RVANews

Rock climbing in RVA

Nathan Cushing — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:44:27 +0000

"Before I started climbing I was very scared of heights," said Aaron Williams, a VCU student who also covers VCU men's basketball for RVANews. He's been rock climbing for over a decade, and learned to do so here in Richmond. "For me, a huge part of the rush I used to experience when climbing was attacking that fear. It's a unique sport. A climber doesn't have to be a certain height or weight to be really good."

He began climbing when he was 8-years-old at Peak Experiences in Midlothian, one of the largest indoor rock-climbing centers in the US. After taking classes and joining a competitive climbing team, he grew to prefer climbing outdoors. While he loves the places that basketball can take him, they're never as good as being in the outdoors. "Rock climbing...happens in amazing places like Looking Glass, North Carolina; Joshua Tree, California; and Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming." All places he's been to.

While perhaps not in the same league as those places, Richmond has its own share of rock-climbing locales. Two are in the James River Park System: the Manchester Climbing Wall and the quarry wall at Belle Isle.

The Manchester Wall

The Manchester wall,¹ a remnant of an old railroad bridge, is made of granite with a peak that tops at 60 feet. Its difficulty level ranges from a 5.4 to 5.11a,² which means climbers should use top ropes to ensure safety.

The Belle Isle wall is located on the north side of the quarry pond. The 35-foot limestone wall is accessible upstream from the Hollywood rapids. It has an average difficulty of 5.7, also requiring the use of top ropes.

Although there's such a thing as competitive climbing, it's typically a solitary sport. Any competition is with yourself. "Winning isn't a score, it's conquering a fear or pushing oneself to the next level," Williams said.

But if outdoor climbing makes your knees tremble, you can always visit Peak Experiences in Midlothian to learn and acclimate yourself to rock climbing. VCU also offers a 35-foot indoor rock wall for its students, staff, and faculty inside the 18,000 square-foot fitness center on Cary Street. There's also a shorter bouldering wall for gym users uneasy with attempting the 35-foot climb.

"Climbing is a big part of the gym here," said Joey Parent, assistant director of VCU's Outdoor Adventure Programs. "You have a lot of people who are not as interested in lifting weights or swimming in the pool." The walls gives gym users an alternative workout.

Parent said the wall also introduces newcomers to outdoor rock climbing³ and other recreation beyond the indoors. "The climbing wall is a really good way to get people into the outdoor program."

If and when students want to tackle an outdoor rock wall, VCU's Outdoor Adventure Programs offers a Climbing Weekend package wherein instructors teach basic climbing techniques, equipment usage, and belaying techniques. Participants spend one night camping during the trip. The program also offers a free outdoor wall climb for VCU students, staff, and faculty on Wednesdays at the Manchester Wall from 4:00 - 7:00 PM through October 23rd.

But rock climbing is just one outdoor recreation that VCU students and other Richmonders have at their disposal. There's also kayaking, mountain biking, outdoor runs, and more. All of these things, Parent says, are important in shaping Richmond's identity. "Richmond has a very strong outdoor community," he said. "There's a lot of really great things that are right here and are accessible."

Aaron Williams agrees. "Richmond is a great outdoor sports town. The river and the parks surrounding the river offer really unique opportunities in urban areas especially for kayakers, climbers, and bikers," he said. "People can leave their nine-to-five jobs and be kayaking by 5:20 PM or rock climbing by 5:15 PM."

Resources

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Footnotes

Here are directions to the wall. ↩
Here's more on the Yosemite Decimal System. ↩
The gym also offers a two-hour belay clinic five days a week. ↩

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Photos

photos by Madison Price

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Farewell Part 2

Aaron Williams — Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:44 +0000

Aaron Williams taking photos at the most recent RVAJazz Fest. Photo credit: Patrick Jarenwattanon of A Blog Supreme

You can read the first half of this interview here.

Williams: You mentioned RVAJazzfest. What gave you the idea to put it on and the confidence to put it on? Can you give some insight as to how much work there was to make it successful?

Christesen: The reason I did the first one is because I believed for all of the talking I did on the blog, it didn’t matter unless I brought it into the real world and actually provided live music for people to hear. I was doing a lot of reviewing and recapping of live performances for people who weren’t able to be there, but it’s like hey, why don’t I put on an event that people can come see?

The goal from almost the very beginning was to do something like that. When I finally decided to do it in September/ October of 2008, Matt White came to me with this grand plan of having Steven Bernstein down and how I was going to be part of that plan.

