Creative Collaboration: The Making of Steven Mackey's "It Is Time," part IV

Time sits Time stands Time is time… from Isaac Maliya’s Time is Time Several years ago So Percussion had the honor of commissioning Steven Mackey for a new percussion quartet. Steve – Professor of Composition and Chair of the Music Department at Princeton University – is one of the most omnivorous and brilliant composers in America today. During the course of a year and a half, we worked closely with Steve to craft a new piece that highlights each of us as performers and interpreters. We found the end result to be astonishing in its innovation and conceptual power. Over this series of four articles, we’ll dissect each movement through the eyes of the individual members of the group: Eric, Josh, Adam, and Jason. We’ll also talk about working with Steve to unlock the potential in each of these instruments. This article focuses on Jason Treuting and the use of drumset in the fourth movement. It appears in the fourth issue of Avue Magazine, a publication of Adams Instruments. The movement runs from 27:00 to the end in the video below.

“I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.” 

- Buddy Rich

I first heard Steve Mackey play electric guitar on a concert of his music as an undergraduate student at the Eastman School of Music. I was a double major at the time, studying classical percussion and “jazz” drum set. My improvisation teacher Ralph Alessi suggested I check it out. Ralph was a very important mentor for me: though a trumpet player, he opened me up to many new ideas about music and styles of playing. When he made a suggestion to see something I took it seriously. I checked out Steve’s show and didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was mostly composed music, but had a feel of discovery and freedom in the moment. So when I met Steve five or so years later at the Yellowbarn Chamber Music Festival, I begged him to improvise with me in the evenings when the long rehearsal days were over. During those sessions, I really got to know him as an electric guitarist and improviser before knowing him as a composer. Looking back on our years of collaboration since then - as a duo that gets together periodically to improvise, as a drummer in his band Big Farm, and most recently through So’s intense collaboration with him on It is Time - I am realizing more and more how important that first connection between drummer and electric guitarist was.

Flash forward … when So hung out on Steve’s deck eating BBQ chicken and grilled asparagus in 2009, he knew I was interested in exploring drum set in his new piece and he already had a great idea of how to write for the instrument and for me specifically. I had been anxious about getting drum set involved in So’s chamber music commissioning because it rarely succeeded for me in other contemporary chamber music settings I had heard. The drum set is essentially a folk instrument where each player is expected to have a unique approach. Attempts to codify it through standard notation tend to squash that uniqueness. And when the drum set is used to obliquely reference the popular styles that it has come to define (jazz, blues, R&B, funk, rock, latin jazz styles, etc), it can go drastically wrong. This is for many reasons, but perhaps most obviously because the drum set is often best played loud while chamber music, even percussion chamber music, is usually much quieter. That is a generalization, but it rings true much of the time.

 I didn’t have these fears with Steve. It didn’t cross my mind to shy away from drum set: we knew each other very well as players and he knows the instrument(s) very well as a composer. In this sense, much of the work was already done. The time needed for a composer and performer to feel each other out and discover what is possible had happened over and over again each time we played together. So, now was the time to feel out which direction to choose from the many we knew were possible. I knew the direction would be challenging. I knew it would involve adding new sounds to the drum set, finding ways to be melodic as well as rhythmic. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the new rhythmic language he would innovate and how fascinating it would be to learn to translate that to the drum set.

As Eric, Josh and Adam have all mentioned in previous articles, each of the four movements in It is Time explores a different way to look at time. In the fourth, steady time is bent and warped. In the many improvisations and little pieces Steve and I made together, we often explored the limits of how malleable groove can be, especially in duo situations. But in the case of a quartet, where a larger group is tasked with bending and warping together, a common reference is needed. Steve chose two angles to explore.

The first looks back to the analog metronome that was so central to the first movement. In this last movement, the steadiness of the metronome is warped by physically tilting it on a block. Steve and Eric discovered that if you set the metronome at just the perfect angle, you can take 2 steady beats and turn them into a longer and shorter beat and thus warp the groove. What groove?

For the second, Steve references common latin patterns from cowbell and clave playing to serve as warp-worthy grooves. In the drum set music that I play, he composes these patterns and their variations in all four limbs - my left foot alternates between a pedal cowbell and hi hat - which shift back and forth between warped and “straight” settings.

