- [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by: the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(lively music) - [David Barnett] Coming up, Beatlemania returns as we tour the new exhibit, Get Back to Let it Be at the Rock Hall.

Plus the violin gets a 21st century makeover thanks to a couple of Case grads.

And explore gender identity with vocalist, Kyle Kidd and guitarist, Marcus Alan Ward.

(lively music) Hello, and welcome to Ideastream Public Media's "Applause".

I'm David C. Barnett.

(lighthearted guitar music) John, Paul, George and Ringo star in the new documentary series, "The Beatles: Get Back".

Artifacts from that series are now front and center in the latest exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia has more.

(upbeat music) - [Kabir Bhatia] We got a behind the scenes look at the new Beatles exhibit from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that aims to help visitors get back to a pivotal moment in rock history.

More than four years in the making, this immersive experience was curated to complement Peter Jackson's 2021 docuseries, "Get Back".

♪ Get back ♪ ♪ Get back ♪ - We hit upon "Get Back", Peter Jackson's docuseries as a very worthy project that we could curate and build an exhibit that would complement his epic docuseries.

- It's footage that was shot originally Michael Lindsay-Hogg for the "Let it Be" film which was a period...

It was a piece, a moment in time that was captured and delivered.

But the chance for a filmmaker today to rewatch the raw, sort of see a different story within it.

And then what it comes back to is you're telling a story, he's telling a story of these four artists that we all know so well, but he's giving you a different view.

- [Kabir Bhatia] The exhibit brings you into the studio during rehearsal sessions with the Beatles and puts you right on the rooftop for that legendary 1969 concert, the last public performance of the band.

♪ Don't let me down ♪ - The goal of our exhibit was to make it an immersive experience, bring you closer to the Beatles during that period in '69 than ever before.

- Then the other is they're larger than life.

So on screen they're bigger than you or I, and you really feel it.

And it transports you in a magical way.

♪ Push it on me ♪ The rooftop concert at Apple, that was the Beatles' final public performance as a band.

And we want you to feel as if you're on the rooftop with them.

- 'Cause it just feels like you are really there on top of the rooftop, the way that the TV curves around like that and the sound and like...

I mean, I don't know if you saw me over there.

I was like bobbing.

I was like, oh my gosh, like, it feels like I'm there.

♪ Don't let me down ♪ - We're there... We're on the rooftop in London, that was amazing.

- And just the fact that it was the last performance that they had, and that people just came out of their offices and the one guy was annoyed, you know?

- Walking through the exhibit, you can see instruments, manuscripts, records and clothing that were used by the Beatles.

All loaned directly from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estates of George Harrison and John Lennon.

- How amazing is it that that stuff survived 50 some years?

Usually that should have been thrown out.

Well, with the Beatles, they realized in the moment how much history they were making.

And they did keep a lot of things.

And everything in this exhibit has been meticulously maintained and documented.

("Let it Be") - Seeing Rocky, George's guitar (woman chuckles) was probably my highlight.

Ever since I found out about Rocky and him painting that, I got super excited and when I saw they had it here, I got thrilled.

- I thought it was cool seeing John Lennon's glasses in person.

I didn't think they would have that here.

I was surprised at that.

♪ Let it be ♪ - I think it's amazing that we're half a century later, we're still, we're still, it's still... Not even relevant, the music actually gets better when you listen to it 50 years later.

♪ Let it be ♪ - The time with my son and seeing his smile on the... As he's watching the rooftop band, that was great.

♪ Words of wisdom, let it be ♪ - [Kabir Bhatia] Now it's been over 50 years for this.

60 years since the Beatles auditioned, I believe, for EMI.

Why are we still talking about this?

- You know, it's the most impactful, iconic band in history is one of the reasons.

The other one is the catalog is still vibrant.

People are still loving it, listening and using it.

And I know it sounds like a cop out but it's the Beatles.

(laughs) You know, it's the Beatles.

So that's why we're still talking about it.

They're still hyper relevant.

And I think they're still admired by musicians and fans.

And then it's generations upon generations.

So there's this incredible connective tissue that the Beatles bring to the world of music.

- [David Barnett] The Beatles: Get Back to Let it Be is on view at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum through March of 2023.

(tuneful music) What do you think?

These violins seem like they could fit nicely on the cover of Sergeant Peppers.

The 3D printed instruments are the creation of a pair of graduates from Case Western Reserve University.

And they're the latest local entrepreneurs to step into our "Making It" spotlight.

- Everyone's shocked at how good it actually sounded was incredible.

- Our biggest problem with this is that no one believes it until they can physically touch it.