I was like, “hell yeah!” How can I not be part of that plan? Fight the Big Bull was one of the reasons that I started the blog because of seeing their successes. They were just signed to Clean Feed Records for their first album (Dying Will Be Easy). Fight the Big Bull with Steven Bernstein fell into my lap and that’s how the first event started.

Yeah, it was a lot of work but that was also my first taste of that and how much work it is going to be. As musicians, all of us put on events: we are all booking our own gigs and promoting them. I think this was actually more work than just putting on a single event.

With the blog, a lot of our sponsorship money came with the underwriting on the blog. It was, "Help pay for this event, I will write an article about you." So that became not only articles about the three bands and Steven Bernstein, but now five sponsors. That became a lesson for me on delegating work and being editor as well as all of the basics like time management and basic fundraising, that kind of thing. That first event was a big lesson in many ways and I think it was a huge success.

The Camel was still in its early days of that ownership and it was exciting to see them so ecstatic about the business. It is tough to see them ecstatic like that again because they see great business all of the time, especially with bands like No B.S. and big punk festivals. That first time, it was great seeing them celebrate a good night of business and knowing I had a part in it. The second RVAJazzfest, in 2010, had an unfortunate turnout because of the weather and everything.

Williams: But now it is in April!

Christesen: Yeah. That was a good lesson too. The lesson wasn’t: don’t make anything happen in the winter. The lesson was how to deal with extenuating circumstances like that and having a back up plan. That second year, I didn’t really have a back up plan. I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t really have a choice. The Camel is a business and they needed something to happen that night. It had to go on and I didn’t have a back up date or anything. That is why the third year was a little more of a success. I was more prepared.

How do you feel about maybe one day producing RVAJazz fest?

Williams: That is maybe one of the most memorable nights during my time in Richmond. Steven Bernstein had come and done a workshop at my high school that had seemed at one point like it wasn’t going to happen. Seeing people that don’t ever listen to that type of music so excited was incredible. I walked in there and usually when I go into The Camel, I at least recognize everyone in there. When I walked into the RVAJazz Fest, I was like, “wow, who are these people?”

Christesen: A lot of that has to do with the title of the event and making a big deal out of it. It was like, hey musicians, you want people to show up at your gig? Maybe try making a big a big deal out of it. Don’t treat it like just another gig for you, because it is not. I've seen Richmond musicians get better about that in the past few years.

Williams: Steven Bernstein has one of the personalities where you just wanted to be there. You just want to listen, whether he was talking or playing. It is important to have those events to get people excited about the scene as a whole. That introduced a lot of people to Glows in the Dark, Fight the Big Bull and Boots of Leather. To have that opportunity in the future would be incredible.

It brings people from, I don’t want to say the circle, but outside the circle in and make them feel a part of it. That event certainly helped Richmond as a whole even the second and third times. It also cool to do that while seeing someone from out of town.

Christesen: I have in the past done other events too. So it is not about limiting yourself to one event a year. You can do this as much as you want. We have presented Glenn Wilson, helped sponsor Matana Roberts coming to town and Jason Ajemian a couple of times and things like that. As many times as I can put on an event and bring the music off the computer screen into people’s lives, I’m going to do it. Especially when you find a band that you believe in and music that moves you, try and spread the word.

Williams: Do you have any parting words?

Christesen: Yeah, you’re going to do great.

Williams: Thank you.

Chrsitesen: I have faith. That is why I have chosen you.

Williams: Well, Chicago is in for a treat. It’s a little bigger scene, but it won’t take you long.

Richmond will certainly miss Dean when he is gone, but it certainly won't be long before we hear from him again.
Now it's back to the important stuff: jazz music.

Farewell

Aaron Williams — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:56:48 +0000

Its 9 o'clock in the morning. Early for jazz musicians. Dean Christesen and I sit in the RVANews office. Artifacts from Richmond line the walls of the old principals office turned conference room. Dean and I reflect on his three and half year journey with RVAJazz while talking about my past and my future with music, the website and Richmond.

Williams: What inspired you to start RVAJazz and how did you start it?

Christesen: I started RVAJazz in December of 2007, which puts me as a sophomore at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) in the music program. I didn’t necessarily feel like I had the authority to do something like this but I did feel like it was needed in the community. Not just for the community or the musicians, but for myself. I was often wondering what was going on any given night of the week. I would have to go from website to website to website, go from MySpace to MySpace, when MySpace was still the key ingredient and find out who was playing where.

It was starting to get really annoying for me and I wanted it all in one place. So that’s kind of how it all started, as a calendar for what was going on. Then I figured I would try out my writing chops and write news. Basically keep everyone up to date with the scene. That’s how it started.

