Songwriter/Educator/Organizer Flight Or Visibility (aka Rafael Natan) believes that your musical voice will inspire people for years to come. Teaching and performance tours have brought them to Europe, Canada, South Africa, and the Republic of Georgia. Most recently, Flight or Visibility toured in Germany and France with Anaís Azul and Petting Kazoo. As a solo performer, Flight Or Visibility specializes in original classical punk music featuring simultaneous violin and vocal textures. Classically trained in both the oboe and the violin, Flight Or Visibility loves to expose students to Klezmer, Jazz, Blues, and other improvisational genres. 

As the founder of the Boston Artists Employment Network and the School of Arts and Social Justice at Make Shift Boston, Flight Or Visibility also teaches private workshops on improvisation, creating healing spaces in the arts, and protest chant writing. They previously taught songwriting at the Boston Public Schools as a guest instructor and held a teaching fellowship with Boston Children’s Chorus. Flight Or Visibility holds a BM in Oboe Performance and an MM in Contemporary Improvisation from New England Conservatory. While in their masters program, they also served as an ear-training TA for the jazz ear-training classes. Their teachers include Hankus Netsky, Carla Kihlstedt, John Ferrillo, Laura Ahlbeck, Philipp Naegele, and Eden MacAdam-Somer.

Education:

New England Conservatory
MM Contemporary Improvisation, 2017
Concentration in Music Education
BM Oboe Performance, 2015

Why this name?

It takes a cliched question about preferred superpowers and flips it on its head, acknowledging the fact that visibility is a superpower, especially in LGBTQ+ communities. Visibility helps us advocate for basic human rights. It is a privilege that not everyone has. It is also one that many who do have will not feel comfortable using.

For me, visibility is about telling our stories! There are thousands of ways we can do this and no one way is going to be comfortable for everyone!