I think the end result is incredibly successful for many reasons. From a personal perspective, it just sounds great to my ears. Drum set playing often comes to life because of the player and their unique approach. Many great drummers warp groove and play around with time as an expressive tool in their improvisations. Steve embraces this sensibility, but he mixes it with the craft of a composer who methodically develops musical ideas throughout a piece. When the drum set is incorporated into contemporary chamber and orchestra music, it is usually a more static element for other things to develop against, but in this movement, he gives the drum set the ability to take themes, both rhythmic and melodic, and develop them as the driving force. That is not common and not so easy.

- Jason Treuting

Creative Collaboration: The Making of Steve Mackey's "It Is Time," part III

Creative Collaboration:  The Making of Steve Mackey’s It Is Time Part III Time sits Time stands Time is time… from Isaac Maliya’s, Time is Time

Several years ago So Percussion had the honor of commissioning Steven Mackey for a new percussion quartet.  Steve – Professor of Composition and Chair of the Music Department at Princeton University – is one of the most omnivorous and brilliant composers in America today. 

            During the course of a year and a half, we worked closely with Steve to craft a new piece that highlights each of us as performers and interpreters.  We found the end result to be astonishing in its innovation and conceptual power. 

            Over this series of four articles, we’ll dissect each movement through the eyes of the individual members of the group: Eric, Josh, Adam, and Jason.  We’ll also talk about working with Steve to unlock the potential in each of these instruments.

            This article focuses on Adam Sliwinski and the marimba in the third movement.  It appears in the third issue of Avue Magazine, a publication of Adams Instruments.  The movement runs from 16:30 to 27:00 in the video below.

 Il Penseroso

“Adam, I hate to tell you this, but you’ve got the slow movement.  I was hoping to show you all off, but I need to do something else.” 

When the time arrived for Steve Mackey to write the third movement of It Is Time, we had already decided that he’d write marimba music for me.  In the previous two installments of this series of articles, Josh and Eric related how simultaneously generous and demanding Steve is as a composer.   He invites you in to the process, asks for input, even what instrument(s) you’d like to play…then writes fiendishly difficult music so well that you have no choice but to commit to it. 

            In So Percussion, everything is equal.  We make artistic decisions by consensus, everybody has the same vote, and we do our best not to present the group as having hierarchy.  A lot of our repertoire features this same dynamic, even to the point where each of us plays identical instruments in layers of complexity (Reich, Lang, Xenakis). 

            It Is Time is designed to break the pattern of anonymity within our music, while still setting us all on equal footing.  I think initially in Steve’s mind, it meant that each of us would also get to rock out on our instrument, displaying the kind of virtuosity that makes percussion music so exciting and fun.    

            By the time Eric’s and Josh’s movement were sketched out, Steve realized that the piece was taking on epic proportions, and its story was turning darker.  The first time he told me where the marimba movement was going, it was by way of apology.  His meditation on the concept of time had lead him to a more melancholic place, where exhilaration at the thought of controlling and harnessing time also revealed its indifference and inevitability. 

            I was thrilled that Steve would throw this kind of challenge at himself in a percussion piece.  To be honest, my favorite moments in So’s work happen when a composer finds these spaces for introspection:  sometimes elegiac, often conflicted.  Each one seems to take the creator by surprise.  I’m thinking especially of the flower pots and teacups in David Lang’s the so-called laws of nature, the final Chorale Prelude in Paul Lansky’s Threads, and the second movement of Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet.  Some of Jason’s music from amid the noise is unbearably melancholic to me, precisely because it isn’t meant to be. 

            Perhaps pensive music breaks the mold of expectation of how percussion usually functions:  it seems better suited to a song with acoustic guitar, or an adagio from a great string quartet.  I have always craved this pensive, reflective mood, believing since I was in high school that percussion could achieve it.  In the best cases, it inspires what Wordsworth called “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”  It is not the same thing as being really sad, which can be tiresome and self-centered. 

The third movement of Is It Time begins with the simplest gesture:  a bouncing ball, releasing its potential energy with a burst of optimism, but always returning to rest.  Steve wanted “time” - such as it is here - to come to a screeching halt at the beginning of this section.  What had built up into a huge menagerie of instruments and colors is now reduced to the solo marimba:  a quiet roll on one note that barely erupts into the first bouncing ball. 

