FAREWELL Video
Check out Preview Video No. 1 of FAREWELL: A Fantastical Contemplation on America’s Relationship with China by ZebraVisual and Spectrum Dance Theatre.
Videographer Gabriel Bienczycki includes footage of the inspiring location of the Madrona Dance Studio and Lake Washington.
In addition, Donald Byrd and I speak about the project and there are excerpts from rehearsals.
3Seasons Music Insights
Check out Victoria Brown’s insightful post about the music for 3Seasons premiered by Whim W’him at On the Boards last month. Brown’s thoughts encourage me, especially the idea that in fiction there is a suspicion of stories that have “too happy an ending.”
I am grateful that she recognizes how the “unnerving” and “weird” new music fits the uncomfortable intent of 3Seasons. The performance brings the dancers and audience closer together through the state of missing the recognizable comfort of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
Brown’s post is enlivened by photographs by Kim and Adam Bamberg of La Vie Photography. I am fond of this image where Jim Kent plays the violin with a birdcage on his head during the second section of Autumn.
FAREWELL Open Rehearsal
Tonight is the open rehearsal for FAREWELL: A Fantastical Contemplation on America’s Relationship with China. As composer on this project, I’ve been attending rehearsals at Spectrum Dance Theatre and meeting with choreographer Donald Byrd as well as musicians Paul Kikuchi and Tiffany Lin. This new work will be premiered at The Moore Theatre in less than three weeks (!)
- Becoming less ignorant provides more solutions than becoming an expert,
- Performance sparks when presented as an actively engaged forum,
- Courage is shameless.
Rehearsals have been intense and magical. Come to The Moore tonight at 7PM for the Open Rehearsal: free and open to the public.
Definitely attend the show February 18, 19, 20, at 8PM.
Stick your Head in Art
Tiffany Lin (aka Tiflin) has uploaded audio and images from Has Fallen in the Well. Lin’s art work is included in the exhibition 保重 Farewell at the Columbia City Gallery through March 07, 2010. In addition, you can order pet grass from her site for a limited time.
Lin draws upon the solitude of childhood in her audio sculpture Has Fallen into the Well. Within a paper box, grass grows as if from suburban California. An audio remix from the story Tikki Tikki Tembo plays in the intimate one-person standing-room-only lantern, where one wants to both stay and exit. A too-close-for-comfort intimacy often leads to rushed good-byes.
Born in Taiwan and raised in California, Lin began studying piano at a young age. She continued piano studies at the CalArts and completed a Bachelors in Music at the Cornish College of the Arts. Honors include an Artist Trust GAP Grant, Jack Straw ASP Residency, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship. Current projects include preparing original music for prepared piano and percussion with instrument maker and percussionist Paul Kikuchi as well as performing in non-traditional spaces with the Toy Boats, a toy piano quartet featuring small and toy instruments.
What are you waiting for?!
Go to the Columbia City Gallery and stick your head in art.
Columbia City Gallery
4864 Rainier Ave S
Seattle WA 98118
(206) 760-9843
The Gallery is open Wed to Fri from Noon to 8PM and Sat/Sun from 10AM to 6PM
(Images courtesy of Tiflin)
The East is Red
In the midst of composing for FAREWELL. Working on the timeline canon is difficult, but am learning more about 20th century Chinese history. Here’s audio of Chairman Mao Zedong proclaiming the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
As a side note, watching The East is Red makes me wonder about “hope”.
To Tickle the Ears
I’ve started teaching Listening to Music again at Cornish College of the Arts.
Three of my favorite sites to discover music are:
- Musique Contemporaine – a French site that includes many composers
- UbuWeb – a resource dedicated to avant-garde and outsider sound art
- NewMusicBox – an online forum from the Amercian Music Center
I’m always searching for music to tickle the ears. Suggestions for me and my students?
3Seasons Musicians
A bit overdue, I finally announce the musicians for 3Seasons. The trio includes Dr. Quinton Morris (violin), Tiffany Lin (cello/toy piano), and Stuart McLeod (percussion/electronics). 3Seasons is prompted by Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and high heels. Whim W’him dancer Jim Kent will play violin during special moments, that is, when he doesn’t have a birdcage on his head.
3Seasons premieres at On the Boards next week – January 15/16/17. Friday night’s performance is already sold-out, so get your tickets soon.
