We had our show! My first ever acting improvisation show! And there were PEOPLE there! And it went really well! And in the very last scene I started hyperventilating and couldn't calm my heart rate down until 20 minutes later!
12 of us from the class ended up being able to make it to the show. Our teacher, Tom, told us that since only 12 tickets had been pre-ordered he expected about 25 people and due do the small audience size and relatively small size of our class he'd decided to do the show without an interval. This was definitely the right decision because there wasn't an unnecessary break in the energy in the middle, but we did a much more kick ass job pulling people into the show than Tom was expecting - 50 people showed up to be our audience.
The performance was set up as a "Maestro Show" which means that ostensibly it is a competition. Really it's just a good way of having a bunch of improvisers on stage together with some sort of structure. We all got little vests with numbers on them (1-12) and our two directors (our teachers Claire and Tom) would pick numbers from a hat, call those people on to the stage, and give them a scene/scenario/or game. At the end of the scene/scenario/game then the audience would be asked if that was worth 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points and everyone in the scene would get as many points as the audience clapped for. (It's in your favour to have your friends in the audience...boosts your applause!) As the show progressed people with lower scores got dropped from the running until there were only two improvisers left - then there was an elimination round and one was crowned MAESTRO! And they won £5, that's the end. Go home.
Make sense?
I got called up for four scenes- I ended up in six because other people kept having scenes where they needed a token lady to show up and I kept being the only female in an aisle seat. (also? I'm way super volunteery) (Yes, that's a word.)
Everyone did a really great job, it was a lot of fun, and we're going to be EVEN better next time. That being said, because this is MY blog and it's all about ME- here's what I did:
The first scene I was in was a parent teacher conference. The set up is designed to have both a battle over status and also as much leaping and justifying as you can shovel in. We kind of lost the plot in the middle but I gather that I, as the head teacher, had called the parents in to talk about their son's eating habits because as a rule we don't prefer the children to eat the furniture and then they were talking about their son like he was a horse and then he had been eating all of the sports equipment and was I sure the school was feeding him adequately and shouldn't that be their responsibility? And MAN that got absurd and confusing quickly. In spite of that we got 5 points! (or 4, I don't actually remember) Woo!
Next I had gibberish scene with Anne Marie. (She's wonderful and Irish.) In gibberish scenes you switch between gibberish and English whenever the directors ding their bell. It's meant to be as fluid as possible going from one to the other in the middle of sentences or even halfway through a word and is excellent for upping the emotional content of a scene because when you're speaking gibberish the only thing you really have to work with is strong emotional and physical states- not so much with the content. Anne Marie had to fire me. As it transpired we worked at a zoo and I had opened the lion enclosure door because I felt that they needed to be free, but 18 people had been killed in the ensuing chaos and really? what choice did she have? Anne Marie was brilliant in closing the scene using the same phrasing I had used about freeing the lions to send me out of the office. 5 points again.
About half the group had been culled at this point and Chris and I got called up to do the final scene of a long running television soap opera in which as many reversals and big reveals as possible happen in the final 60 seconds. This was like taking candy from a baby (a sleeping baby who doesn't know they have any candy) since really all we had to do was cliche after cliche after cliche. I was his mother, I was dying of cancer, he was actually his evil twin, my brain was exploding, I wasn't dying of cancer, blah blah blah and then- (man this would have been cool if we'd actually managed to do it in unison) it was all a dream. 5 points.
You might notice at this point that I've got quite a lot of points.
Anne Marie and I were the final two standing and so as a tie breaker were given the task of filling 60 seconds with neurosis. I went first and freaked out about everyone watching me (inside I was like "what on EARTH am I supposed to be talking about?" First time I'd ever done anything like that.) and then started hyperventilating. This was in character, mind you, I was supposed to be being neurotic; but at that point in the show? Blinded by the spot light? Yeah, important thing to remember: Don't Pretend To Hyperventilate- you'll start doing it for real.
