Colleen Clark is a local musician, sound engineer and associate professor at Salisbury University. And, she has been exploring music since she was a child. Delmarva Public Media's Jenny O'Connor explores her journey, learns about her influences, and discovers what drives her music today.
O'CONNOR: What do you get when you cross a professor with a live sound engineer for giant music festivals and a guitarist in multiple bands? That's not the intro to a joke. That's just our guest, Colleen Clark. She's well known on the Eastern Shore for her musical abilities, but her real talent is how this multitasker manages to keep all her careers and all those sound faders, perfectly balanced. I'm Jenny O'Connor for Delmarva Public Media.
CLARK: I think I was really lucky that there was constantly some new perspective related to music that I was getting into.
O'CONNOR: That's Colleen Clark, Salisbury local musician, SU associate professor, and pro career juggler, not in the circus way. It seems she knew who she was from a very early age and began dabbling in multiple interests when she was still in elementary school.
CLARK: I started out pretty early on piano, did the twinkle, twinkle, little star piano recitals, and so it was piano and then trumpet and then guitar, and then it just kind of evolved into always having some sort of new frontier related to music, and it's kept me interested for 41 years.
O'CONNOR: And from there, she learned she wasn't just good in the creative department, but she had other dreams of becoming a woman in STEM.
CLARK: I was such a nerd in school and I loved math. And when I got to college, I knew I wanted to study either math or physics, and I landed on math. I just knew I wanted to study music. I wanted to take music classes because I found them interesting.
O'CONNOR: So she went to school to study both mathematics and music theory, and eventually went on to study audio sciences as well. And though math and music are beautifully overlapped, it's the polarity of the two that she really loved.
CLARK: Every piece of music has some sort of mathematical structure to it, and there are a lot of places where it doesn't overlap, right? There are a lot of areas in music where you just have to kind of be creative and follow your heart, and there's no mathematical pattern to get you where you want to go.
O'CONNOR: Colleen also works as a freelance sound engineer for larger festivals such as the Virginia Women's Music Festival and the National Women's Music Festival in Middleton, Wisconsin.
CLARK: It is chaotic and stressful and anxiety inducing, but just a ton of fun too.
O'CONNOR: On top of that, she's teaching the next generation of musicians and audio engineers at Salisbury University.
CLARK: One [student] started working for a company called Maryland Sound International. Not long after graduation, he was sending me pictures, running sound for the Times Square, New York, new Year's Eve, so running sound for Mariah Carey and all that. And then another [student] also started working for the same company. He was running sound at the presidential inaugurations.
O'CONNOR: And although she's teaching, Colleen is grateful for the amount that she's learned as well.
CLARK: There's no better way to make sure you know all the details about something than to try to prepare a lesson plan for it.
O'CONNOR: Colleen is constantly keeping her brain stimulated, always trying to learn and improve in her various careers. She takes the same approach in her bands, constantly learning from the people around her, especially when working with her band, Gypsy Fuzz and the late Christine Havrilla, who passed away in May after a long battle with cancer.
CLARK: Everything is sort of through this lens of playing with Christine now. She was a self-taught guitar player, and her techniques are just so original. And really since she passed away, I've been digging into videos, watching her play her own music and trying to sort of decode the way that her hands moved. And it's just giving me a whole new appreciation for her talent.
O'CONNOR: And this December, Mama's Black Sheep and Gypsy Fuzz are continuing the Christine Havrilla and Gypsy Fuzz tradition, in their Not So Silent Night Tour with help from Regina Sales from Pennsylvania.
CLARK: Christine Havrilla, she had a big part in sort of creating that tour with Mama's Black Sheep. We wanted to keep that tradition going. We're definitely having to rethink things without Christine. I got a lot of practicing to do, I think. But yes, I'm excited.
O'CONNOR: For information on those shows and more of Colleen's work. Visit soundsofclark.com. And to hear Christine's stories firsthand, go to christinehavrilla.com. For Delmarva Public Media, I'm Jenny O'Connor.
