Oodles of Doodles - Music Composition-

Pictures courtesy of Casey Ford

Audio excerpts:

Young Doodle loves to doodle. When emotions run high, he doodles. When he dreams, he doodles. When words fail, he doodles. So just imagine his excitement when he receives his first sketch pad! Join us at The Alliance Theater on this journey through the secret pathways of creativity. Filled with live music, movement, imaginative drawings, and engaging storytelling, Oodles of Doodles is the perfect show for early learners learning to express themselves. Unleash your inner artist and the possibilities are endless! Created by Ricardo Aponte.

12th Annual Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival 2023. Curation & Entertainment Production.

Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival returned to Westside Provisions District on Sunday, July 30 from 1-4 p.m. for an annual celebration of the juiciest fruit in Georgia: tomatoes. This event is hosted by Georgia Organics and celebrates the delicious Farmer Champion partnership between Georgia's organic farmers and the culinary teams who make local ingredients shine. This year, Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival raised over $100,000 in support of Georgia Organics' mission: to invest in organic farmers for the health of our communities and the land. Pictures Courtesy of Erik Meadows Photography.

Ghost Pools: Illuminating the history of public swimming - Sound Design - 2023

During the summer of 2023, Flux Projects presented Ghost Pools, a multi-media installation by Hannah Palmer that explores Atlanta’s history with public swimming by creating temporary memorials to two pools in East Point that became a battleground over integration and were eventually abandoned.  Of the two pools, one was restricted to white residents while the other was in East Point’s segregated Black neighborhood. Today the two sites are a lawn beside the East Point Historical Society and an overflow parking lot for the John D. Milner Athletic Complex.

Once loud with laughter, shouts, and splashing, what if these sites could talk?  And can East Point reclaim and reactivate these formerly segregated spaces in a way that acknowledges the past, while looking towards the future?

A public history and art project, Ghost Pools will create a shared understanding of what happened to East Point’s Jim Crow-era swimming pools – how they were funded, designed, litigated, defunded, and ultimately abandoned.

Collaborating with visual, sound, and performance artists, Palmer will transform the former pool sites into an inviting space to explore and reflect on this complicated, often painful history.

Special thanks to Travis Schwieger from Salvage Yards Designs for his beautiful work towards the sound devices used during this public art installation.

Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives. Recording Engineering & Sound Installation - 2021

Charmaine Minniefield, lead Artist.

The Ring Shout is a traditional African American worship and gathering practice with origins in West African ritual and ceremony.  The Ring Shout was reborn during enslavement in the American South in resistance to laws which prohibited those enslaved from gathering, except for worship, and forbid any form of cultural expression, including drumming.  These laws were imposed in an effort to systematically dismantle communication, and ultimately community.

In response, those enslaved created Praise Houses—small usually wooden structures (barns or shacks) used for worship throughout the Southeast.  As an act of resistance, congregants would gather in circle to stomp or shout (full body rhythmic movement) upon the wooden floors, ultimately creating a communal drum—secretly preserving their cultural rituals and collective prayers and traditions.  These small hidden worship spaces are thought to be precursors to the first Black churches in the Western world.

Remembrance as Resistance celebrates the endurance of these traditions in contemporary dance, music, and spoken word as testament to the resilience of a people. The project will open on Juneteenth, which celebrates the emancipation of those who were enslaved in the United States, and will run through July 11, 2021.

While creating this work Minniefield was an artist in residence at Emory University and worked with the Langmuir Collection at the Stuart A Rose Library. Images from their acclaimed African American archive appear in the video installation.

Photo: Julie Yarbrough Photography

Let us come together. Original Composition - 2020

A virtual performance of the Ring Shout by Charmaine Minnifield with choreographer Julie B. Johnson

Choreographer/Collaborator Julie B. Johnson and Charmaine Minniefield call upon the Ring Shout as a historical African American spiritual practice, an act of resistance, and a mode of community-building amidst the forces that worked to dismantle communities.

In their words:

“With a collective of intergenerational black women dancers and movers, we manifest a contemporary Ring Shout practice through embodied memories of disruption and distance. It began with Minniefield in The Gambia, exploring her upbringing in the Pentecostal faith in the U.S. south in which she would shout or dance in prayer, and her current research of the origins of such practices in Africa. We work to lift up these traditions and honor the experiences and labor of our ancestors, while exploring forward into contemporary improvisational movement forms that attend to our bodies’ needs right now, in this moment.

