: “Where is Eric” – a brief history
I am terrible at at this whole publicity thing. I find the very notion of having to promote myself “awkwardness inducing”. It feels like bragging.
“Hey! Look at me! Ain’t I great!?”
Nonetheless, in 2009 I started up a small mailing list to promote any gigs I was playing on. In the Subject of the emails I put “Where in the World is Eric“. This was a take off on a children’s show in the 1990s “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego”.
Taking a slight detour here. In the mid 1990s my kids were in elementary school. Like all dutiful parents, Lisa & I carefully monitored their TV watching in an effort to shield them from the corrupting influence of commercial TV. With hindsight this was a pointless exercise. Anyway, there was a late afternoon show on PBS called “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego” (to be hitherto referred to as WitWiCS.) WitWiCS was a sort of kids geography game show and was very cleverly put together. The ‘object’ of the contest was to locate master criminal Carmen Sandiego and her evil hench people by answering geography-related trivia questions which would reveal the location of one of Carmen Sandiego’s cronies and eventually Carmen herself. An a cappella group – Rockapella – was the house band for the show and also contributed to the comic relief. You can google it if you’re curious.
Truth be told (as should always be the case) I think I enjoyed the show more than the kids. I was (and still am) a big geography buff. When I was in middle school I knew the capitals of all 50 states as well as most countries in the world – and I still enjoy looking at maps.
Meanwhile back to 2009. After the first few e-mails I sent out, I shortened the Subject to simply “Where is Eric”.
Now fast forward to 2017. After diving into this crazy world of composing I joined several composer groups and my compositions were being performed in small venues in NYC, so I decided to send out a “Where is Eric’s Music” email blast – to the same folks that were already receiving my “Where is Eric” e-mails.
And then, just to make my life more complicated, I wanted to invite some of my fellow student composers – but just to the concerts. So I set up yet another email list using this Mailchimp app for promoting the classical concerts. And this was also called “Where is Eric’s Music”.
With old age I am trying to simplify my life and have consolidated these various endeavors. Hence what you are now reading.
Hopefully this was not TMI.
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Meanwhile, my album got a nice review in Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review. I especially liked the opening line: “Who is Eric Heilner?” I ask myself that very same question on a regular basis. To this day I still haven’t gotten a clear answer.