Williams: You just put up a calendar?

Christesen: Yes, it was a BlogSpot blog. I used a picture that my dad took of a brick wall and I overlaid white text and that was the masthead and that was it. Not too long after that, I got the domain name RVAJazz.com. It was really just an experiment of mine to write anonymously about the scene and the main players in the scene.

Williams: It was anonymous at that time?

Christesen: It was anonymous for a long time.

Williams: When did it stop being anonymous and what made you stop?

Christesen: I’m not sure exactly when it stopped, we would have to check the books on when it stopped being anonymous. Again, the reason it was anonymous is because I didn’t feel like I had the authority. I was just a young kid documenting…not just documenting, critiquing and criticizing the scene. So it was like, “who is to listen to this kid?” So that is why I was anonymous. I guess when I became not anonymous…It’s not when I realized, “Oh yeah I’m now an authority, now I can speak under my name.” Who cares if I am an authority or not, this is a resource that is needed and it is more work to be anonymous than it is to actually fulfill this goal.

Williams: Were people catching on?

Christesen: Not really, but it made it really hard to do interviews. Everything was email based. Even people like Skip Gailes, we would be talking in class and he would be like, “Who is this RVAJazz?” It kind of hurt a little bit to not be able to tell Skip that it was me. “I don’t know Skip, (laughs), I don’t know who it is.” Eventually, I just became not anonymous. That was right around the time that I began planning the first RVAJazz Fest. So I was like, “this is going to be impossible if I am still anonymous and there is no need for it anymore.

Are you excited?

Williams: I am very excited. I love this city. People in this city are why I am into jazz and why I am into music. Its not because I discovered some recordings of some people from the 50’s or 40’s or 30’s, its because I met people in this city and heard people in this city play. Taylor Barnett was my brother’s high school jazz band director and he has such a magnetic amazing personality. He is one of those people you just want to be around because he is so passionate and amazing at what he does.

Then I met Bryan Hooten and I had the same experience as my brother at my high school. I just started meeting people. It is so different to experience something live than it is to listen to recordings, and I have a passion for original music. Richmond has all of that. It is so approachable. I was just a kid and I had the ability to meet people who I really looked up to. Now to be a part of that, sometimes as a player, and to document that is amazing.

Christesen: Well you are a young guy. You are a freshman at VCU and you are one of the few people that as a high schooler in the area, already had a reputation, especially with your band High Noon. So what was your high school experience like? Did you study with Bryan and you were in the Greater Richmond High School Jazz Band?

Williams: Bryan was my high school band director at James River High School. We met once a week after school. Freshman year, his and my first year, the saxophone section was so weak. This was the first year we had a jazz band and the saxophone section was so strugglin! The band was super young. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. He brought in John Lilley because no one had an idea of what saxophone was really supposed to sound like. So I approached John Lilley and asked if I could take lessons with him.

He kind of hesitated for a minute. I think I even asked, “Do you teach lessons?” He responded, “Well yeah, of course I do.” (Laughs) He has some other students now but I was his only student for a really long time, which was amazing. I learned a lot of great things.

The cool thing about Richmond is that there is a lot of emphasis put on original music and building bands. For me, I started writing music, put a band together and recorded a record. For me, that was just obvious. High Noon, for me was, “duh.” I talk to some people from other towns and they have played a lot of standards gigs and different things but its not quite as obvious to do that. I really love the creative process and the process of working with other people towards a collective goal. High Noon is probably one of the most rewarding things I have done in my life.

The Greater Richmond High School Jazz Band was really amazing. I was a member for three years. VCU seemed like the logical decision on where to go to college. That is where I met most of the guys in High Noon and a ton of other people. It is cool that even on a high school level those connections are being made.

Christesen: Yeah, you aren’t excluded because of your age. Everybody is welcome and you especially because you assert yourself. You are there hanging out. You are at the Matt White parties (the leader of Fight the Big Bull). That is certainly part of it. Being friends with everybody, so you know what is going on. Friendship is part of the music making community here in Richmond. Everyone is in bands together and they all learn from each other.

Williams: Absolutely. Everyone has been super welcoming even though I am a lot younger than everyone else.

Can you talk about your departure from Richmond and RVAjazz.com? How has your experience building this website from scratch influenced what you want to do?

Christesen: I am going to Chicago in August to study arts management at Columbia College. RVAJazz prepared me for that. My career path has become less of that of a performing musician. Even though I was a performance major during my undergrad: jazz studies, that is ok with me. It doesn’t hurt me that I am not going to be playing music professionally for the rest of my life because I have discovered other strengths of mine. I did that because of RVAJazz.

