Music to keep your creativity flowing

This story ispart of a web series called Music that Matters with CBCYukon's Airplayhost Dave White.Dave sits down with Yukonerstotalk about five pieces of music that inspirethem.

As the artistic director of Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse, Jacob Zimmer has a lot of tasks, but one of the most difficult is keeping people awake and inspired during the company's annual 24-hour creativity competition.

"We were thinking about the music we use to keep us creative and energized through the night," he said. "I have a lot of playlists that are for work, and different kinds of work; 'this is a playlist for grant writing'....those sorts of things are really helpful for shaping my energy."

Canadian dance group Thunderheist provided Zimmer's first choice with their track SuenosDulces.

"I often need a lot of energy and excitement and enthusiasm and this song is just a straight up banger of positive, let's go energy," he said.

Zimmer's second choice is by Canadian artist Gonzales and his track Overnight.

"I've got a playlist of solo piano which is just Gonzales and Thelonius Monk," he said. "And that is an almost Pavlovian response for me to settle in and calm down and let the creativity flow. That's a playlist I put on very frequently to help myself focus."

"So now we've calmed down into the evening, but maybe we're a little anxious and need some energy so we're back with Janelle Monae and Dance Apocalyptic... it's also a delightful amount of silliness and science fiction and Janelle Monae is such a fiercely creative artist who does such wonderful things with her imagination."

Yukon band Crytozoologists providedZimmer's next choice.

"This song, I'll Find Patterns, from his newest record is just the perfect song for 2 a.m. for how my brain or anyone's brain whohas been working late at night begins to find the patterns that you never knew were there."

Listen to I'll Find Patterns.

For his final selection Zimmer went back in time a bit, and back home to Cape Breton when Ashley MacIssac released his record Hi How Are You Today?

"When this record came out I was really into it, and I was a grade 12 student doing all night radio at the Dalhousie (University) radio station," he said. "This song, Sleepy Maggie, was an incredible song to keep me awake, to keep the energy going. Also for writing and creativity it has that driving beat to keep me going forward, and for lyrics, it's a language that I don't understand, so I don't get distracted by the words butthere's human voice and passion in it."