Anne Marie was confused at the beginning of her minute because she had thought she was doing a different word which played in *perfectly* to being neurotic because she kept asking for reassurance that what she was doing was indeed what she was supposed to be doing. It was great fun and Anne Marie won and I'm totally already signed up for the next course in September.
Showing posts with label I like my classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I like my classes. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Improv Class! Characters
Today my favourite of the teachers we've had so far taught and it was an abnormally small group, only twelve of us, so there was a lot of time to try things and really get into things- which is always a treat.
We played a game called "hot seat" where you come into the space as a character and then everyone else gets to ask you whatever questions they want. A good way of doing this for anyone, but especially as beginners, is to base your character on someone that you know. Because there was no impetus to work on setting a scene or develop a plot or anything like that, it meant that all of your energy as an improviser could go directly to fleshing out who your character was.
It was riveting.
The bar was set frighteningly high by the first few people to go- the characters were heartbreaking and breathtaking, fully fleshed out and interesting. Because we weren't sharing *our* stories but instead our *character's* stories it meant that everyone felt very free to hand out secrets, to be open, revelatory, and honest. It was incredibly intimate; it was an honour to be entrusted with these characters' stories. At the break we were actually hugging each other- it had been such an intense experience.
I chose a friend of mine and was shaking before my turn. "I don't know how she's going to answer these questions!" I thought, certain that I wouldn't be able to give as authentic (it wasn't really a performance... an experience?) as everyone else had. And then there she was. Or someone rather like her in any case. I had about 12 minutes of answering questions and she didn't even pause. Best of all, she was internally consistent and her motivations were clear with later statements making references to earlier statements and everything making sense. One of my classmates later said that he got so angry with her. Not me, her: such strong opinions about everything. She really rubbed him the wrong way.
We played a game called "hot seat" where you come into the space as a character and then everyone else gets to ask you whatever questions they want. A good way of doing this for anyone, but especially as beginners, is to base your character on someone that you know. Because there was no impetus to work on setting a scene or develop a plot or anything like that, it meant that all of your energy as an improviser could go directly to fleshing out who your character was.
It was riveting.
The bar was set frighteningly high by the first few people to go- the characters were heartbreaking and breathtaking, fully fleshed out and interesting. Because we weren't sharing *our* stories but instead our *character's* stories it meant that everyone felt very free to hand out secrets, to be open, revelatory, and honest. It was incredibly intimate; it was an honour to be entrusted with these characters' stories. At the break we were actually hugging each other- it had been such an intense experience.
I chose a friend of mine and was shaking before my turn. "I don't know how she's going to answer these questions!" I thought, certain that I wouldn't be able to give as authentic (it wasn't really a performance... an experience?) as everyone else had. And then there she was. Or someone rather like her in any case. I had about 12 minutes of answering questions and she didn't even pause. Best of all, she was internally consistent and her motivations were clear with later statements making references to earlier statements and everything making sense. One of my classmates later said that he got so angry with her. Not me, her: such strong opinions about everything. She really rubbed him the wrong way.
Man, that was exciting.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Orff Workshop
This weekend I was lucky enough to be sent to an Orff workshop down in Richmond. Orff Shulwerk is another school of thought surrounding music education. They had a lovely little browsing library and I found a book called Comparing Dalcroze, Orff, and Kodaly by Gilles Comeau. I thought "oh, perfect!" and proceeded to write this whole paragraph down:
"For Jaques Dalcroze and for Orff, rhythm is unquestionably the most important element, the foundation of all musical composition and all artistic works. It is not surprising, then, that they both use physical movement as a basis for music education. In the Orff approach, however, movement is not the only medium of choice; language is also fundamental in learning rhythm, perhaps even more important than movement. Kodaly, however, tended to emphasise the melodic component by developing a pitch discrimination, a melodic ear, and inner hearing. It is not surprising that he favored singing as the preeminent medium for music education."Now, I don't know how helpful that description is for you, but it was brilliant for me. The workshop was run by a delightful German man named Rodrigo who spent most of the workshop being both incredibly silly and incredibly tactile. (Do German's have a smaller personal bubble than the Brits? I kind of suspect not and blame his lack of one and willingness to invade others' on his Portuguese background.) We learned a number songs from around the world and he did an excellent job of teaching us the songs in small and fun steps so that we were playing games and enjoying ourselves, but also repeating the songs again and again and again without getting bored.
