Each Spring in collaboration with Brushwood Center’s At Ease initiative, Black Moon Trio facilitates Water(color) for the Soul, a series of music composition workshops for outpatient Veterans from the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center and other local Veteran organizations. In collaboration with world-renowned visual artists, poets, and community partners, the musicians of Black Moon Trio explore music composition through graphic notation—a method of expressing musical ideas using shapes, colors, and images rather than traditional Western notation systems that often require years of formal study.

No prior musical experience is required. Participants are guided step by step through the fundamentals of music-making over the course of each visit. Topics include melody, harmony, leitmotif, rhythm, ostinato, mood, character, timbre, and orchestration, among others.

Each workshop series culminates in the creation of 10–20 original musical works composed by the Veteran participants. These pieces are performed by Black Moon Trio and presented alongside visual elements in a pop-up gallery exhibition at Brushwood Center in Riverwoods, Illinois.

The project’s title, Water(color) for the Soul, is inspired by the poem Water for the Soul by Chicago author Michael Tyler, whose poetry served as the conceptual through-line for the program’s inaugural iteration.