For awhile, this single gesture repeats: winding down, restarting, over and over again.  While Steve and I were working together, this was straightforward enough, as learning to control the natural bounce of a stick is one of the first things that a percussionist has to do.  But he wanted to take it further.  How could we create polyphony, the perception of overlapping wind up and release?  He wondered if notating gestures with general overlap indications would be effective.  Not trusting my own ability to be convincing with that, I told him how much I admire the way composers like Xenakis use precise notation to achieve chaotic results.  In the end, he decided upon a way of notating the gesture as an accelerating rhythm, so that an overlapping gesture could be placed anywhere, worked out for performance as a complex polyrhythm.  Paradoxically, this kind of detailed execution frees the performer from his own tendencies and limitations.  Often as an artist you want to celebrate those personal tendencies, but in this case we needed an impersonal, inevitable force. 

My movement is somewhat unique in that Steve already had reams of experience writing for marimba.  In the other movements, he actually invented new instruments (or extended them in entirely new ways).  Our challenge was to get the sound, mood, and pacing just right for this movement, to expand the reach of the piece into another world, where time is elastic and ill-defined. 

His final touch took me completely by surprise, and was even annoying:  While I am toiling away at my fateful gestures, the other members of the group rise up from their instruments and start walking around, placing little dinosaur wind up toys all over the stage.  It’s chaotic, distracting, and frankly takes a bit of attention away from the soloist.  To my mock-dismay, it was also pitch-perfect, exactly what the movement needed. After all, the music that I’m playing is not in any sense about me.  Gravity and nature are indifferent to our need for attention, which is why we hold them in awe. 

This is ultimately the most profound rumination a pensive moment yields:  we are so small compared with the forces that operate upon our lives.  Optimism and action are a struggle against, or even a celebration of, the fact that our momentum will always eventually come back to rest. 

Our Princeton Year

With SoSI's new focus on student composers in 2013, I wanted to highlight some of the work that came out of last year's residency at Princeton University.

For almost a decade, So Percussion has worked on and off with the Princeton composition department.  This year's Summer Institute is our fifth at Princeton, and many of the faculty have written major pieces for us.

I've written previous articles here about our projects with Paul Lansky and Steve Mackey.  Dan Trueman's huge work "neither Anvil nor Pulley" will be released this year on Cantaloupe Music.

One of our favorite attributes of the Princeton department is the stylistic diversity and openness of their culture. Students come in with many different ideas and influences, which they are encouraged to explore. Steve, Dan, and Barbara White are all serious composer/performers, who incorporate improvising and fluid collaboration into their work.

During the 2012-2013 academic year, they invited us to be in residence full-time.  We taught a fall seminar on writing for percussion, and spent the spring collaborating with each grad composer on a new work for quartet.  As we have so often realized, teaching folks how to write for percussion is actually teaching a process of exploration.  Of course, there are always helpful hints we can give about orchestration, mallets, etc.  But it seems that unlocking a composer's imagination for percussion is mostly about encouraging their willingness to conceive a new world with each piece.

In some cases, the composers surprised us by suggesting a technique or way of making sound that we hadn't thought of:  Elliot Cole wondered about bowing harmonics on vibraphone.  We said we'd never tried it, and then discovered right in front of the whole class how magical it was.

Below are a few that came out really well, and for which the composers made nice online audio and video links.  Listening to these again seven months after the premieres, I'm blown away by how different and developed each voice is.

Although we enjoy doing readings and short residencies with new work, there is simply nothing to compare to this long collaborative process, especially for percussion.  You quickly become aware that the one true thing that students often lack is the time, resources, and exposure to create mature work.

I've done many weeklong composition residencies, both with So Percussion and as a conductor with the International Contemporary Ensemble.  The goal of these residencies is usually to get a decent live recording to help the composers develop their careers, which is a great thing that they really need.  But you rarely leave one of those weeks feeling transformed by the process.  Usually, the performers are exhausted, and sometimes the composers are exasperated by having so little time to experiment and develop their ideas with living people.

Obviously, it's often the most that can be done.  Our Princeton year was a dream come true, a chance to truly see how far these composers could take their ideas when given the chance.

The composers' websites are linked below, if you're interested in learning more about their music.


Elliot Cole

Postludes for Bowed Vibraphone

These pieces were a breakout success from the residency.  We programmed them again at SoSI, and they've since been performed all over the country and even the world!  Elliot passed along a list of performances as of Jan 1, 2013, seven months after the premiere.  Below is my favorite, No. 5 in Db.

Mobius Percussion Quartet, NYC

Tennessee Tech

Indiana State

U. Indiana

Michigan State

Louisiana Tech

U. Wisconsin Oshkosh

Living Room Music, Ann Arbor MI

U. Akron

Square Peg Round Hole (band), Bloomington Indiana

Juilliard

U. Kansas

U. Tennessee

Cleveland State

Ohio State

Mahidol U. Bangkok

So Percussion - Elliot Cole - Postludes for Bowed Vibraphone (No. 5) from Elliot Cole on Vimeo.