There was definitely more of an emphasis on words than I've experienced with Dalcroze workshops. That being said, it wasn't always easy to remember the words since the songs we sang were from Taiwan, Tanzania, Japan, and Germany. (And the German one was in nonsense words! But German nonsense words...)
One of the things that I really liked was that three of the five songs we learned were singing/dancing games. So that the movement was definitely tied to the rhythm, but also tied to specific group movements that meant that if you got it *wrong* well, you knew.
In Dalcroze one of the exercises that you do is called a "follow" and you move about the room in a manner dictated by what you hear from the piano. Say, for instance the teacher is trying to get everyone to walk around the room to consistent quarter notes. The only thing that is helping you to know if you are absolutely dead on or not is the sound of every one's feet. If you hear one big CLOMP! then it's all good, if you hear cloclclocclclomp....then you're not together as a group. Eventually you feel it in your body and through this method you develop a very secure sense of pulse and inner rhythm.
In contrast- this weekend what we were doing was playing games that involved rhythm: our Taiwanese song eventually involved two pairs of partners with sticks sitting perpendicular to each other and tapping them on the ground and slamming them together in a specific rhythmic pattern. The sticks made a hash sign that opened and closed as the rhythm went around. There was also a dancer that had to put their foot in and out of the opening and closing square in the middle of the sticks and then make their way gracefully across the square while stepping at specific times dictated by the rhythm. It was a lot of fun and if you got it wrong your foot was caught in a bunch of sticks (fortunately made out of lightweight plastic, not painful) so you knew you got it wrong. I don't know how much that helps if you haven't already got a pretty sound sense of rhythm, but it was a great dance/game; a lot of fun.
One of the other things that I really enjoyed was that any time we were dancing, or doing some sort of complicated body percussion, or playing on the xylophones and other instruments: we had to keep singing the song. This meant that one or the other aspect (singing or rhythm) had to be solid enough to you could put it on autopilot while focusing on the other aspect. At least, that's how I dealt with the complicated multitasking issue....
Lots of fun, lots of good and useful ideas, and if you even mention in passing a Japanese clapping song game about making Mochi I will force you to learn it and play it with me because I *love* it.
Ps. Yes, it's the same Orff as Carmina Burana. I love that man.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Improv Class!
I've signed myself up for an 8 week acting improvisation class! It is the follow on from the two weekends that I've done and the first class was last night. There are about 15 of us and each class is three hours long. I gather that a number of different people from The Spontaneity Shop will be teaching us. Last night we had Claire, a lovely woman from Chicago. (There were 3 American women in the group, we had some USA love.)
Because it is level 2, it means that the group has self selected to be even more awesome. Level 2 is one that you can just hang out in for as long as you want, continuing to work on skills and playing and practising. It's a class but it's also a lab, if that makes sense. I think about 50% of the group has already done level 2 at least once before. Of the two weekends that I did only three of us managed to persevere this far. You do level 1 if you're curious or want to work on breaking out of your shell or whatever. You do level 2 if you secretly love this stuff. (Oh wait. Is that just my reason? Not so secret now.)
At one point I was telling someone about the improv choir that I did this weekend, and I think was also drawing parallels between what we were doing and contact improvisation. They asked if I had had an abnormally structured childhood...
At one point I was telling someone about the improv choir that I did this weekend, and I think was also drawing parallels between what we were doing and contact improvisation. They asked if I had had an abnormally structured childhood...
ps. Yoga brag: I hung out in a head stand today. Just 'cause, you know, I can. Whee!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Cornwall: The end
Our last trip to Cornwall was last weekend and I'm sorry that it is all over now. I had a wonderful time with the project and became very attached to (not to mention proud of) my group of kids.