And that is our biggest reception is people who hear it, love it.

People who just hear the idea, don't believe it.

(tuneful music) - Hi, my name is Matthew Canel and I am the founder and engineer for 3D Music.

- Hi, my name is Ben Kaufman and I am the co-founder and business developer at 3D Music.

We're making 3D printed plastic, acoustic violins for schools and research purposes.

So that way we can make things that are cheaper, easier to maintain than traditional wooden violins.

More durable and more resistant to weather elements and climate changes while also being drought resistant and throw resistant.

(violin thuds) (violin thuds) well, you can see that these can take a hit.

- [Interviewer] If you do that to a wooden violin just imagine how upset everyone involved would be.

- I graduated Case with a degree in computer engineering in 2012, and then a degree in management in 2013.

And then sort of stuck around the area helping out, doing various startups.

- And I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and technical theater in 2020, and a masters in mechanical engineering in 2021.

I'm trying to decide if I should dare try to play and the answer is I really shouldn't.

I don't play violin.

(chuckles) So actually this started out as a summer project for a course credit.

And I used to play the cello, and obviously cellos are a bit big to start 3D printing.

So starting with a violin was a little bit more reasonable.

From there, I developed the 1/4 size which was in the end, my thesis.

And after I graduated, I started developing the other sizes and hope to eventually move on to other instruments as well.

- We're up to about our 108th prototype, and we're just about ready to go to market and mass produce them.

- So it started with let's make it the general shape, accounting for the fact it's plastic so it'll resonate a little differently.

From there, we actually approached a local luthier, Max Morgan who makes wooden instruments and he was able to help us quite a bit with the sound profile.

Basically, how our printers work, you have a roll of plastic that's fed by motor into this box right here which has a heating element in it, which melts it and then a micro controller computer tells it to feed the plastic out in whatever pattern you program.

This will do the 2D drawings of each layer and then every time it does layer, it will drop down.

For our 1/4 size violins, that's about a day and a half.

For our full size violin, which is a bit bigger, that'll be about two days.

They print in two parts, the body and the neck, this one already having tuners in it.

And you can see we screw in the tuners.

These are currently off-the-shelf guitar tuners.

And then they just get slotted together.

And you have (violin music) some strings through the holes to the tuners, you put a wooden bridge on it, and then you have a violin.

- This is the first startup I've worked on that was truly a physical product with no digital element at all.

And it is great being able to physically see the object change, play it, tweak it, touch it, and then just like iterate and iterate and just keep figuring out where it's going wrong.

- It has been quite fun to see people react to be surprised by its quality and pleased and excited to see it.

And to have people excited to see what will become and what comes next.

- [David Barnett] To meet more entrepreneurs from Northeast Ohio, check out our "Making It" series online at arts.ideastream.org.

(festive music) Easter eggs are not just a tradition in Ukraine, they're an art.

On the next "Applause", we make a Northeast Ohio connection to Ukraine with an exhibit of exquisite eggs located in Tremont.

Plus a Cleveland maker named Purple Elephant shares the love of lavender.

And we go honky tonkin' in the 330 with Cory Grinder and the Playboy Scouts.

All this and more, on the next round of "Applause".

♪ She got style ♪ ♪ She can give it to you ♪ ♪ You can talk your talk ♪ ♪ But just a look at that girl you know ♪ ♪ She got flare ♪ ♪ Just a look at her hair ♪ ♪ I like to take that little woman with me everywhere ♪ - [David Barnett] In New York City, the beauty of high flying birds inspires a mural project dedicated to conservation.

The Audubon Society hopes these murals bring awareness to birds threatened by climate change.

(upbeat music) - I had opened the gallery and wanted to bring some attention to the gallery so I asked the one fine artist I knew who also did quote-unquote, street art to paint a mural on the adjacent gates to this art gallery.

And he's from Florida and he said to me, "I'm gonna paint a Flamingo for you because I'm from Florida and bring some Florida flavor."

And I made the connection, John James Audubon, birds, and that's how the project really got started.

- I said, "Wow, this is a great idea.

Get the word out about the threatened birds, beautify the neighborhood, but let's be a little more ambitious.

Let's not do just a dozen birds, let's do all 314 threatened birds.

Do murals of all of them on gates and walls all over this neighborhood."

And Avi crazily said, "Sure, let's do it."

And we've been chasing our 314 number ever since.

- So it's really nice to sort of publicize one of the great Americans and really one of the most interesting Americans to people who are familiar with the name but unfamiliar with the actual person.

- [Mark Jannot] John James Audubon was possibly America's greatest bird and natural world artist.