Kate Neal

What Hath II  

We first commissioned Kate to write for SoSI students.  She had a very strong language and set of ideas  to explore.  This music is based on naval codes, semaphore, and morse code.  The visual and theatrical elements of the piece are very detailed.


What Hath II: excerpt 6min. from Kate Neal on Vimeo.


Cenk Ergun

Snares

Cenk is a friend of ours and a frequent collaborator.  He loves to write extremely quiet music.  For this piece, he took a common percussive nuisance - the snares on a snare drum rattling in resonance - and made a whole gestalt out of it.  As usual with Cenk's music, what at first may sound like ambient activity is actually very rigorously organized, exuding a Feldman-esque beauty.





Troy Herion

Earth Crust

Troy's piece speaks quite well for itself.  He was very sensitive to the excitement and intimacy of chamber music playing on percussion instruments.  I'm proud of the performance, because I think it exhibits a level of familiarity that is impossible in a reading or with one week of rehearsal.


So Percussion - Earth Crust by Troy Herion from Troy Herion on Vimeo.

Where (we) Live - Brooklyn (Vermont, PA, Minneapolis, Montana)

Jason performing with blacksmith Dave Berger at Juniata College
Photo (c) Chad Herzog 2012

Strangers All Along  

When So Percussion conceives big projects of our own work -  especially those that make it to theatrically-oriented venues like BAM - we always start with a source of inspiration outside of purely musical ideas.  We look for a kind of libretto; but being rather non-linear guys, we quickly abandon the source and allow its discourse to inform our process.

For Where (we) Live, that source was Jane Jacobs' manifesto of urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  We found in it an analogue to something that we had been thinking about for awhile:  what about attempting a unified creation with multiple and sometimes chaotic inputs?  In Jacobs' book, she rails against the well-meaning but (in her mind) hopelessly short-sighted urban planning of the 50's and 60's by the likes of Robert Moses, where whole communities and use-areas were conceived together as one design.  She claims that a truly vibrant city must have stages of growth, unplanned diversity, and mixed uses on every block.

My knowledge of effective urban planning goes only about as far as I've read that book and a few other commentaries, so I'll leave that issue here.  Also, many of the compositions we perform were created via top-down planning, and we're perfectly happy with it in music.   As I said, we abandon the source pretty quickly.

But it sparked in us the thought that our art forms are often planned and segmented in exactly the same way, so that our conservatory degrees in "Percussion Performance" designate us for a specific function in the art world.  While we eagerly embrace that function, we also feel that it requires only a simple act of outreach to experiment outside of its boundaries.

But that function is also what we've trained for, and what we're best at.  Just as with Jacobs' mixed-use block, what if we practice our craft, but ask other folks to share the stage and practice theirs?

Would it just be a big happy mess, or could we hammer out an aesthetic shape and purpose?  

Along with the many other moving parts that we attached to Where (we) Live, we decided to ask specific artists and artisans to join us on the stage and make things.  While our collaborations with Emily Johnson, Ain Gordon, Martin Schmidt, and Grey Mcmurray would be long and consistent, our work with these other artists would be very short, perhaps only a day or two before each show.

We visit each in their own studio before the performance, learning about their process by observing the idiosyncrasies and rituals of their work.  They then bring tools to one rehearsal, where we hash out the parameters of our brief collaboration.   To us, the juxtaposition is not enough.  We strive for the uncanny sense that our simultaneous and disparate activities are part of the same ecosystem, a created community on stage.

The results so far have delighted us:  Steve Procter fired his giant ceramic pots with a blowtorch; Michelle Holzapfel gathered fabric to the gently whirring amplified hum of her sewing machine; Dave Berger's mighty anvil pounded out its own rhythms while a cloud of amber-burnt dust rose to the ceiling, wafting an ancient aroma through the hall.   In Helena and Billings, Montana, Joseph Firecrow whittled a new flute, joining us in playing "Strangers All Along."


The Dignity of Craft

The concept of "craft" came up over and over again.  Why, when we have the ability to fabricate massive quantities of perfectly symmetrical and consistent objects, would somebody still labor over creating them?  The question applies just as well to music:  At this point, I can barely tell the difference between a programmed marimba in Ableton Live and the real thing.