I discovered that I could put on these “bigger than small scale” events because I am organized and I think I can see the big pictures enough to put on things like that. I have also realized that a lot of musicians need help. That goes back to the very beginning of RVAJazz when I was just creating a calendar. A lot of these people didn’t even have a calendar of their performances, which tells you they aren’t even promoting their events to their fullest potential. That is really a shame because that is what it comes down to for musicians. Maybe they are promoting their CDs a lot or maybe they are not but these club dates maybe go totally under the radar.

Facebook has changed a lot of that and people are talking it up as much as possible on Facebook but it goes so much further than that. People are embracing this new media but are totally forgetting about traditional media. I think I can help with that. I think I have tried to help with that and learned more from doing it through RVAJazz.

Williams: RVAJazz had a lot to do with my ability to get downtown and find out about these shows because I wasn’t a Facebook friend with these people. That was important to me. I remember going to check the calendar and I would run and talk to my parents, “this is the night, this is the night I HAVE to go.”

After more than three years with RVAJazz, there is a lot to be said! The second half of this interview will appear next week.

Photo credit: Lauren Serpa

High Noon: First Last Stand

Dean Christesen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:28:48 +0000

Pictured from left to right: Brad Rogers, John Weisiger, Matt Nichols, Aaron Williams

High Noon
First Last Stand
(Self released, 2010)

If you didn’t know how old the members of High Noon are, you’d think nothing of age when listening to their debut album, First Last Stand. Maturity of sound isn’t everything, and while these eighteen-year-olds have only been playing their instruments but a few years compared to their elders, it’s the way they come together that makes their music special. It’s not all youthful jolly and acrobatic multi-metered performances, despite their age. In fact, it’s very little of that.

The four hail from three different Richmond area high schools, tenor saxophonist Aaron Williams and keyboardist John Weisiger both from James River High. They met bassist Brad Rogers and drummer Matt Nichols while playing together in VCU’s Greater Richmond High School Jazz Band and started exploring new and original compositions together. For all the talent each has on his instrument, the compositions on First Last Stand are the chief instigators and the creative impetuses that allow them to thrive as an ensemble.

Listen to "Island Cannibals":
[audio:
http://rvanews.net/sounds/Jazz/01%20Island%20Cannibals.mp3|titles=Island Cannibals|artists=High Noon]

Some tunes have many themes and sections that are all interconnected and give new backdrops for improvisation, or no solos at all. Like on the album’s lead off, Williams’s “Island Cannibals,” the band focuses tremendously to turn so many varieties of the same fruit into a meal.

The music in Weiseger’s “15 Wives” is as twisted as the polygamy that its title suggests. The talented pianist not only frames his own skills with impressive piano parts, but the layers of his composition add depth.

Writing lines in unison is a device used throughout the album’s six tunes, and it’s the first thing heard on the record between saxophone, keyboard, and bass. It’s a statement of sorts to double or triple a melody or theme that needs no reinforcing with harmony. At one point during the catchy jazz-rock “Odd Couple,” keyboardist Weisiger doubles the saxophone's background ostinato with his right hand while playing the melody with his left hand in unison with the bass. Drummer Nichols brings the energy way down, and the effect is truly mesmerizing.

Listen to "Odd Couple":
[audio:
http://rvanews.net/sounds/Jazz/02%20Odd%20Couple.mp3|titles=Odd Couple|artists=High Noon]

Williams says it’s his appreciation for the small ensemble, as well as a duo playing workshop that he took with saxophonist JC Kuhl and drummer Brian Jones, that inspires him to use unisons in his compositions. A separate workshop with the band Kneebody at the School for Improvised Music in Brooklyn, NY, showed him a different approach. “Every member [of the band] learns every line of every composition by ear. This leads to some seriously spontaneous doubling.” Using the instruments available for the colors that he seeks, doubling lines allows Williams to fatten a sound where he sees fit.

Because of their age and most clubs’ unwillingness to let in under-agers, they say they’re presented with obstacles that most musicians in the area don’t have to deal with. They have played gigs that range from PTA meetings to opening up for No BS! Brass, dealing accordingly and still managing to catch as many performances as they can and being exposed to as much music as possible. It’s because of this exposure and the approachability of Richmond’s established musicians that Williams calls the Richmond jazz scene his greatest influence.

When young musicians have a wealth of creativity and the technique and tools to turn it into something, that’s when it’s special. All four musicians are beginning college pursuing either jazz or classical music performance, and their creativity should guide them to great places.