And an extraordinary pioneering ornithologist.

He spent the last 10 years of his life here in Washington Heights.

- The center of the project really has shifted to what was once the Audubon Estate between 155th and 156th street and Broadway.

And it's appropriate because John James Audubon's final resting place is in Trinity Cemetery on 155th.

We made the decision to paint from approximately 135th street west to 193rd street, which is the end of Audubon Avenue.

And there's no great logic to it, but we sort of thought it would be nice to keep the project uptown.

Picking the locations is a bit of a challenge but one of the things we decided from the beginning was we weren't just gonna paint anywhere, we're looking to beautify.

So we're seeking out spaces that are in need of some sort of fix, some sort of improvement.

So the big walls that we've painted all had crumbling paint and really were in a state of disrepair.

We've worked with landlords to secure spaces like empty alcoves that are boarded up.

And we can work with studio artists who are painting panels that we then install into the building.

We're mostly working with artists who are from the neighborhood or from the greater New York area.

We work with them to choose a bird.

We try not to paint the same birds twice.

We really ask them to do what they want within reason.

(upbeat music) Some of the murals contain more than one bird, so we've painted about 70 birds so far.

There are challenges to painting outside, but there are also benefits to painting outside.

So there are people who come while an artist paints and they're engaging the artist and it's a little bit distracting.

But the positive is that they're engaging the artist and they're learning about the project and they're learning not just about global warming, they're learning about art.

I'm from the neighborhood originally, and I wanted people uptown to be able to see the sort of art that you would normally have to go to Chelsea or the Lower East Side or maybe parts of Brooklyn for.

(upbeat music) - One of the things I love about coming up here to look at and for the murals is that you can't be sure on any given visit which ones you're going to see or that you're gonna see them all.

In that way, it's sort of like going out for a birding expedition.

You can't know which birds you're going to see.

When you're talking about half of all North American birds being threatened, you're gonna see some birds there that you wouldn't expect to see.

They will shift, they will move.

The Baltimore oriole is projected to no longer be able to be seen in Baltimore.

The common loon which is the state bird of Minnesota is projected not to be able to be found in Minnesota.

I think that sort of seeing these murals of birds in this urban environment in a particularly urban sort of art form is something that gets people's attention.

And I hope they will sort of investigate and see if like, what is this?

Why are these murals all here?

And really learn about this threat to the birds that we are used to seeing around this, even in an urban environment.

I hope that it inspires people to think about that and to kind of be inspired to do something about it.

- On 163rd, we have one of my favorite murals.

It's by the artist, Cruz, who's a New York based artist and it's a painting of three tricolored herons.

In the mural, the polar ice caps have melted and sea levels are rising, and the three herons are sort fighting for the last food in this case, a snake.

(somber music) There's so many things I'd love for people to take away from the murals: an understanding of the threats that the environment faces, more neighborhood pride for Uptown Manhattan, a sense that art is accessible.

- [Mark Jannot] I strongly encourage people to get up here because it's really an extraordinary experience.

(somber music) (acoustic guitar music) - Singer, Kyle Kidd and guitarist, Marcus Alan Ward are kindred spirits when it comes to portraying the Black experience in their music.

And this is true despite their different musical, educational and sexual backgrounds.

The two collaborated on music for our "Applause Performances" series.

Kyle, you grew up in Cleveland Heights, you spent some time in Solon as well.

Music's been a part o' your life for quite a while and a lot of it comes from the church.

Can you talk about those early musical influences for you?

- Yeah.

So my experience started in the church.

My father's a pastor and we had a family church that we went to.

Well, that a lot of our family went to.

And so my aunt was a pretty amazing singer as well as my uncle.

So that's kind of like where I got my vision of like, oh, singing is a thing.

And my mother told me, when I was younger, she always would tell me she knew that there was something different about me.

Or that I was really gonna be into music from like the age of three.

Our church used to always sing hymn at the beginning of the service and I would stand on the back pew next to my grandmother and sing all the way through.

And I probably would be the loudest person in the sanctuary the whole time.

- And for you, Marcus, now, you're this kid growing up in Bedford Heights, that's where you get the love for guitar, but there was maybe a little difference between your musical taste and most the other kids at high school, or how would you describe it?

- Yeah, so I did...

Unlike Kyle, I did not grow up playing in church, I don't have any musical members in my family at all.

I just kinda...

I was a kid, I was blessed enough to have parents that just kinda let me try anything.

And like I said, I tried skateboarding, all types of things.

And then I picked up a guitar one day and it was kinda connected with me.