For me, the question was answered vividly when we visited Dave Berger's forge.  I had never actually been close to a skilled blacksmith (or I guess any at all).  Something deeply human in me thrilled at the physical gesture, the smell of burned ash, the proximity to melted steel.

It brought to mind my favorite quote by the composer Iannis Xenakis, which may surprise those who think of him as a mechanical composer:

The hand, itself, stands between randomness and calculation. It is both an instrument of the mind – so close to the head – and an imperfect tool. ... Industrialization is a forced purification. But you can always recognize what has been made industrially and what has been made by hand. Industrial means are clean, functional, poor. The hand adds inner richness and charm.  

Steve Reich, another of my favorite composers, talks about the joy of discovering how much he liked hearing imperfect humans attempt phasing in his music.   Mathematical perfection pales aesthetically in comparison with our experience of identification with the performers who exert themselves in achieving it.

Our increasingly digital lives, while conferring many benefits, detach us from this thrill.  Live performance, and craft by hand, jolt us back into a basic humanity.


Our Artists

The four performances at BAM (December 19-22) feature a different Brooklyn-based artist each night.  Their creations, and the aesthetic experience of watching them make things alongside us, change the musical and theatrical environment.  We encourage anybody who comes out to check out more than one night and see how the show changes.



Brooklyn:


Paula Greif, ceramics (December 19) trained as a graphic designer and has always had an interest in rock. Her first job was in the art department at Rolling Stone; she was art director at Mademoiselle, Condé Nast, Barneys New York, and Richard Avedon’s studio and designed album covers as well. At MTV in the 1980s, she made her first Super 8 rock video for The Smiths, “How Soon is Now,” and directed many rock videos and TV commercials. After marrying and becoming a parent, she began making pottery and glassware, taking inspiration from 20th-century artisans such as Lucie Rie, Beatrice Wood, and Rosanjin Kitaoji. She has a shared studio in Red Hook and in the summer is potter in residence at old Field Farm in Cornwallville, NY. Her wares are available at Beautiful Dreamers in Williamsburg and Iko Iko in Los Angeles.

Marsha Trattner, blacksmith (December 20) is the owner of She-Weld, which specializes in welding, black- smithing, custom metal design and fabrication. She gives workshops and private instruction, and runs a “Girls Night at the Forge.” Trattner also creates sculpture, drawings, prints, and designs lighting, jewelry, theatrical sets, and artifacts for the home and garden. 

Marsha's studio in Red Hook was ravaged by Sandy, so we'll be donating a portion of our proceeds from merchandise sales at BAM to the The Red Hook Initiative, as well as to Marsha's personal restoration efforts.  

Riccardo Vecchio, painter (December 21) was born in 1970 near Milan, Italy. From 1990 to 1993 he studied design at the university of Trier, Germany, and continued studies at the European Institute of Design in Milan. In 1994 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to enroll in the masters program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, from which he graduated in 1996, receiving the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for his thesis project. Since then, Vecchio has been a faculty member in the School of Visual Arts’ illustration department. He has won awards from American Illustration, Communication Arts and other publications. His work has been published in a wide variety of magazines and books, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Penguin Books. His work has also been published by the Verve Music Group, Adobe, American Express, and other media and commercial outlets in the US and Europe. His work was exhibited in a major solo exhibition at the Visual Arts gallery in Manhattan in 2006 and at project spaces in Brooklyn, including Astor Row unlimited in 2009 and 2010. He lives and works in New York City. 

Victoria Valencia, woodworker/furniture-maker (December 22) hails from California and upholds a respect for materials in their natural state while introducing urban clean metal to contrast and complement. The resulting work retains the imperfections of the varied source materials but demonstrates a finished elegance borne from the mastery Valencia has cultivated. Largely self-taught, she worked in house remodeling and then as a head designer in set design. She then began to design and fabricate custom furniture. Working closely with clients, she creates unique pieces that fuse function and an elegant, unconventional aesthetic. Her passion for solving spacial conundrums often results in enlightened ideas for forgotten spaces. She views her work as a collaboration between the client, the space, the materials, and the external environment. 

Montana

Joseph Firecrow , Cheyenne flute maker and player.


Minneapolis

Zak Sally , Comic book author and illustrator

Kate Farstad, Visual artist


Juniata College - PA

Dave Berger, Blacksmith


Vermont

Veranda Porche , Poet

Steve Procter , Ceramicist

Michelle Holzapfel, Wood artist and seamstress

Where (we) Live - Taking Notes

Although only just under an hour long, So's newest project Where (we) Live is dense, enigmatic, and chaotic.  Some elements - such as the music - are straightforward, at least in the sense that they resemble work that we've been doing for years.  

