(pic: Joshua Wanyama)

These guys rocked the first TED session. Jill kicked off from the simulcast in Palm Springs with a typically melodic and enchanting song, written brand new for us of course, about her trip to the desert, and a motel that looked different from the web site. Jill has played many, many TED conferences going back to before the current Chris Anderson era, and though Chris is a stickler for ‘fresh’ Jill manages to come up with something fresh every time.

Naturally 7 are an a cappella group from New York, though that hardly does them justice—they call what they do ‘vocal play’ which means they ‘box’ multiple instruments, kinda the way Bobby McFerrin does it, but all at once and enhanced with realtime effects. For example, one of them sings a screaming lead guitar part, and it’s treated at the mixing board through a fuzz pedal and delays. We first became aware of N7 when we spotted a clip on YouTube that featured the band singing ‘In The Air Tonight’ in a rush-hour Paris subway car.

Ben Zander, director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, made a popular return to TED and coaxed us through singing the conference a happy 25th birthday, in Ben’s own inimitable way. He’s one of the most infectious speakers I’ve ever seen: just check out his TEDtalk from last year.

I was hoping there’d be a source of photos that I could rapidly link in, but the TED gallery seems to be a day or two behind. So I’ve borrowed a camera from Yesenia and if I can work out how to use it I’ll start to add pics to these blogs. I have to tell you all about Gamelan X, but I have to rush off to Session 3. Next up is the adorable Regina….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Misc, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.