We had an uneventful drive up to Cornwall and were back at the first set of cottages. This time we didn't have the uninhabitable in the winter cottage up on the cliff with the outdoor toilet and the coffin bathtub- but we also weren't entirely sure where the other cottage was... so that let to a very late night the first night as we kept trying to figure out where we were staying. I say "we" but I actually slept through most of that as I was in the first cottage.
Fortunately for the more sleep deprived members of our party we didn't have to get to the school until 4:30 the next day so we had a leisurely morning and then FINALLY had a chance to explore a bit of Cornwall. Emma and Jo went for a drive while the rest of us explored the sea side and countryside around our cottages. We were blessed with gorgeous weather (also a first for our Cornwall trips) and went on a bit of a hike. I played unabashed tourist and took bunches of pictures which are now up on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
That afternoon we only got one and a half hours with our kids, and actually it was in the evening too- so they were knackered and we were all like "Ahh! You have to remember the piece because this is the only time we get with you before the performance! Ahh!" So it wasn't quite as much fun as the other rehearsals/composition times have been. But my group is still pretty great. It was nice that the piece worked out the way that it did too- because there were clear wind sections and string sections which meant that I could send the winds out to the hallway to remember what they were doing and I could keep the strings in the room and tell them to "play that again. Nice, now listen to each other and try to get the same sort of sound. Sit up straight" etc.
Sunday was the day of the performance. The pieces that we wrote were only one part of a much larger "Super Sunday" that happens once a month at the Tate St. Ives. It is an open family day with free activities for all ages to help them engage a bit more than they might usually at an art gallery. In one room they were writing stories, another they were making textured collages, and in my room they were making graphic scores. The 9 of us were divided up in to teams for the various gallery spaces. Heather, Jo, and I were lucky enough to be in the gorgeous room with the giant windows looking out at the sea and the beach.
As kids came into the room they were encouraged to take some crayons and a giant piece of staff paper and make a piece for us to play. We started as a cello, tuba, and bass trio and then broke up to turn into solo acts as the room got busier. It was so much fun, and really quite rewarding to do so many graphic scores in a row. Instead of straight reading what they had drawn, we decided to have them conduct it and point to the shape/color/whatever that they wanted us to play. We encouraged them to point in any order and to go back to sounds that they really liked.
I had two favorites from the morning. The first was a child who had drawn a pink cloud. We tried something together first and that was "pretty good, but it sounded like a dark cloud" but then his father asked if the tuba could be played with out pitch, just air. So then Heather and I wanted in on the fun so we started blowing into our F holes which A: made a great sound and was louder than we expected and B: made both of us rather light headed... It was all to the good though because then we were "perfect." And you can't top that.
My other favorite was a toddler who had scribbled all over the page. There was one small, purple scribble in the centre and whenever he pointed there I played a short, loud, rumble at the bottom of my range. He loved it and would point quickly at the purple dot before burying his face in his father's knee over and over and over again. It was so cool that he understood that he was controlling what I was doing.
Whew. So that was a long and satisfying morning- and then we had the performances! The crowd was pretty large at this point. My group played splendidly (though I really would have appreciated a chance to do a run through on the day of the performance) and everyone else did as well. Two of the gallery spaces were too small to fit the crowd, so they got to play their pieces twice in order to let everyone hear who wanted to. It was a lovely day and really such a wonderful experience.
We had an uneventful drive up to Cornwall and were back at the first set of cottages. This time we didn't have the uninhabitable in the winter cottage up on the cliff with the outdoor toilet and the coffin bathtub- but we also weren't entirely sure where the other cottage was... so that let to a very late night the first night as we kept trying to figure out where we were staying. I say "we" but I actually slept through most of that as I was in the first cottage.