But a few other elements are very new to us.  We purposefully set it up that way,  bringing people whom we admire into the room without steering them too strongly towards a specific purpose.  Each of our core collaborators was given the power to influence the outcome of the project.  


Here are the elements of the live show:

• So Percussion 
• Grey Mcmurray, guitar, live processing, and vocals
• Martin Schmidt's videos (controlled by So Percussion members)
• Nightly special guest artist/artisan:  we've had a blacksmith, a seamstress, a potter, several visual artists, a graphic novel author.  
• Emily Johnson:  the "note giver."  
• Ain Gordon, the director 

Two of the collaborators infused material directly into the show:  Grey McMurray's music and Martin Schmidt's videos are instantly attributable, and have their own strong profile.

Our director Ain Gordon has a role that is also traditionally defined, even though he is tasked with directing an un-traditional performance.  He stands apart from the show, helping us understand whether our creation is making any sense.  

Even the special guest, who is different every night, has a clear task: to make their work in co-existence with the other performers.  

But we have one final collaborator, whose role and tasks have proven more difficult to explain.    

Choreographer and performance artist Emily Johnson (who was honored with a Bessie Award for Oustanding Production this year) is our "note giver."  She sits quietly at a desk stage left, listening and watching.  When it strikes her, she writes notes down on little scraps of paper and hands them out to any of the other performers during the show.  We offered her complete latitude with regard to what instruction she might pass, and when.  

We also gave ourselves a rule:  to acknowledge and attempt whatever she asks.  The trust we place in her to perform this task is immense, because she now has the power to balance the dynamic and flow of the show, or possibly to completely derail it.  

These instructions can range anywhere from the very concrete ("walk to the back of the hall"), to the mysterious ("believe").  They are designed to create unexpected dynamics and relationships among the performers in real time, while also revealing new possibilities for the arch of the theatrical situation.  

As such, there's a kind of improvisation happening, although our musical performance is quite fixed and rehearsed.  Far from freeing us of the burden of tight preparation, this embedded x-factor actually requires us to labor even more heavily at knowing the material.  

Of course, anybody who works with improvisation or flexible elements in performance will tell you how very much preparation is actually necessary.  

So Emily has omniscience, and also agency.  She alone knows what instructions each performer has received (we are not privy to each other's notes).  

As if Ain didn't have enough to keep track of at this point, now he has somebody making unplanned decisions in real time affecting every aspect of the show!  

I asked Emily and Ain to talk about their roles in Where (we) Live.  Grey contributed his own short description of what it is like to have this "note giver" in our midst.  


Emily:

I think of action all the time. And stillness. I think about how action and stillness intersect with our thoughts, bodies, curiosities, values, needs, wants... In WwL I listen. I look at the house we are in. Empty space and full space. I see, hear, and feel Jason, Eric, Adam, Josh, Grey, and Ain and I think my role is a link in the space: between them; between now, what just happened, and what is coming; and between where they are and where the audience is. I try to make that space smaller somehow. Or maybe smaller is the wrong word. Maybe the word is thicker. I offer action or stillness or thought or a million other things as choice on little bits of paper and sometimes I demand something, too. I know where we are trying to get to but I always have to find a new way. I have to be ready for sound and space to jolt me into writing something down; I have to trust it immediately or wait a bit and see where it fits in. It's terrifying and it's the best thing. I try to: make us all (performers and audience) feel at home or for a moment lost, dig something up or reveal something we forgot. When I see one of them doing or attempting to do one of the directions I gave them I get a sense that many things are happening at once. There's the thinking about the action/stillness and there is the doing. We are doing what we know and at the same time making something we don't know yet. These moments jump through space and make me feel super alive and I hope they do that a bit for the audience, too.

Ain:

“Directing” this project is an accurate title and a nutty word for the task. I am there to uncover the work’s core intention and shape options to constantly re-reveal that core while constantly defending the performer’s ability to choose another “option.” So, we honed a mutually agreed upon “script” with a million options to step off that grid and clear imperative avenues for returning – at least, that’s all true when it works. I feel a kinship with Emily’s role because I am the offstage her or she is the onstage me. We are using different lenses and timelines to coax out the molten core – at least that is how I think of it.

