Xephyr and Zephyr

Back in another lifetime, I helped start an adult Orff performing group called Xephyr. We decided that the way we taught and helped kids create, improvise and compose was too good to just be limited to kids and decided to treat ourselves as teacher/artists to the same processes. The first meeting was a freewheeling one-hour long improvisation involving body percussion, vocal percussion, improvised singing and movement, getting sound of any objects in the room. We six Orff teachers listened, responded, responded to the responses and finally the experiment came to its own conclusion. We then sat down and talked about which parts were interesting and might be developed further. And then we did. Eventually creating collective multi-media compositions that formed into our first public show. 

 

Why "Xephyr"? Because our first meeting in 1992 took place in the Zephyr Café. We liked the image of the West wind blowing a fresh breeze both into the Orff world and the performance world and into our own creative lives. We took it one step further by changing the first letter, with the X doubling as a unique spelling and a reference to the xylophone.

 

We met every Thursday night for some fourteen years.  And also continued to perform, both in rented spaces in San Francisco and at Orff gatherings in Carmel Valley, Dallas, St. Paul, Seattle, Phoenix, Long Beach and Salzburg, Austria. Our last show was in Salzburg in 2006 (the first had been in 1995, a second in 2000) and then we formally disbanded. 

 

Why am I thinking about this now? Because Spring has come with a vengeance to San Francisco. Our four seasons are simple—Summer/ fog, Fall/ sun, Winter/ rain, Spring/ wind. And windy it was today, around 23 mph to be exact. Not pleasant for walking and terrible for bike riding. Especially heading west. 

In the old Greek myths, Boreas is the North Wind, icy and wild and tearing up trees and piling up waves. Notus is the South Wind, so heavy with moisture that water drips from his tangled beard and he spreads a leaden fog over land and sea. Eurus is the East Wind and is considered unimportant and non-descript. But Zephyr, the West Wind, is the gentlest of them of all, sweeping the sky clear of clouds and making all of nature smile. *

 

Maybe in Greece, but not in San Francisco!

 

·       These descriptions from D-Aulaiers’ Book of Greek Myths.