Fortunately for the more sleep deprived members of our party we didn't have to get to the school until 4:30 the next day so we had a leisurely morning and then FINALLY had a chance to explore a bit of Cornwall. Emma and Jo went for a drive while the rest of us explored the sea side and countryside around our cottages. We were blessed with gorgeous weather (also a first for our Cornwall trips) and went on a bit of a hike. I played unabashed tourist and took bunches of pictures which are now up on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
That afternoon we only got one and a half hours with our kids, and actually it was in the evening too- so they were knackered and we were all like "Ahh! You have to remember the piece because this is the only time we get with you before the performance! Ahh!" So it wasn't quite as much fun as the other rehearsals/composition times have been. But my group is still pretty great. It was nice that the piece worked out the way that it did too- because there were clear wind sections and string sections which meant that I could send the winds out to the hallway to remember what they were doing and I could keep the strings in the room and tell them to "play that again. Nice, now listen to each other and try to get the same sort of sound. Sit up straight" etc.
Sunday was the day of the performance. The pieces that we wrote were only one part of a much larger "Super Sunday" that happens once a month at the Tate St. Ives. It is an open family day with free activities for all ages to help them engage a bit more than they might usually at an art gallery. In one room they were writing stories, another they were making textured collages, and in my room they were making graphic scores. The 9 of us were divided up in to teams for the various gallery spaces. Heather, Jo, and I were lucky enough to be in the gorgeous room with the giant windows looking out at the sea and the beach.
As kids came into the room they were encouraged to take some crayons and a giant piece of staff paper and make a piece for us to play. We started as a cello, tuba, and bass trio and then broke up to turn into solo acts as the room got busier. It was so much fun, and really quite rewarding to do so many graphic scores in a row. Instead of straight reading what they had drawn, we decided to have them conduct it and point to the shape/color/whatever that they wanted us to play. We encouraged them to point in any order and to go back to sounds that they really liked.
I had two favorites from the morning. The first was a child who had drawn a pink cloud. We tried something together first and that was "pretty good, but it sounded like a dark cloud" but then his father asked if the tuba could be played with out pitch, just air. So then Heather and I wanted in on the fun so we started blowing into our F holes which A: made a great sound and was louder than we expected and B: made both of us rather light headed... It was all to the good though because then we were "perfect." And you can't top that.
My other favorite was a toddler who had scribbled all over the page. There was one small, purple scribble in the centre and whenever he pointed there I played a short, loud, rumble at the bottom of my range. He loved it and would point quickly at the purple dot before burying his face in his father's knee over and over and over again. It was so cool that he understood that he was controlling what I was doing.
Whew. So that was a long and satisfying morning- and then we had the performances! The crowd was pretty large at this point. My group played splendidly (though I really would have appreciated a chance to do a run through on the day of the performance) and everyone else did as well. Two of the gallery spaces were too small to fit the crowd, so they got to play their pieces twice in order to let everyone hear who wanted to. It was a lovely day and really such a wonderful experience.
improvisation experiments
Creative Ensemble was a bit a loose ends this week since we don't currently have a performance looming that requires us to HURRY UP AND WRITE SOMETHING ALREADY. So we did some scheduling and then sat around for a moment trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. Our next performance is part of a quirky set of concerts happening on the upper deck of an old Route Master bus in Spitalfields (neat, huh?!) so we wanted to figure out what to do there and were talking about that when Jo had a brilliant idea:
send half the group into the hallway and make up some sort of rule for improvising- then bring everyone back in and have at it and see what happens.
This was ridiculously fun.
My group went first and started out slowly with these rules: ignore the audience. Talk about fruit. The piece ends when we start talking about starfruit. Now, as leadership students, we are not typical audience members- which meant that it was actually pretty difficult to ignore the audience because they kept trying to influence us by shouting "banana!" "MANGO!" "grape! Green grape!"