Grey:

Whenever I'm alone for a stretch, I will inevitably confront the thought of how I'd like to be, or I'll ask myself how I'm doing being what I hope I am, or more specifically, what the time-spending-activities are that I wish I would do to be more like the perfect person I can imagine. In other words, I find myself detaching and looking at myself, so I can imagine I'm less alone. Of course, when I don't detach, I am less alone. When Emily hands a note to me during the performance, no matter how I think I'm doing, or how I'm doing trying not to think about how I'm doing, I devote full attention to her written instruction / request / demand / hope-for-a-better-performance note. If I bump into an unknown someone on the street, I get out of my head the same way. Some notes induce strange movements, others hopeful thoughts, but no matter the content, Emily's free compositional sensitivity always takes me away from myself when I might be fading-in, and places me back where I am. Her words-on-scraps are my healthy aloneness. I would do better if I got her notes everyday.

Here's what I mean...

This morning, I was privileged to talk at Northwestern University about John Cage.  The 30 minutes of the talk was just enough time to scratch the surface of what his work means to me and to my group.  The over-arching point of my talk was that to many, Cage is still an outlier, a kind of prophet in the wilderness who we all agree was singular and important.  But to us as percussionists, he is foundational. He actually created the artistic world that I now inhabit.  

While preparing for this talk, I experimented with writing a lecture in Cage's style, using chance operations to cut up material.  I hoped it might reveal connections and new ideas that I hadn't thought of.  It certainly did that.  

In the end, I thought it would be more interesting for the group at the conference to hear about how So Percussion uses Cage's music to stimulate creative programming and recording.  But I wanted to put the text down on e-paper, as I've been doing with other writings recently.  

During the effort to emulate Cage, my text became very personal.  For as much as I proselytize for him, I actually have a very complicated aesthetic relationship to his work.  I suppose I take him seriously enough to be troubled and provoked by some of his conclusions and directions.  

Those who dismiss(ed) Cage as a joker or clown are avoiding these issues entirely.  When you become intimately acquainted with his work, he is impossible to dismiss in this way.   

I may turn this text into some sort of performance piece, measured out in time and accompanied by tasks and percussion sounds.  But I'm going to leave it for awhile, and see if the unintended juxtapositions spark other ideas.  

Here's a video of my talk at NU:

Here’s what I mean…

If we take time and duration to mean structure as Cage thought,

Where do we place our emotions? 

I am not interested in Zen, although obviously I am interested in it. 

Duration contains both silence and sound,

Though silence does not exist here…

So duration actually contains the sounds

Intended or not intended

But the sounds “intended”

Are genus or species

And not the sounds themselves

For only the sounds themselves

Can be the sounds.

The intention of a sound

Is the intention of a generality.

And the question of emotion is trite,

As we all know. 

Placing emotion is manipulative

It is the bullwhip of corporations

Detachment is honest, trustworthy

But I have my emotions

And I like some of them

And I feel them when I play

John Cage’s music.

To speak of Cage’s originality

It is vast

But Art is social

And nobody creates in a vacuum

I found out that Marcel Duchamp made chance music

Decades before Cage.

It takes nothing away from him

Actually it enhances everything.

I plan to use chance in this talk

Because it is about Cage. 

But I will change it

If I don’t like the outcome. 

I am not yet at peace with the world

I do not accept everything as it is. 

I believe Art is freedom.

We percussionists had nothing to lose. 

We don’t tear down power structures

We brush them aside

And embrace freedom 

Melodies are sounds in sequence

I’m not tired of Schubert

Not at all

To speak of a melody

As pleasing or not

Is fine

But you can’t disqualify…

We hear sound on a line:

growing

shrinking

withholding

connecting

scattering

expanding

contracting

But if we say it is not “music”

We are caught defining music

For others

I simply think that chance may be better

At combining things

Than I am

And I tire of my own train of thought

Imagine if I subjected you to it as well! 

I desire urgently to communicate with you…

This discussion makes me uncomfortable.

Back to duration:

We feel experientially that we can measure it

Control it, quantize it

It is a hammer

Leveling the great arc

Beethoven died, after all

Trying so hard to make something different

It’s a worthy impulse

But why shouldn’t we be connected? 

Taste

The limits of our view

Sentimentality

All of a sudden our thoughts form

As objects

Weapons from the past

Cage penetrates the bubble.

To speak of theater…

I know nothing of theater

To speak of music

Is to speak of sound

And silence.

But to speak of silence

Is to be un-silent

And to be silent is merely

To move towards the sounds

You haven’t yet considered. 

Walk into a crowded room

Look intently at somebody else

Who doesn’t know you’re listening

As they speak. 

