beautiful islands in the world.  I was immediately struck by the beauty that the different artists experienced in their convergence.  At some point in the documentary, each described the unique phenomenon of creativity that they were brought into through this experience.  The trip departed from the normal experience of recording music in that the artists all left the comfort of their recording studios and homes and travelled to an island that none of them had ever been to, in order to record together.  The beauty of the landscape that surrounded them contributed to the creative expression that came forth in their songs, and is also depicted in the documentary. I was struck by how the beauty of the surrounding atmosphere affected the creative process that each of the artist went through.  It is indeed phenomenal how the creative process occurs in so many different ways and how the mixing of environment and different people can affect the creative process.