Meet Noor Cheree | CEO & Co-Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Noor Cheree and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Noor, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Symphonic Planet uses the avenue of storytelling, adventure, creativity, innovation, media and art as a vehicle to share and discover new narratives in cultures from around the world to bring people of different backgrounds together in a global community. At the core of our backgrounds we are creatives in music and film. We crafted a union between both to provide a platform to share our discoveries with our audience and clients specializing in providing a new perspective about music cultures and different ways of life. Most importantly, shedding a different light into how we can communicate values through music and film. While we provide many services in music publishing, composition and music software development, the centerpiece of our company has always been producing travel film content investigating different music cultures. Understanding existing cultural stereotypes, addressing them and learning to respect different people can open a vast, beautiful and effective opportunity on how to improve our communication with different people and what values we can learn from them to enrich our lives in the many aspects that can serve us.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
As an Entrepreneur you don on so many roles. I will always be a creative artist. But, you have to be a business guy too. When I came up with this idea it was due to a long laundry list of things I was either frustrated with in the industry and my life. I’ll start with addressing my music. I wasn’t feeling very good about the work dynamics of the film composing environment, and also I felt that many musicians and songwriters were so heavily influenced by following the success of other famous stars, being related to sounding like whoever was popular. I never felt like I belonged in any category which created an unsteady feeling for me. I had my epiphany when looking through the 501 must take journey book and upon reading one of the listed adventures, I asked my friend Jonas, “If you were to have your own soundtrack for your own experience traveling to one of these places, what would it sound like?” I invented my own process of composing music to reflect how life is experienced. It also involved a combination of cinematic scoring, ethno-musicology and songwriting. More importantly, the aim was to be as authentic as possible by actually traveling to these destinations and experience them. Discovering and recording sound phenomena that nature performs, meeting people and investigating their unique stories, and learning how to play rare instruments and unique genres of music that I don’t know from masters in their own tribes and regions. And then composing the music and conducting a live orchestra to record the music. This was a remarkable discovery for myself and finding what my signature voice was and it became the defining trait that attracted exclusive and major clients seeking our particular sound. But that was not enough. I firmly belief that people listen with their eyes, and therefore we had to tell these adventurous stories through producing film. There wasn’t a travel show about music in the world we could find that would entertain us. This was our golden goose and we went for it. But it wasn’t for the faint of heart either. It was financially difficult and expensive to accomplish. I didn’t understand that overnight success is a 10 year project and that Symphonic Planet would have to become a lifestyle in order to manifest. We went through so many different phases with teams and people coming in and out. Learning that you have to delegate and identify what and who you can trust and what you lack. Patience, developing workflows, and doing everything correctly in business too. A minor slip up in accounting and taxes can be the devastating blow that prevents your ambition to succeed. Pretty much most things involving a creative business isn’t easy. But, one thing that was easy was the never ending fountain of creativity and resources of inspiration the world has to offer by interacting with different cultures and world events. One of the important tenets of Symphonic Planet’s mission was to inspire others to push the boundaries of their comfort zone. As an artist, I feel it’s my responsibility to misbehave and take risks. Especially to overcome my own prejudice about a different persons life and culture understand why they love the things love and see if that can make me a better person and in turn influence me to be a better artist. See, it’s not completely about the music or the film, it’s about the action to continue to learn and adapt. Travel is education for life.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
So, aside from all the passion talk I give about Symphonic Planet. I am quite an eccentric, goofy and “extra” person sometimes, especially when it comes to planning fun. I go super hard. To me I absolutely detest experiencing “tourist” type of things. Not my style, so if I was going to take my friends on a memorable experience, I’d be the person planning on a voyage around the world in 80 days or go freeze our butts off trying to gain acceptance into an Inuit tribe in the arctic or the Ainu people in Hokkaido. Maybe even smuggle our way into Somalia to find a poet. Or join park rangers to fight in Africa to protect animals from illegal poachers. Possibly, learn to cook a long lost ancient recipe in Tibet or hang out with the last Whistling language people in Oaxaca or Greek Islands. Yup, I’m that kind of friend. We are so insignificant in comparison to the vastness of the cosmos, but what we choose to do in our lives can be significant for ourselves before we finish our journey through life.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are a lot of people I treasure and tip my hat for the growing success my company has achieved. However, I do have to first and always give credit to my business partner, friend and Co-Founder Jonas Petersen. At the time of the company’s inception we both were experiencing the overwhelming challenges of living in Los Angeles and pursuing careers. Jonas was the first person to believe in me and share the vision of Symphonic Planet and question life’s persistent questions. In addition, I do also have to thank the authors and publishers for the book “501 Must Take Journeys”. Back when I was enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, I was at a Goodwill store and found this book listing the most incredibly inspiring itineraries and information about destinations around the world to experience. I bought that book for $1.00 and I couldn’t even fathom that someday that $1.00 could change the trajectory of my life and become the most fulfilling venture I would embark on. Sometimes, I look back and see it as “The Ultimate $1.00 Journey”. In the early days of Symphonic Planet, every employee/team member that would join us I would find a copy of this book and give it as a gift. It’s much harder now since the book is out of print, but I suppose that would just make it that more valuable.

Website: www.symphonicplanet.com

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