Then the other group went. They made the room in to a sound installation by taking themselves out of it. Really what this meant is that it turned into a silent game of hide and seek while we tried to find them in amongst (or actually in) the giant percussion cases stored in that room.
My group went a second time and had a GENIUS idea. We set up the chairs so that they were in one row, but alternating which direction they were facing. So that the people on either side of you could make eye contact. Then we came up with a seven beat body rhythm that involved our knees, our neighbors (the other groups)'s knees, and a high five that would effectively be in the other groups' faces. We weren't sure how they were going to react or what was really going to happen, but what DID happen was this: they joined in. Everyone laughed a LOT, and it was brilliant. What was so nice about it was that because it was 7 beats long it was just difficult enough that it took a couple of tries to get right. Also, because we were so close to each other it felt very inclusive- without being freaky the way that staring straight into someone else's face would be. This would be a perfect ice breaking, group building activity for teenagers.
Then the other group had a GENIUS idea. They all chose one body part to be conducted by and then reacted whenever one of us moved. It took us longer than you might think to figure out what exactly they were being controlled by, but it was totally fun trying to work it out. Kate was singing whenever one of us moved our face, but Nick just kept yodeling so they got into a yodeling match. Eventually Emma and I started moving their chairs around at which point it became unclear who was really in charge of the improvisation. We're thinking we'll use that one on the bus- an improvisation led by the audience with quite specific rules to be worked out later...
It was so lovely to be working with the group in a relaxed and FUN manner and to be so very goofy with them. It is good to be reminded that we're a goofy group of people, that we have good ideas, and that making music with each other can be downright joyous.
send half the group into the hallway and make up some sort of rule for improvising- then bring everyone back in and have at it and see what happens.
This was ridiculously fun.
My group went first and started out slowly with these rules: ignore the audience. Talk about fruit. The piece ends when we start talking about starfruit. Now, as leadership students, we are not typical audience members- which meant that it was actually pretty difficult to ignore the audience because they kept trying to influence us by shouting "banana!" "MANGO!" "grape! Green grape!"
Then the other group went. They made the room in to a sound installation by taking themselves out of it. Really what this meant is that it turned into a silent game of hide and seek while we tried to find them in amongst (or actually in) the giant percussion cases stored in that room.
My group went a second time and had a GENIUS idea. We set up the chairs so that they were in one row, but alternating which direction they were facing. So that the people on either side of you could make eye contact. Then we came up with a seven beat body rhythm that involved our knees, our neighbors (the other groups)'s knees, and a high five that would effectively be in the other groups' faces. We weren't sure how they were going to react or what was really going to happen, but what DID happen was this: they joined in. Everyone laughed a LOT, and it was brilliant. What was so nice about it was that because it was 7 beats long it was just difficult enough that it took a couple of tries to get right. Also, because we were so close to each other it felt very inclusive- without being freaky the way that staring straight into someone else's face would be. This would be a perfect ice breaking, group building activity for teenagers.
Then the other group had a GENIUS idea. They all chose one body part to be conducted by and then reacted whenever one of us moved. It took us longer than you might think to figure out what exactly they were being controlled by, but it was totally fun trying to work it out. Kate was singing whenever one of us moved our face, but Nick just kept yodeling so they got into a yodeling match. Eventually Emma and I started moving their chairs around at which point it became unclear who was really in charge of the improvisation. We're thinking we'll use that one on the bus- an improvisation led by the audience with quite specific rules to be worked out later...
It was so lovely to be working with the group in a relaxed and FUN manner and to be so very goofy with them. It is good to be reminded that we're a goofy group of people, that we have good ideas, and that making music with each other can be downright joyous.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Composition Class
We just spent a grueling yet fun morning playing through all of the compositions that we brought in. Usually, as a group, we don't actually write down what we're composing. It tends to be more along the lines of "So, keep that going until the flute comes in and then drop it a third, yeah?" So making a proper written score is a bit of a change. Also then reading the score...
