photo courtesy of Anne Esler
This is the home of JLA "Noise" in Sandwich, NH. Sandwich, NH is located approximately 2 hours from Hanover, NH and Dartmouth College. The concert is set for Saturday Sept. 30th, 2006 - 2:30pm, with a raindate set for Sunday Oct. 1st around 10:30am. The concert will consist of several simultaneous versions of James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" (~20min) and followed by John Luther Adams' "Strange and Sacred Noise" (~65min) for percussion quartet. The performers will be Steve Schick, Lisa Tolentino, Doug Perkins and myself. Gustavo Aguilar and Nathan Davis will joins us on the Tenney and hopefully some other superstars. Read the info below from my previous project Desert.
The inspiration for this event begins with John Luther Adams' ideas of music and place. Refer to JLA's Winter Music and www.johnlutheradams.com. For me I am interested in discovering how place affects interpretation, both for myself and for the listener (participant). Our traditional concert infrastructure is designed for the listener to 'hear' the music, and to 'see' the music. We have lights, a stage, sound system, nice seats, and an acoustically refined space. These are fixed variables and force the listener to experience music in a very particular manner. This project focuses on music and performance as an experience, and as a process. The desert region provides a natural landscape barren of stimuli and infrastructure remitting the real experience. It has been said that JLA 'composes the North', a method which is suitable to an experience. My goal is to capture this essence, and allow the landscape to speak.
An adjunct to this idea is the concept of awareness. Not just awareness of new performance media and collaboration, but awareness of environment, and ones personal connection to environment. The workshop which follows this performance will begin to discuss the idea of awareness in both the arts and sciences. The question I plan to explore is - Can artists use their natural environment as a place, subject, canvas or something else? and if so - Could this create an awareness of the unique qualities of these environments and their worth in conservation efforts? Are we aware of how environment affects our interpretation of art? and finally - Could this strengthen with scientific collaboration and gain support for conservation of land, and interests in climate change?.
Desert
Photo by Jason Rosenberg