#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Ashley Weckesser

Please welcome Ashley Weckesser to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!

A few of your favorite things:

The outdoors, plants, animals and good food are just a few of my favorite things.

Things you need to throw out:

I need to throw out my garbage from this week, donate some articles of clothing that I no longer wear and some nasty old cat toys that my cats still seem to enjoy.

Words that describe you:

Crazy (in a good sense I hope), passionate, creative, adventurous, kind.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t:

Intimidating, anti-social.

Something you wish you could do:

I sincerely wish that I could fly (without the aid of technology)!

Something you wish you’d never learned to do:

I wish that I had never learned how to crack my knuckles. I make a lot of people cringe…

Favorite things to do:

I love exploring the great outdoors when I get the chance to escape, playing video games, playing sports, creating art and cooking new and exciting meals.

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing:

Cleaning up other people’s messes.

Things that make you happy:

Ice cream, cats, sunshine, fresh air.

Things that drive you crazy:

Gossip and people who don’t seem to mind taking advantage of other people including yourself.

Things to say to a composer:

Really any compliment will suffice however if you dig deep into all the hidden messages and complexities composers usually layer within their work, you will win them over.

Things to say to a composer if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next composition:

“You should’ve done ___ instead”, “It sounded nice.”, “Did you mean for it to sound like that?”.

About Ashley:

Ashley Weckesser is an Edmonton, AB-based composer and interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of music and sound, visual art and theater. An early-career artist, her instrumental and graphic score works have premiered at the University of Alberta’s Convocation Hall through the University’s Experimental Improvisation Ensemble (“XiMe”), Contemporary Music Ensemble and Edmonton's Ultraviolet Ensemble. A recent graduate from the University of Alberta, she has studied composition with Dr. Mark Hannesson and Dr. Scott Smallwood. Her current interests involve music design for video games and film, producing animated graphic scores, working with advanced music software such as Max/MSP, and the visual arts.

Her works have won awards for best video game audio design, multiple university scholarships and recently her animated graphic score, A Composer’s Nightmare, has been featured in the Toronto 4th Multicultural Film Festival 2021. Ashley’s primary goal in her works is emotional storytelling that ignites passion. Music cannot effectively impact listeners without having a story and without having emotion. Ashley has taken a new interest in musical compositions that are designed to explore the impact of music on the conscious and subconscious emotional reactions of both the performers and listeners. Her goals are to design music in both the film and video game industries, as well as live performances (taking multiple forms), that turn the active listener into a participant; creating their own personal story and subsequently emoting on a transcendent level. “I believe music and sound have the ability to connect people, thoughts and emotions. Music and Sound allow us to tell engaging stories with lasting effect. It is the bridge by which we can cross into the land of our subconscious and transcend our self awareness; it inspires.”

Her music, photography, graphic scores, and more can be viewed at https://www.aweckesser.com.

Let’s Be Social:

Website: https://www.aweckesser.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a.weckesser/?next=%2F (@a.weckesser)