My brief was to write for 6 members of the group using all extended techniques or sounds that the instruments don't usually make. I ended up also creating my own instrument using a metal goblet, a metal bowl, a chopstick, and a pitcher of water. Water sloshing around in ringing metal? Best. Sound. Ever.
I was up until an embarrassing time last night getting the score all in order and handwriting everything because most computer composition programs don't let you invent new shapes for note heads, which is one of the things that I needed to do in order to make my score work. It should have been tedious writing everything down- but I got the biggest kick out of it.
Ella, my composer flatmate, let me use a couple of pieces of her HUGE manuscript paper, so I was sitting there taking up the ENTIRE kitchen table with my paper and my notes and sketches and my pencils and pencil sharpeners and multiple erasers. Moises and Latana came in and had supper while I was working which was really lovely- to have comfortable conversation going on around you that you can join or not while you're working.
I think my score is beautiful and will probably post pictures of it later. We had 9 scores to get through so we extended class time a half hour earlier and half an hour later. We all have recordings of our pieces now which is really exciting too. Would have been even more exciting for mine if there hadn't been a wind quartet rehearsal next door that was drowning out some of the sounds even through the wall. Oh well, still wonderful. It was fun watching people's faces as their music came to life. Emma at one point even said, with a huge grin on her face, " I wrote in and they're playing it!" Which seems kind of obvious, but is a tremendous feeling.
Off to Cornwall now! We're performing at the Tate St. Ives on Sunday! And I'll tell you all about it on Monday.
My brief was to write for 6 members of the group using all extended techniques or sounds that the instruments don't usually make. I ended up also creating my own instrument using a metal goblet, a metal bowl, a chopstick, and a pitcher of water. Water sloshing around in ringing metal? Best. Sound. Ever.
I was up until an embarrassing time last night getting the score all in order and handwriting everything because most computer composition programs don't let you invent new shapes for note heads, which is one of the things that I needed to do in order to make my score work. It should have been tedious writing everything down- but I got the biggest kick out of it.
Ella, my composer flatmate, let me use a couple of pieces of her HUGE manuscript paper, so I was sitting there taking up the ENTIRE kitchen table with my paper and my notes and sketches and my pencils and pencil sharpeners and multiple erasers. Moises and Latana came in and had supper while I was working which was really lovely- to have comfortable conversation going on around you that you can join or not while you're working.
I think my score is beautiful and will probably post pictures of it later. We had 9 scores to get through so we extended class time a half hour earlier and half an hour later. We all have recordings of our pieces now which is really exciting too. Would have been even more exciting for mine if there hadn't been a wind quartet rehearsal next door that was drowning out some of the sounds even through the wall. Oh well, still wonderful. It was fun watching people's faces as their music came to life. Emma at one point even said, with a huge grin on her face, " I wrote in and they're playing it!" Which seems kind of obvious, but is a tremendous feeling.
Off to Cornwall now! We're performing at the Tate St. Ives on Sunday! And I'll tell you all about it on Monday.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
LCDS: the second year
So the thing about walking through the wind tunnels that are the streets in the City, is that when you're carrying a bass it is kind of like para sailing.
That is neither here nor there- the London Contemporary Dance School project has begun again! I'm excited for this year, some of my favorite musicians from past projects (last year's LCDS and Globetown) are back again for this project and we're already having fun.
Interestingly, there is only one female choreographer, last year I think they were all female. The composers and choreographers have been having their initial meetings and showings of their work all this week. This afternoon they're deciding what the pairings will be for the collaboration. I'm happy to find that there is much more talk this year about how to use the instrumentalists in the dance space which would make us more visually integral to the performance. Last year there was only one piece that didn't involve the whole band playing in the back like it was a pit orchestra.
We warmed up together and moved about the space as an entire group to get the session started. Then the instrumentalists gradually picked up their instruments and began improvising. I moved diagonally across the room playing pizzicato on the bass (a not very subtle attempt to get the day started off with a "musicians can be dancers too" feeling) and then realized that what the music really called for at that moment was arco which meant that I had to walk all the way around the room back to the piano in order to get my bow. This I actually tried to do subtly, which didn't work as a couple of the dancers came and walked with me. So: success for the first thing I was trying to do!
