We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Teil Taliesin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Teil below.
Hi Teil, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.
Dreaming of fun and innovative ideas comes naturally to me when I am inspired. For a while I struggled on the implementation of my dreams. I would ruminate on the ideas, trying to perfect the concept and messaging before moving forward on any business plans. As I became more assured in my vision and business direction, I started to share my nerdy vision of classically performed arrangements of video game music with established professional musicians. Since there was nothing like this at the time, I received a lot of “that’s interesting, next topic” responses that felt absolutely demoralizing. As such, I quietly shelved my idea for another year until I realized finally the concept was great, it’s just that I had not found the right audience. Not everyone is going to be passionate about gamified music, and that is alright; we all have unique artistic visions. I struggled to find the community that was interested in these ideas, and I internalized that struggle as audiences not interested in my work. As I reflect on these early days I am reminded that an important part of building a business is learning to articulate your vision, finding the need only you can solve in the community, and authentically connecting with that particular community.
Through another year of planning and dreaming, we (my husband and I) finally found other musicians who shared our passions for gaming music. These nerdy musicians are from all over the world and record arrangements of video game music virtually, mixing into sonic soundscapes distributed on Spotify and Youtube. As we began recording and arranging this music with our internet-based community, it again ignited our passion to make this possible in our local physical community. We were not sure if we could get a paid opportunity to perform our classically inspired video game music arrangements, so we cold-called a few gaming and anime conventions offering to perform for donations. Suddenly we were performing at GDEX, RathaCon, CinCityCon, Ohayocon, and more to packed rooms of eager audiences! It felt amazing to finally be reaching an enthusiastic audience excited by our performances and wanted to connect with us. The only problem, we weren’t being paid for our work. Creating video game music arrangements, practicing, and performing takes a lot of energy and time. Dylan (my husband and creative partner) and I were happy to do this work for free as we started out, but we always believed that the other artistic collaborators needed to be paid. When the next year came and conventions asked us to be back, we made the necessary leap to ask for modest funding to cover our expenses for the performances. This led to some closed doors that later opened as they invited us back years later. Standing up for what we needed was a difficult and necessary choice that ultimately has helped us further grow as a business. Artists need to be paid fairly for their work.
As our business started gaining momentum, we found the most important aspect to our continued expansion was creating and maintaining our artistic, creative, and nerdy community. Finding partnerships with other organizations sharing our creative vision has been key to our continued growth and expansion. Most importantly, finding partnership with artists in different mediums is crucial. We have the musical vision and knowledge to compose, arrange and produce music. To further build our brand and immerse ourselves in the creative community, we cultivated partnerships with graphic designers, photographers, videographers, visual artists, gaming events producers, and more to not only broaden our reach but in turn help them broaden their reach as well. Each partnership has the intent to be mutually beneficial as we all support our growth. These partnerships have also sparked new ideas for programming as we dream together and push each other to make the dreams reality. Be open to new and exciting ideas – you never know where these collaborations will lead and the magic you will discover along the way!
Teil, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Teil Taliesin and I am the Executive Director and Oboist of Phoenix Down RPG. My ensemble Phoenix Down RPG is composed of classically trained musicians boldly coloring outside the lines and making music differently. We believe in making a difference in our community, connecting authentically on and off the stage while providing unique and immersive performance experiences designed to challenge the boundaries of classical music and excite audiences with interactive immersion.
When I started middle school, my mother was adamant I join band class as performing music has a positive correspondence with early childhood brain development. Originally I started on Clarinet, but soon gravitated to playing the Oboe. While the instruments look similar, they are completely different in personality. In my band class there were 8 Clarinetists, but there was only 1 other Oboist. Since a young age I have always wanted to stand out; little did I know I was switching to one of the most difficult instruments to master! Almost from the beginning I felt I had found my artistic voice through playing Oboe. Not only does Oboe get so many gorgeous and heart-wrenching orchestral solos, but it has also gotten me through many emotionally difficult times when I felt the only way I could connect with others was through music. During my Undergraduate and Masters Degrees I studied Music Performance with the intent to win a position with a major symphony orchestra. The further I went with my studies, the more frustrated I became with trying to match phrasings and musicality recorded by oboists long past. It felt that my performance had to be a perfect carbon copy of all the other oboists before me, and there was no room for my own artistic interpretations if I wanted to perform in an orchestra. I felt the need to break free and make music the way I wanted, which spurred the idea for Phoenix Down RPG.
In its early days, Phoenix Down RPG was a reed trio (Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon) performing primarily French chamber music. We won local competitions and awards, and soon began expanding in new exciting paths. Our Clarinetist Dr. Dylan Lloyd one day arranged five favorite tunes from popular video game franchises. Soon after we were performing as guests for local and regional gaming and anime conventions to packed audiences! This generated our first performance series called Name That Tune. Instead of revealing our setlist, we would perform video game music to audiences and pair it with fun trivia where players compete for prizes and the title. These performances are always a hit! Audiences feel nostalgic as they explore video game music taken seriously through the classical lens in high-performance art. For many of our audiences this is their first experience with classical instruments, and we delight in making our art form accessible and enjoyable to our local communities. We continue performing Name That Tune events locally and at regional conventions, with a book of over 200 video game music tunes we have arranged ourselves.