“This collection of movement prayers and meditations performed remotely by women from their homes in different locations contemplates ‘togetherness’ in virtual spaces, and reflects on the ongoing unrest arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the disproportionate toll it has taken on our black and brown communities, and the racial violence that attempts to silence our communities and erase us. The resulting work will bring the women together in a virtual Ring Shout to again inspire connection and community in spite of separation during this global pandemic.”

Performers: Rahquelah Conyers / Jazelynn Goudy / Dr. Theresa Howard / Tambra Omiyale Harris / Lela Aisha Jones / Nneka Kelly / Charmaine Minniefield / Kaylah Smith / Tamara Williams

Music Composer: Santiago Páramo

Video Editor: Kimberly Binns

This project is offered as part of Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives, a project by Charmaine Minniefield.

OneBeat at the ArtsXchange. Cultural diplomacy initiative - 2019

The Community Music Studio, in partnership with the ArtsXchange, hosted OneBeat during their South East tour the first week of October of 2019. Onebeat brings together emerging musical leaders from around the world to collaboratively create original work and to develop a global network of civically engaged music initiatives. An initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with Found Sound Nation, OneBeat employs collaborative original music as a potent new form of cultural diplomacy.

Pictures courtesy of Adinah Morgan & Alexia Webster

Sara Santamaria’s at Showerhous. Sound Design - 2019

Sound designed for Sara Santamariia’s solo exhibition at Showerhous gallery in Atlanta, GA.

WINK. Original Music Score - 2019

WINK, a contemporary dance performance choreographed by Jessica Bertram, presented on March 22nd and 23rd of 2019 as part of Dance Canvas’ showcase of emerging choreographers at the Ferst Center for the performing Arts in Atlanta, GA.

Picturtes courtesy of Richard Calmes

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Ni Aquí Ni Allá. Sound Design - 2018

Ni Aquí Ni Allá is a multimedia performance and installation giving voice to Atlanta's Latinx community. We revisit our childhood memories, our family traditions, our spiritual roots through a lens polished with subversion and decolonization. These are the moments that colored our lives and firmly grounded us in the cultures and narratives we have become geographically removed from. Ni Aquí Ni Allá is a window onto a vital facet of American culture, and we welcome people of all backgrounds to indulge our uniquely American blend of Latin cultures and traditions, uprooted and replanted. Through nostalgia and symbolic repurposing, Ni Aquí Ni Allá is a space for defining, decolonizing, and reclaiming our Latinx identity in all of its prismatic splendor.

*Latinx is a gender-inclusive term referring to people of Latin American descent.

- Video by Guillermo Dorado -

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CINEBASH. Music Curation and Set Design - 2018

It makes me very happy to have been chosen by The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival as a Music Curator and Set Designer for CINEBASH 2018 at The Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. I specially want to acknowledge the work of Production Designer Danny Davis and that of multidisciplinary artist Amy Pursifull, with whom I conceptualized and built my DJ Booth as homage to the title sequence of the Film "The Man with the Golden Arm".

"Cinebash is a film party. An unforgettable evening blending art installations, food, music, dance, and other elements for an immersive and multi-sensory experience celebrating the Cinema Arts. This year’s Cinebash was themed around the work of graphic designers Saul and Elaine Bass, best known for their motion picture title sequences, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho, promotional movie posters for such films as Exodus, The Shining and West Side Story, as well as some of the world’s most recognizable logos."

Pictures courtesy of Amy Pursifull photography, Donald Felice and Vaughn Gittens.

The Jungle Room. Sound Design - 2017

This interactive play space for babies who are newborn through 36 months old and their caregivers featured a kaleidoscope of color inspired by Ashley Bryan’s award-winning book Beautiful Blackbird. The Jungle Room is presented in conjunction with the High Museum of Art exhibition Painter and Poet: The Wonderful World of Ashley Bryan. 

