Greetings From Inside
Jeremiah and Mary Councill
Spin we into a fantasy
An odyssey of Passionate, Perplexed Pilgrims
The Creators
Jeremiah Councill began his career as a musician (bass player and lead singer) during his college years in various dance music bands, finally leading his own band for several years on the New York/New Jersey circuit in the 70’s and 80’s. During this time he worked on a concept album with Tony Camillo at Venture Sound Studios in New Jersey. The seeds for the chamber opera A’Musing were born here.
In the 90’s Jeremiah redirected his career to that of teaching, where he became an English professor at Isothermal Community College. During this phase, he joined the Globe Players, a Shakespearian acting company, and performed in many roles including Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Polonius in Hamlet, Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. In the area of Broadway plays, he was Pelinore in Camelot, Fagin in Oliver, King Kaspar in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and Old Deuteronomy in Cats.
In their close association with the Rutherford County Arts Council, Jeremiah and his wife Mary (on keyboard) have been involved in the pit orchestra for many productions ranging from children's musicals to Broadway shows.
Mary Councill started her musical career as a flutist and classical pianist. This training evolved into musical composition inspired by poetry and lyrics written by Jeremiah. Mary has written the scores for all songs in the chamber opera A’Musing, an odyssey of passionate pilgrims. A’Musing was performed at the 2017 Piccolo/Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC and a fully staged performance was produced by the Rutherford County Arts Council in October 2017
In New York City, Mary joined Jeremiah’s band as the keyboard player and performed as part of his quartet on the New York/New Jersey dance circuit. During this time, she studied jazz technique with the formidable pianist Morris Nanton from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. She came to be responsible for “the wall of sound” in the quartet and after moving to North Carolina continued playing with Jeremiah as a duo.
Mary became a teacher of gifted children in the Rutherford County Schools and went on to become director of the county’s gifted program. She has published articles for The Journal of Creative Behavior (“Creating Inspiration”) and The Gifted Side (“Whole Brain De-Stress Options for Gifted Individuals”). She has been a presenter at several conferences for gifted education and was successful in writing a 3 million dollar grant which was implemented as an after school program called “Playing for Keeps.”
Working as a keyboard collaborator on her Kurzweil 2600, Mary has played orchestral arrangements for the pit orchestra in many Arts Council productions, especially evident in the productions of Camelot, The Music Man, Sound of Music, Oliver, Amahl and the Night Vistor, Cats, Little Mermaid and Little Women, the Broadway Musical.
Work Product
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. (1989) Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, Los Angeles. .
Baldwin, J. (1984) Giovanni’s Room. Doubleday, NY. 1956.
Bachelor, S. (1997) Buddhism Without Beliefs. Riverhead Books, NY.
Bachelor, S. (2015) After Buddhism.Yale University Press, New Haven.
Bowles, P. Collected Stories (1939-1976. 91993) (1988) Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa.
Bulfinch’s Mythology. Thomas Crowell Company.
Bunyan, J. (1678) The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Campbell, J. (2008) The Hero With a Thousand Faces. New World Library, CA.
Campbell, J. and Moyers, B. (1991) The Power of Myth. Anchor Books: A Division of Random House, Inc., NY.
Camus, A. (1942) L’Etranger. Editions Gallimard.
Chomsky, N. (2002) Understanding Power. The New Press, NY.
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Coates, T. (2015) Between the World and Me. Spiegel and Grau, Random House, NY.
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Coates, T. ( 2017) We Were Eight Years in Power. One World, Random House, NY.
Dalai Lama. (1998) The Art of Happiness. Riverbed Books, NY.
Dalai Lama. (1997) The Four Noble Truths. HarperCollins, India.
Everyman - late 15th century morality play.
Harari, Y. N. (2015) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., NY.
Heller, J. (1994) Catch-22. Simon & Schuster, NY.
Homer. (1967) The Iliad. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Homer. (1937) The Odyssey. Penguin Books, NY.
Jung, C. G. (1971) The Portable Jung. Viking Penguin, Inc.
Laxness, H. (1976) Independent People. Vintage International Edition, NY.
Mahabharata. Retold by William Buck. (1973) University of California Press.
Matthiessen, P. (1978) The Snow Leopard. The Franklin Library, PA.
Milne, A. A. (2001) The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie the Pooh. Dutton Children’s Books, NY.
Plato. Republic. Trans. by Robin Waterfield (1993) Oxford University Press, NY.
Ramayana. Retold by William Buck. (1976) University of California Press.
Seth, Vikram. (1994) A Suitable Boy. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., NY.