So I was the only Black kid in my high school playing guitar and listening to things like the Mars Volta and Led Zeppelin and these prog, Rush and things like that.

These prog rock things that I was inspired by but now I'm glad to see today that Black people are in all spaces, we're skateboarding, we're making alternative music, rock music, punk music.

So I was an Afrofuturist then and I still am now.

♪ Seems like you're always running from me ♪ ♪ Can't tell if it's your inability ♪ ♪ To put words to your own feelings ♪ ♪ You passport into everything ♪ ♪ With no regard to our dreams ♪ ♪ Hell, that you promised me ♪ - [David Barnett] Both of you call yourselves Afrofuturists.

What does that term mean for you?

- Afrofuturism is seeing Black people in a progressive space that may not exist today, right?

So I know that Black people may be at the bottom of the totem pole today politically and socio-politically and economically, things like that but I will never look at Black people differently because I see the future.

I've seen the future happen in my lifetime like I said, with something just as small as music but a thousand years in the future, Black people may be the most dominant.

We're gonna be at a different economical space, we're gonna progress.

So Afrofuturism is in fashion, music, everything like that, wearing things that may not apply to our small lens today but will be a commonplace in the future.

- One thing-- - And I think.

I think-- - Go ahead.

- If you don't mind me chiming in I think-- - Yeah, absolutely.

- So we always have been ahead of the curve.

If you're looking at the history of Black culture, if you're looking at rock and roll, we talked about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and what it means to have rock and roll be a thing.

You know, it was Black people who brought it to be a thing and then the society we live in gave it a specific name and the categorizing of things.

but we've always been ahead of the curve, the new trend of people wearing durags and all of these things, that has been a part of Black culture and wearing your hair in different styles, with the volume and things like that, even fashion and things like that.

So we've been ahead of the curve.

It's just about being able to have the power behind us to claim it as ours and it still be ours and a part of our cultural experience and not be adapted to something else, taken away from our experience and our heritage and our cultural background.

- Yeah.

♪ Body ♪ ♪ Gain some self control ♪ ♪ Nothing's like it was before ♪ ♪ I cry so many times ♪ ♪ Walking out that door ♪ ♪ But something, something brings me back to you ♪ (acoustic guitar music) ♪ Too late ♪ - [David Barnett] Marcus, I know that as you guys relate to each other, you're coming from two totally different musical... Two different perspectives in life or something or...

Explain a little bit about that.

- Kyle is a queer Black male and I'm a heterosexual Black male.

And it's just interesting that who you choose to be intimate with or have sex with can lead you on these two totally different things, become kinda the basis for your life, but it's... Me and Kyle are...

This collaboration is special because we do have different backgrounds on that but we're really kindred spirits in that, like I said, I mean, we both are... Once I saw him singing in Mourning A BLKstar, I think that night Kyle, I came up to you and I was like, "We gotta work."

I asked you right after that.

So it just came together naturally like that and anybody that sees Kyle sing will know that he's a star.

♪ Everything ♪ ♪ Don't make me search more ♪ ♪ Don't let regrets be why you ignore these feelings ♪ - [Marcus] He represented everything that I just wanted to be a part of musically, that soul, a natural and innate ability to just communicate just the Black experience with his voice.

♪ So little child ♪ ♪ But I keep trying.

♪ - You see it the same way, Kyle?

- Definitely.

I think it's so...

I told Marcus specifically that I wanted to have this question or this conversation with you all because I think from my perspective of being Black and queer and identifying how I identify, it's very hard to be in spaces with cis and hetero men specifically Black men.

And so for our relationship, it just speaks to the times, it speaks to the future of what it can look like, putting all of these things aside and coming together and just finding commonality between one another because it's been a struggle.

And the majority of my friends, I have a lot of friends who identify a lot of different ways, but I have a lot of straight, male, Black friends and people are always so surprised.

And I'm just like, well, we just like one another, like, we're just cool.

Why is that such a surprise that I have friends?

So I think I wanna make an effort always to show that things can be different, things... Not even different, they can just be, this can be normal.

This can be the normal, if there is a such thing as normal.

And there doesn't have to be anything else connected to it.

(acoustic guitar music) ♪ Feelings ♪ - [David Barnett] You can dig into our Applause Performances archive on demand via the PBS app.

The PBS app is also where you can find more episodes of "Applause".

♪ Running down your face ♪ - [David Barnett] Okay, time to groove on outta here.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

♪ To show ♪ ♪ Free yourself ♪ ♪ Free yourself ♪ (acoustic guitar music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Production of "Applause" on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by: the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.