Idi Amin, America and a Bar of Soap. Sound Design - 2017

Idi Amin, America and a Bar of Soap is a two-man show inspired by the life of Derreck Kayongo, the CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.  Written by Patricia Henritze (with Derreck Kayongo), the play follows Derreck from his childhood in Uganda under Idi Amin’s brutal regime, through his experiences in Kenya as a refugee, and finally into the U.S. as an immigrant and ultimately a citizen.  The show is performed by two actors, one as the young Derreck, and another as Derreck today. Both performers also inhabit other roles in the course of telling Derreck’s story. In 2011 Derreck was chosen as a CNN Hero for founding the Global Soap project. This non-profit international aid organization recycles discarded soap from hotels and distributes newly processed soap to fight hygiene-related diseases, which is the #1 killer of children in vulnerable populations around the world.   While Derreck has an amazing story to tell, this is not a documentary or motivational speech.  Derreck’s journey is filled with humor and the play has something for everyone: dangerous escapes, spies, firing squads, betrayal, hope and redemption. From refugee to CEO, Derreck has learned how to survive, turning challenges into triumphs, and his story reminds us we all live in a world where one person can still make a difference.

Dinosaur. Sound Design - 2017-2018

A one-of-a-kind collaboration between the Fernbank Museum of Natural History and the Alliance theater. A gentle and awe-inspiring introduction to the wonders of the pre-historic world. A play where science and art intersect, and where our tiniest audience members interact with some of the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth.

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Dance Truck. Sound Tech and DJ Set - 2014

- Presented by the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs -
"We were honored that our 2014 showcase was presented on the closing night of Elevate, a week-long festival that celebrates downtown Atlanta’s vitality and the intrepid voices of our city’s finest artists." -Dance Truck -

Pictures courtesy of Aubrey Longley-Cook

Estamos Unidos. Interactive Installation - 2014

A collaborative interactive art installation by photographer Matthew Smith, wood worker Jay Wiggings, and multimedia artist Amy Pursifull, commissioned by Art on the Atlanta Beltline.  In these series of cubical sculptures, photography is used in a playful manner to convey a message of unity among humans despite their origin, ethnicity or gender. 

Pictures Courtesy of Amy Pursifull Photography

Sanity Ceremonies. Sound Design - 2013

" Sanity Ceremonies is a one-act, one-woman foray into being both in-stride and off-kilter in which I piece together colorfully layered conclusions about what it takes to find equilibrium in a hectic and baffling world.  The production takes form through a marriage of dance, text, video animation, costume, and prop use that draws from a range of daily rituals, archetypal figures, cultural idiosyncrasies, and autobiographical anecdotes, as I plumb the material of my own day to day realities as an artist, and the beauty and enigma of my family heritage.

The work stems from the questions:  Where do I come from?  Of what mettle am I made?  How do I orient myself when things don’t make sense?  What does it take to keep putting one foot in front of the other?  With Sanity Ceremonies, I aim to contribute a story that will translate well across a spectrum of experience by grappling with big but basic questions in a personal voice.  This is a challenging and exciting piece for me as director and performer.  I’m stretching my choreographic modes to communicate the humor, eccentricity, and absurdity of my life and to provide a playfully honest portrait of the day to day struggle to not just make it through, but to be brave and go big." - Helen Hale -

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Pictures courtesy of Bobbi Jo Brooks Photography

Pillars of Growth. Installation - 2015

A giant tree made out of cardboard and tape built in partnership with artist Amy Pursifull, commissioned by WonderRoot and the Community Farmers Market for their annual fundraiser and gala in Atlanta, GA. The tree represents the nature of these two organizations as living and expanding organisms, both being pillars and essential to our community.

Threshold. Original Music Score - 2012

An evening-length performance in a life-sized house made entirely out of cardboard, created by choreographer Blake Beckham and presented by The Lucky Penny at DramaTech Theater, GA Tech | Set Design by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects | Art Direction by Malina Rodriguez | Dance performances by Alex Abarca, Claire Molla, Alisa Mittin | Original music by Santiago Páramo | Lighting by Joseph A. Futral | Technical Direction by Danny Davis | Production and Stage Management by Nadia Morgan | Project Management by Susan Williams | Sculpture by Karley Sullivan | Props and set dressings by George Long and Jane Garver | Costumes by Tian Justman | Sound design by Jon Summers | Video design by Chelsea Raflo