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We’re very happy to have some time today with acclaimed chart-busting musician, commissioned composer, author, award-winning teacher, speaker, studio owner and – WHEW! – humorist extraordinaire Cory Cullinan; greetings and salutations Cory and welcome to Vents Magazine! Before we dive down the Q&A musical rabbit hole, how is the New Year treating you and yours?
New Year has been wonderful for my family. Our two daughters were on winter break from college and we all went to Charleston together. Riley (my youngest who’s also a recording artist) and I got to perform a show in front of a room full of really smart, thoughtful and influential people. We learned a lot while we were there. I’m aware that the past month has been really, really bad for a lot of people — in Los Angeles, in Ukraine, and more places — and I’m aware I’m fortunate to make music for a living. Footprint represents one side of an effort to always honor the fortunate role I have as an artist and try to make work that is meaningful and impactful in more ways than personal finances.
Major kudos and accolades on your freshly-minted new avant-garde and beautifullyexperimental companion music video for Footprint which is out now! Starting with some background on the genesis of Footprint, can you talk about how thisimmersive journey first began for you so many moons ago?
When I was a freshman at Stanford double majoring in Music and Political Science, there was this amazing professor at the electronic music department who had literally changed the sound of music by developing FM synthesis, the engine of the DX7 and other synths you hear on almost every 80s and 90s pop recording. He graciously let me take his experimental electronic music course that was intended for upperclassmen and grad students. I had an idea for a “found sounds” piece — basically Footprint — that had a dramatic narrative I could hear in my head, and I wanted to produce it. But there were no Digital Audio Workstations at the time, barely any field recordings, and I just couldn’t devote the time to completing it. For several decades I’ve wanted to, but it’s not a “commercial” thing so I never did in my life as a professional musician.
Footprint is not a ‘one size fits all’ type of tune – Different folks will experience it in theirown subjective ways. Was that always your intention with Footprint, or was this somethingthat happened organically?
Yes, it was! I very specifically wanted it to be a bit open-ended. I teach the Recording Arts course at Stanford each summer, and have a diverse array of amazing and talented students. I played the finally-finished piece for my class last summer, and this sounds weird, but I was THRILLED that they were divided as to what the piece was actually about and what it was saying. Most of them fell into three distinct camps of interpretation. I won’t list what those were because I do want people to bring their own experience into the piece.
What I will say is that Footprint is divided into six sections or “eras” (Taylor Swift terminology alert!!!) that weave into each other. In the Logic Pro file I produced it in, those sections are even set up as markers. Different types of sounds were placed in the different sections — some in more than one — and then arranged in a musical and narrative way to resonate off each other and tell a very emotional story that, in my heart, has three distinct acts that fuse dangerously into each other.
On a personal note, how did it feel for you to finally unveil for famed composer, electronicmusic legend – not to mention your college mentor and teacher – John Chowning yourfinished version of Footprint? Was it what some might call a ‘full-circle’ moment?
YES and YES. Also yes. It was amazing. What happened was that I was booked to play a concert with Riley Max in San Jose, CA last summer, and I got word that Dr. Chowning and his wife — who is a singer who I also know — were COMING to our show. At that point I said to myself: ‘I HAVE to finish Footprint and finally play this piece for him that I told him about a million years ago.’ We did the piece live with some audience improvisation added, and it was crazy because all the other songs we played were pop/rock/jazz songs, and then we hit the audience right in the middle with this experimental thing. They were gamers! I pointed him out at the start and said “This piece is for him,” and at the end of it he shouted from the crowd: “You did it Cory!!!” That was really funny.
The companion music video for Footprint is ethereal and emotional, echoing visually theaudio. Can you talk about what it was like to collaborate with the video’s director – and yourincredibly talented daughter – Sidney Cullinan?
Well, the interesting thing is that, by design, it was hardly a collaboration. I wanted her to take it and do her own thing with it. So I gave her a few thoughts and ideas, maybe a minute’s worth, and then I said: “But you don’t have to take any of those ideas. I’d honestly rather see what you feel you should do with it.” I only commented on one draft, and I think there were only two things she changed after my comments. The rest is her. She is an Environmental Studies and Communications student and knows more about all that stuff than I do. As an intern last summer, Sidney designed the most impactful social media campaign the world’s largest environmental organization has ever had… so I knew she’d do something that resonated with people.
So we innovated a bit and did it backwards from most films. Most films have the film and then give it to the composer to set the soundtrack to. We had the audio and gave it to the filmmaker to set the “filmtrack” to. Honestly I cried at her last shot in the film. I was getting chills before that and then the last shot just floored me and I lost it. I knew I had the right person then. Which is great news because it’s hard to fire your kid…
But she’s become essential to our artistic and business operation. Sidney directs and edits all the videos at my production house. I bought the gear and built the room — cameras, lights, green screen, etc. — but I have no idea how to use it. Whenever she’s done with Dad I’m gonna have a problem making my videos, for both me and others I produce…
In your humble opinion, what differentiates Footprint from the Distinguished Competitionon the current day music scene?
Well, for starters, Footprint is a million times weirder.
Serious answer: Footprint — and actually much of my work — is not primarily designed to fit into a genre. I am also obstinately fighting against the modern desire for everything to be in 2-3 minute songs and snippets. I love longform things. Things with time to evolve and develop. Even my work for kids as Doctor Noize is that way — every album is a longform musical instead of a collection of singles.