Here is more information about the musicians:
Dr. Quinton Morris enjoys a multifaceted career as concert violinist, chamber musician, professor, conductor, artistic/executive director, and founder of The Young Eight — America’s only touring string octet. Dr. Morris has performed solo recitals, concerto and chamber music in Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. He was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Boston Conservatory, and the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in violin performance. He has recently performed chamber music at Town Hall Seattle and has appeared as concerto soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the Tacoma Youth Symphony, the Renton Youth Symphony, the Thalia Symphony, Keningston Symphony, and Orchestra Seattle. He recently performed a solo recital for the Bach series at Our Lady of Fatima in Seattle. Dr. Morris is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Chamber and Instrumental Music at Seattle University.
Piano player and toy pianist Tiffany Lin has been sitting at the keyboard fumbling for the right notes since 1986. Her small-town, classical background is what has influenced her interest in expanding standard piano techniques and disassembling pianos. Tiflin studied at CalArts with pianist Peter Miyamoto, violinist Leroy Jenkins, and trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith. Lin holds a Bachelors of Music from Cornish College of the Arts where she studied with Laura Kaminsky and Oksana Ezhokina. Awards include a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, an Institute & Festival of Contemporary Performance scholarship, an Artist Trust GAP grant, and a 4Culture Site-Specific grant. Current projects include a prepared piano and percussion recording project with percussionist/instrument maker Paul Kikuchi, a collaboration with composer Zachary Watkins and installation artist Ranjit Bhatnagar involving a MIDI controlled robotic extension for 16 piano hammers.
Stuart McLeod recently finished the two-year Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. He holds a degree in Music Composition from the University of Washington, where he studied composition with Richard Karpen, William O. Smith, and Kenneth Benshoof, as well as percussion with Tom Collier and Michael Crusoe. McLeod has written an orchestral score for the indie film The Knitter and numerous soundtracks for Brown Box Theater. He leads the experimental group SIL2K and plays drums with the instrumental rock band TRANSPACIFIC. In addition, McLeod has played percussion with Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra, Federal Way Philharmonic, and Gamelan Northwest.
First Egg
First egg of the new year, but which pullet is officially now a hen: Red, Black or Star?
Hunger: An Unnatural History
Sharman Apt Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History
Especially moving are Russell’s personal struggles with food. As she attempts to find the meaning behind food as an American with the privileges and contradictions of knowing hunger from feeding her own children juxtaposed with commercials of hungry children around the world, she voices a compassion that “hunger cannot be ignored.” Most devastating for me is the section about cannibalism in China – yi zi er shi (swap child, make food) – where in the 1930s corpses of starved girls were boiled into soup.
Hunger is recommended for people who need to read stories about eating, starving, and everything in-between from a poetic voice who references multiple disciplines throughout history and around the world.
Bret’s Amazing Mind
After meeting with writer/director/theatre-maker Bret Fetzer, I had insight on two matters:
- Violence as a Solution
- Celebrity as Politician
Bret and I discussed our fascination with the Fort Hood Shootings. He said that ever since the 90s in America, violence has become a solution.
We also spoke about the transfer of empire and how the state will increasingly be ruled by celebrity personas. The aura of the celebrity fuels feelings of inadequacy and encourages increased spending which oils capitalism and silences multiple voices.
I realized that advanced capitalism and social democracy are inherently at odds with each other. The day after Thanksgiving is known as both Black Friday and the National Day of Listening. Black Friday, a way to lubricate the capitalist economic and social system, had extensive media coverage while the National Day of Listening, more akin to a democratic forum, had only one article from the major press.
Perhaps with time this will change.
Stuck Elevator reading
Stuck Elevator
starring Steven Eng
Thursday, 4:30-6PM
November 19, 2009
Pearl Studios NYC
500 8th Avenue
New York NY 10018
Free and open to the public
Limited seating – please RSVP
Email apa.rsvp@nyu.edu or call (212) 992-9653
About the Show
Prompted by the real-life story of Ming Kuang Chen, Stuck Elevator is an operatic solo performance about a Chinese restaurant deliveryman trapped in an elevator for three days.
* * *
Music by Byron Au Yong
Words by Aaron Jafferis
Director David Herskovits
Music Director Alden Terry
Violinist Cynthia Marcus
Cellist/Pianist Alden Terry
Percussionist James Mack
Sound Designer Kate Marvin
Stage/Production Manager Laura Wilson
Assistant Director John Kurzynowski
Creativity Workshops
Up next, I teach two creativity workshops for Portland Taiko. This is an expansion of a workshop I taught at the North American Taiko Conference in Los Angeles over the summer.