Stein, G. (1948) First Reader and Three Plays. Houghton Miflin, Boston.
Shun (15th Century. The Ten Oxherding Pictures from the Manual of Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki. www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mzb/oxherd.htm
The Tibetan Book of the Dead. W.Y Evans-Went. (1960) Oxford University Press.
Voltaire. (1992) Candide ou L’Optimism. Editions Gallimard.
Wright, R. (2017) Why Buddhism Is True. Simon & Schuster, NY.
Bibliography of our way
A beautiful Chinese woman.
A disapproving group of Peruvians on their way to church as we were fishing for pirranah.
Machu Picchu is evocative of a fascinating civilization.
Mary and Ferdinand.
Caged bird hanging by the wall of The Forbidden City as its owner plays mahjong.
Yaks, in a cacophony of bells having just literally brushed by us in the upper Himalayas .
Staying in the old city of Istanbul we soaked in the cultures of the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque while constantly absorbing the muezzin call to prayer echoing from minarets across the city. It is here that we woke at 5:00 am to hundreds of birds creating songs in harmony with the muezzins — the essence of jazz.
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In China we walked the Great Wall, explored the streets and alleys of the ever-diminishing hutongs of Beijing, immersed ourselves in the history of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, listened to the singing of caged songbirds hung in the trees by old men playing mahjong in the city parks and the chirping of crickets placed in wooden boxes alongside our dinner table. We experienced the “aha” of how to proceed with one of the five acts of our opera-in-progress at the frighteningly formidable Beijing train station and were fortunate to attend a complete production of a Chinese opera. In western Hunan Province we explored the Himalayan/Tibetan culture visiting an array of Buddhist monasteries and convents. A roadside traveler calmed our incredulity at the appearance of furiously smoking stupas by explaining that the villagers were burning incense to feed the Hungry Ghosts.
On our way to Cambodia we got to spend One Night In Bangkok. Reaching Siem Reap, we spent days exploring the Hindu/Buddhist dynamism at Angkor Wat. There is a small stone temple in the midst of this complex where you are able to “release your demons.” By a soft hit to the chest, a sound is produced in tandem with the resonant frequency of the structure. This action produces a low resonant echo which is quite satisfying. We traveled by tuk-tuk through monsoon flooded streets to attend an ancient shadow puppet show. And then, someone placed a copy of Stephen Bachelor’s Buddhism Without Belief on our nightstand. How did s/he know?!
Along with performing, Jeremiah and Mary have worked diligently over the years on the chamber opera A’Musing, a rendition of which was performed in 1991, produced by the Rutherford County Arts Council. After major editing and rearrangement, A’Musing, an odyssey of Passionate Pilgrims, was accepted and produced in concert form at the 2017 Piccolo/Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC. A fully staged performance of A’Musing was produced by the Rutherford County Arts Council in October 2017. Jeremiah and Mary are currently working on a second opera, A’Mazing, an odyssey of Perplexed Pilgrims. Many of the concepts for the opera A’Mazing are inspired by our world travels. In Peru, we visited Cusco and Machu Picchu, traveled down the Amazon fishing for piranha and walked the rain forests sitting in on native medicine men eating hallucinogenic plants and diagnosing illnesses.
Angkor Wat with hen.
A subtle smile.
We have slept under heaps of homemade Moroccan rugs in the Sahara Desert and visited a nomad family living in caves in the Atlas Mountains. Our companion on the Moroccan trip was The Complete Stories of Paul Bowles. A passing pilgrim said that reading about the country while you were traveling in it was like “reading in 3-D.”
Shot while shooting, I am experiencing the Sahara for the first time.
In India we explored Old Delhi; traveled to the Mehrangarh Fort of Jodhpur; stood transported in front of the Taj Mahal; stalked tigers in the Rudyard Kipling Preserve (and washed an elephant in the local river); explored the Ajanta and Ellora Caves; saw the artisans constructing floats for the Diwali holy days in Calcutta (Kolkata); bought the best tea we’ll ever drink at The Happy Valley Tea plantation in Darjeeling; were lucky enough to have the best guide we’ll ever have while exploring Varanasi (Benares) and walked in the path of the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala/Mcleod Ganj.
Tara's trunk.
All of her.
Effigies of the Hindu goddess Durga, sold on Potters Lane in Kolkata for use in the Diwali celebrations.
Iceland showed us the land of Snorri Sturluson. It is the home of his Norse Sagas. Then we had an unforgettable moment under the Northern Lights.
A long blissful moment.