With Footprint, making sure it’s a piece that feels unhurried is a requirement to convey the set of messages I was feeling and thinking about when I wrote it. Ten minutes is actually pretty short to convey the span of time the piece conveys. Honestly I’d love an hourlong version. But I feel grateful that people might gimme ten minutes to get contemplative and meditative and consider a deeper span of things and a deeper consciousness of where and how we’re fitting in, and whether we have a responsibility to fit into the world in a certain way.
Most music — certainly most pop music — is about how we can experience the world for ourselves. Finding love, finding happiness, finding excitement. And I love and believe in all that. But this piece, without lyrics, is more about how we are experiencing the world for the world.
Footprint now exists in three formats: as an audio piece, as a live audience interactionpiece, and as a multimedia piece that’s also a collaboration between you and your daughter.How does it feel to know that you have three similar yet different versions kicking around inthe world now? Is there a true sense of pride as an artist?
Feels good! Of course, if I was smart, I’d just have one version, and I’d promote the hell out of that. But I’m not smart. You don’t wanna be too smart about your business as an artist. It starts poisoning your creative decisions.
And, in fact… there will be a fourth version one day. This piece is made for immersive (surround) audio. And that doesn’t exist yet. And as to the second version — the interactive live version — I have a crazy idea I want to develop that could create a whole new form of live concert experience for that piece and others. It’s an idea that fuses technology and organic improvisation, connects audience and performer and composer like never before — and other artists could use it too. But it would take me several years to figure out and develop, and I’d need to spend a lot more time with the geniuses at Stanford to learn a few things and lean on a few really smart people to do it. If that time ever comes, I’m hoping we have another interview someday where you’re asking me about this development and I’m telling you it exists somewhere other than in my mind. It happened with Footprint, so it could happen with this too.
A few questions back we were discussing John Chowning and, to pick up that thread, weunderstand that you will be hosting and introducing him for a series of lectures andperformances coming up next month; congrats! Can you talk about how this upcoming eventcame about and give our ever-inquisitive readers the nitty gritty as far as dates, locations and
times go?
Sure! Since last summer, John Chowning and I have reconnected a bit more. A brunch we had together in Silicon Valley in October has turned into a trip out to CO where we’re lucky to host Dr. Chowning and his wife here at our home for a few days while we go around to a few of the colleges I’m associated with in Colorado and he presents his work as both an artist and a synthesist to a few fortunate crowds out here. He really is a legend. It means a lot to me that I get to connect someone who has played a meaningful role in my life to young musicians, faculty and audiences out here. So they can hear from someone who’s really made a dent in their musical world.
Can you give us a hint or three as to what else you have coming up in 2025? Are youlooking at another busy year?
Yes. Thank you for asking! I’m commissioned to write a brand new modernized version of “Sleeping Beauty” for Palo Alto Children’s Theatre. They have been extremely, overly patient with me to get this score done, and it’s finally getting done this year. We’ve created a really innovative reimagining of the tale that simultaneously honors the original story and completely turns it on its head. Desiging and writing the plot has been amazing and now we’re on the libretto and music stage of the project. Again, long developments and extended narrative structures giving people a new way to look at things… that’s what I love.
I’m a judge at Baylor University’s All University Sing, which will be a blast, and then I release a sustainability single and video on Earth Day 2025 I’ve written for my amazing all star side band Konshens & The Earth Band, featuring Grammy winners Ricky Kej and Lonnie Park and our frontman, DC rapper and poet extraordinaire Konshens The MC. It’s an unusually sly, funny and deep song intended for a family audience, and I’m deeply grateful to the guys for doing it with me — they are all very busy and successful doing other things. Ricky is a UN Goodwill Ambassador and Lonnie produces everybody and their grandmother.
Finally, this summer I release my retrospective Doctor Noize album “Positive Energy (The Music of Doctor Noize),” featuring my best and most popular tracks from the albums plus several new collaborations with Grammy winners and more. Everyone from last year’s Children’s Grammy winners to the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra appears on the album. I’m really looking forward to its release.
Any final thoughts you might like to share with fans and readers regarding the Footprint companion video?
So… I don’t want to give too much away for those who haven’t watched it, so if you haven’t, go watch it and THEN come back and read this!!! But here is what I found really moving and chilling about Sidney’s video interpretation: What she left out. What is NOT in her video gives the film a whole new and deeper meaning. Let me give you just one example, even though there are several. There are militaristic sounds — guns, machines, etc. — in my audio piece. But there isn’t a single gun or fighter plane or bomb in her video. Lots of technology, but no experience of war in people’s daily lives — people in the film are just walking around, living their lives. We see them with technology and industrial things, but not anything that looks as dangerous as it all may be. I find that incredibly moving and inspiring. It makes me want to think about every single thing I create and do, and whether there are side effects to those things just outside of my field of vision or thought unless I really dedicate myself to seeing and understanding the holistic summary of the things we do. Sidney knows I feel very strongly that, as a species, we humans are great at individual science projects and works of genius, but we are demonstrably and objectively terrible at comprehending or even really being willing to pay attention to big systemic social and scientific things.
I also like that she doesn’t directly line up sounds to images. Her film absolutely gets and feels the tempo and development my musical piece expresses, and the pacing is extremely telling, and as one viewer who said she’s planning to watch it multiple times poignantly wrote, both “beautiful and disturbing” — but the fact that reality and what you hear does not exactly match with what you see is very insightful and poignant to me, every single time I watch it. There’s a message there Sidney’s giving, and I don’t think my piece gives it as strongly as her multimedia version does.
So I suppose it is a collaboration after all.