This year we furthered our vision of video game music performance in a new series called Melody & Mayhem. We partnered with local gaming organizers Potions & Pixels to host a Super Smash Brothers Ultimate video game tournament paired with interactive music played live. Our ensemble’s music would change and interact with the music on the tournament screen. Our audiences were excited to see their passions taken seriously and elevated in new, innovative performance experiences! This event is unlike anything our local community has seen, and we intend to organize more gaming tournaments with live interactive music.
A few years ago, we created our most innovative performance experience designed to delight audiences and support artists of different mediums as we further intertwine music and gaming elements. Campfire Tales combines tabletop roleplay gaming with live, interactive and improvisatory music. Local artists act as players, gathering around our “campfire” to explore collaborative storytelling led narratively by the Story Teller (myself) in front of a live audience. Instead of character success being defined through rolling dice, our players must pull from the Tower of Fate, a giant Tumbling Blocks tower. The Tower represents the character’s hope and despair throughout the game. As they make choices and alter the story, they must pull blocks from the tower to balance on top. As the story progresses, the Tower of Fate becomes more and more precarious, building the climactic tension of the story. If the tower falls, their character dies or is written out of the story – those are big stakes! Audiences can feel the tension in the room as the tower sways. The climactic energy in the game is further heightened with interactive improvisatory music by our in house bard. As players approach the wobbly tower to make necessary story choices, they can feel their heart beating faster echoed by live frenetic drumming. These stories are not only fun and enjoyable to watch, they also support the artists playing characters by highlighting them in another lens to their community and increasing traffic to their artistic sites. In the fall we will launch our Campfire Tales season which can be experienced live or in recorded podcast format.
Not all of our services are a direct combination of music and gaming. Our co-founder Dr. Dylan Lloyd wrote his dissertation on klezmer music. Klezmer is the instrumental folk music tradition of the Jewish people, and it has also been a foundational part of Dylan’s musical journey as well as a personal connection to his ancestral roots. At its core, klezmer music is one of assimilation pulling music and styles from other cultures and people throughout history as the Jewish people encountered them. Klezmertron takes that idea and throws it into the future. By using looping pedals, effects, electronic instruments alongside his clarinet Dylan creates a one man klezmer band that fuses the traditional aspects of klezmer with modern tools to create something uniquely his.
We also offer music available for purchase online and digital streaming. Phoenix Down RPG composes and arranges our own tabletop gaming music titled Dragon Ballad available for digital purchase or online streaming. These compositions include collaborations with nerdy classical musicians nationally. Annually the group of friends gets together for a weekend to compose, record, and release new gaming music. Interested in collaborating with us in realizing music for your video games or tabletop gaming experience to further the immersion with your players? We are always happy to collaborate!
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
As classically trained musicians, there is so much pressure to perform perfectly all the time. It can easily feel like you are only as good as your last performance. Sometimes classical orchestral music can feel like there is no room for your artistic voice. As a musician you do not select the repertoire you perform, and this often leads to re-performing the same works, stifling creative exploration and bringing new composer voices to the performance halls. Add to this the rhetoric that seemingly repeats every year – Classical music audiences are dwindling and the art form sometimes seems unable to support itself indefinitely. These factors create a dour feeling around Classical music.
Dylan and I founded Phoenix Down RPG as our way to exercise our creative voices. We wanted to play music we loved and that our audiences love. We want to have artistic control over our products, and we most importantly want to have fun. Our driving mission behind Phoenix Down RPG has and will always be the prioritization of fun combined with innovation of performance experiences and high-quality live performances. We build an immersive experience free of the shackles of traditional performances. Instead of adhering to rules on when to clap, we invite participation from audiences! We are constantly exploring new ways to involve audiences in our interactive performance events. We enjoy performing in unconventional spaces to remove the barriers between artists and our community. We believe in activating unused community spaces to create performances that feel unique and innovative. We love to push the boundaries of what Classical music can do, and how we can more fully combine our passions of alternative Classical music and gaming elements. Our passions of combining gamified elements with our classical music training reignited our passion in music, brining us back to life like the mythical Phoenix. Let’s have fun and create amazing experiences!
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I personally value the creation of the creative community as an artist. I used to think success was defined by what I could accomplish on my own. As I stepped into the professional world, I quickly realized I was in fact never accomplishing or creating on my own. Throughout my collegiate studies and beyond I always had support from family, friends, and mentors. It is easy to get stuck in the singular view, and it was incredibly rewarding when I was able to remove those blinders and more fully immerse myself in the creative community. If I create by myself and for myself, the end result feels empty and leaves me unfulfilled. It also prevents me from authentic connection. When I create with intentionality to reach audiences and communities in new and interesting ways and am open to their creative needs, it leaves me with a burning passion and inspiration that my work is important, giving my work focus and clarity. However, the work does not stop there. Part of the beauty and joy of being a creative artist is participating in the community and enjoying other creative work. My friends and mentors give time and energy to my work and projects, and it is rewarding to give energy back to their work, broadening my own artistic horizons and refueling my creative spirit. The community we build together, offering support and shared knowledge, is incredibly inspiring and I am so grateful to be part of my creative community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.phoenixdownrpg.org
- Instagram: @phoenixdownrpg
- Facebook: @phoenixdownrpg
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/phoenixdownrpg
- Other: Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/1gCKVuZ3BprEcj5AWPRqEt
Image Credits
Dionna Bright
Xavier Jimenez
Alvin C Jacobs Jr.
Chris Rodarte