The workshop is called Seven Ways to Develop Material. Here’s a description:
Do you have great ideas but need to know how to turn your thoughts into a composition? Learn seven ways to expand craft and creativity to create compelling music. These tools can help produce work that takes risks, develops material, and engages the audience. Together, we will expand the space between our ears to complete unfinished works or refine existing catastrophes.
There will be two workshops. The first workshop introduces seven ways to approach creating a musical performance. In between the two workshops, students will use these tools to develop musical material. In the second workshop, four to five participants will share their developed material.
In preparation for the first workshop, I’ve asked participants to come with:
- A list of 20 ways music is used. For example one way would be wedding music.
- A list of 20 audience types. For example one type would be farmers.
- One musical idea you are working on, with, around, or in. The idea should be on paper and can be drawings, words, musical notation, or a combination of any/all of the above.
Seven Ways to Develop Material will cover the following:
- Function What and who is the music for?
- Concept How does the work access imagination?
- Structure Does the form promote the concept?
- Time Where does the performance take the audience?
- Timbre When do in/significant moments happen?
- Filter How does the music breathe?
- Notation How can the work be remembered/documented most effectively?
I look forward to working with Portland Taiko on these Creativity Workshops.
Unclogging Gutters
As I clear autumn leaves from clogging the sewer drain outside my home, I am reminded of all the music-making that needs to happen in preparation for Three Seasons to premiere at On the Boards in mid-January 2010:
- Finish my musical analysis of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
- Meet with Stuart McLeod to figure out an amplified percussion set-up that can appear and disappear seamlessly with the dance
- Touch base with Baroque violinist Ingrid Matthews, costume designer Michael Cepress, and choreographer Olivier Wevers
Even though it is much more fun to gather leaves in the rain and hang out with the chickens, I know that once I start transferring my sketches and connecting with collaborators, my figurative clogged gutter will flow with musical creativity.
Tristan Uhl recently wrote about the Whim W’him launch where a Three Seasons musical sketch presented:
For Whim W’Him’s debut production Olivier has chosen to address not only the unpredictability and fragility of our lives but also, the changing of the seasons. The title for the debut is Three Seasons — an apt beginning for a project that thrives on unpredictability.
The piece has been scored Composer Byron Au Yong, who has created a profoundly moving and modern interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The musical instruments used almost confront nature with man by melding sounds including but not limited to, a violin, the rhythmic rustling of leaves and — my favorite — a high heel. The overall effect makes it hard to distinguish the traditional instruments from the more novel ones.
SubterfugeSeattle.com has the full article plus photos. Thanks for the nice write-up. High heels are my new favorite instrument too.
Music with light bulbs and leaves
Last Saturday, Whim W’him held a benefit for the launch of Olivier Wever’s new company. The debut work, to be premiered at On the Boards in January 2010, will be the Three Seasons prompted by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
percussion set-up photo by Stuart McLeod
Press play for an audio sample (duration 1:11)
(No audio player? Try AloneTone Mp3)
I’ve been sketching ideas drawn from Vivaldi’s use of musical gestures. His phrases for violin and strings represent birds, thunder, and other sounds heard in nature. This prompts me to think about the nature of “nature.”
Each of Olivier’s nine dancers have an object they cannot live without. These include high heels, pillows, and light bulbs. I wonder if these factory-produced items affect a listener’s notions of what is natural.
- How do man-made and nature sounds inhabit the world?
- In the Digital Age, is the notion of nature broadened?
- What is the sound of light bulbs with leaves?
The audio sketch above is from a live performance held at Steve Jensen’s studio loft.
The music was created in collaboration with Sebastian Lange on amplified/processed violin, and percussionists Stuart McLeod and James Whetzel on amplified leaves, water bowl, pillows, high heels, water phone, and light bulbs. Jeff Walker recorded the performance and yours truly edited the sample above.
Stuck Elevator 2009 Demo
Aaron and I are busy revising Stuck Elevator for two readings in New York in mid-November. To that end, we created a demo from the September reading. This was recorded in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at the Tisch School of the Arts by audio engineer Mark Aiken.
Already one of the songs, A River Running, is cut from the November version of Stuck Elevator. I am fond of the music, so I included it as part of this online demo.
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