Their words come into radiant focus

In your mind.

So it is with the wall clock

The radiator hum

The birds

But to speak of Beethoven

As Cage did

Makes very little sense now

So I will speak of Cage. 

Back, tentatively 

Again to emotion

The theater is a box,

Just like the Silent Piece

What we call theater

I am totally unable to do

In terms of craft.     

As a box for examining life

I am enthralled. 

We all have different tools.

The urge to ritualize

And frame life

Is all that’s needed.

Catharsis is obviously temporary

And I suppose that’s the point

But I can’t abandon my emotions

Because life…

But arrival at stasis…

I’m going to keep using this word “freedom”

Because I hope I can make it taste different in my mouth

After the 2000’s 

We are not supposed to worship the man

We are not supposed to do anything

That’s the point. 

I’ve heard some music dismissed as “derivative.”

I know I’m supposed to understand what that means

But nobody ever tells me exactly what it’s derived from

Or why they dismiss the source

Which was itself inevitably a complex derivation

Of something else

Modernism was a cleansing

In many ways healthy

But locked and trapped in the past it resisted.   

It must not have been original. 

It seems to me that the only original act

was the creation itself.

Everything else is a derivation

I only run into trouble

When I try to be somebody else.

But as myself

I create theater in community

I suspend the tiresome

But necessary rules

I am still myself.

This brings me back to freedom

Not lonely freedom from the community

But freedom together

We can all change the rules. 

Stasis need not be boring

It can be commitment

A small powerful thought

Penetrated

If my thought is powerful

Why leave it quickly?

What contrast do you require? 

Are you listening,

Or are you apprehending? 

I don’t mind either

But apprehending from a book makes sense

Because, temporally speaking

It is malleable.

Give yourself license

To hear the world as it is

Now to speak of pitch

Or really frequency

How slow or fast things vibrate

I still believe that sounding these vibrations at the same time

Can be divine

Mozart

Schubert

Chopin

You will build better connections than I

Or at least, I’d like to allow for it. 

I haven’t composed a piece of music until 33 years of age

Because of this thought. 

The question is not “this” or “that.”

When things vibrate at the same time

We are alive.

Cage wanted us to see it larger

And more clearly.

Every noise has frequencies

Sometimes many simultaneously

Cage said something new

Because of who, where, when, why…

And because he was courageous. 

He turned our ears. 

This is supremely social. 

My talk is derived from Cage’s methods

It is highly unoriginal.

I can’t believe that he meant for us to set him aside

With extreme permission

And just continue on as we were.

We don’t need to swing the pendulum

This way and that.

But I don’t know what that implies

Because it was fun. 

My emotions

Are overwhelmed

But Cage lets it be. 

I don’t reject the past.

In fact, I embrace it so well that I’m left inert.

I suspect it’s the same for some of you. 

I’m not overcoming anything

Because Cage doesn’t require me to defeat him

If I use chance, I simply use chance. 

If you consider me unoriginal

I enthusiastically agree

But I want to make sound.

And I want to speak with you. 

The consequences are not what you think…

I can’t proclaim revolution against him

Even if I wanted to

Which I certainly don’t

I am unworthy of this style

Of this voice

Of this courage

But “the only rule is work.” 

He stands, in a sense

For everything.

To be honest, I can

Understand those who think (and thought)

That it’s a little bit ridiculous to stand for everything

Duration is an illusion, to be sure

But it’s concrete enough for us

And I have no time for mysticism

I recently read

“Once the point (of 4’33”) is grasped

Do I really need to sit and listen to it?”

But then the point is surely not grasped

Back to freedom

It is of course another paradox

It can only be experienced within strict limitations

Such as duration. 

The “Freedom” of endless decision points

Endless duration

Endless spinning out

Is a tyranny. 

Pitches are rhythms…

My emotions are touched by pitches

Which is to say rhythms

My emotions are attachments

I am attached to the world.

I’m not fighting against anything…

But it needed to be done. 

There is nothing wrong with the keyboard per se

The keyboard is just a pattern

Any pattern becomes oppressive

When it’s enforced.

And so it is with new patterns

Built to replace the old. 

I won’t tell you what John Cage stood for

Because of John Cage

A cactus or a branch is a newfound instrument each time

And you paid, and I’m dressed up. 

What I urgently want you to understand

Is that this is not a joke

But it can be funny. 

I don’t want you to “get it.”

I want you to try it on. 

You may find yourself a little lighter.