We broke into three groups and were given half an hour to make a piece based on "boundaries" and the breaking of said boundaries. Since I had the largest instrument our group got to stay in the room we would be performing in. (The bass is actually fairly portable, but I'm not arguing.) We discussed briefly how many ways we could set up barriers to break such as having the audience sitting in a semi-circle and walking through them. There was a closet off to the side of the room that I really wanted to see if we could use since it was (I'm going to use the word indigenous even though that is sort of out of place, you know what I'm getting at though, right?) indigenous to the room and making things specifically for specific spaces is always fun to do.
Then the composer, Aaron asked me if I could play while the bass was in the air...so we tried that out and decided that it would be easiest if we just used open strings, but we wanted a different feeling than Tonic Dominant Tonic Dominant over and over again so we de tuned my A string so that we had a tri tone double stop in the middle which meant that when we made an ostinato there was this lovely, gritty, funereal air to it.
So. Closet, semi circle audience, hoisted up bass, ostinato.
We started in the closet with the door closed and me playing. This was very quiet through the door which was brilliant because it meant that the door squeaking open was audible. Then Louis (the choreographer) started processing out while I continued playing and Aaron began lifting up the bass, still behind the, now open, closet door so that the audience still couldn't really see what was happening. Then we began processing across the room, causing the audience to scramble out of the way when it became clear that we were headed straight for them. (The bass was at this point nearly parallel to the floor, my right shoulder got very tired from bowing at that angle- directly out in front of me) We walked through the rest of the room and then out into the hallway where we continued for another 10 seconds or so.
Barriers broken: physical barrier of the audience, barrier of the various doors, using a dancer as something other than a dancer, preconception of how the bass could be played, and if we're looking at the dramatic feeling of the piece- the barrier between life and death. So deep. Aren't we cool?
There was more, but I have errands to run so that is all you get for now.
That is neither here nor there- the London Contemporary Dance School project has begun again! I'm excited for this year, some of my favorite musicians from past projects (last year's LCDS and Globetown) are back again for this project and we're already having fun.
Interestingly, there is only one female choreographer, last year I think they were all female. The composers and choreographers have been having their initial meetings and showings of their work all this week. This afternoon they're deciding what the pairings will be for the collaboration. I'm happy to find that there is much more talk this year about how to use the instrumentalists in the dance space which would make us more visually integral to the performance. Last year there was only one piece that didn't involve the whole band playing in the back like it was a pit orchestra.
We warmed up together and moved about the space as an entire group to get the session started. Then the instrumentalists gradually picked up their instruments and began improvising. I moved diagonally across the room playing pizzicato on the bass (a not very subtle attempt to get the day started off with a "musicians can be dancers too" feeling) and then realized that what the music really called for at that moment was arco which meant that I had to walk all the way around the room back to the piano in order to get my bow. This I actually tried to do subtly, which didn't work as a couple of the dancers came and walked with me. So: success for the first thing I was trying to do!
We broke into three groups and were given half an hour to make a piece based on "boundaries" and the breaking of said boundaries. Since I had the largest instrument our group got to stay in the room we would be performing in. (The bass is actually fairly portable, but I'm not arguing.) We discussed briefly how many ways we could set up barriers to break such as having the audience sitting in a semi-circle and walking through them. There was a closet off to the side of the room that I really wanted to see if we could use since it was (I'm going to use the word indigenous even though that is sort of out of place, you know what I'm getting at though, right?) indigenous to the room and making things specifically for specific spaces is always fun to do.
Then the composer, Aaron asked me if I could play while the bass was in the air...so we tried that out and decided that it would be easiest if we just used open strings, but we wanted a different feeling than Tonic Dominant Tonic Dominant over and over again so we de tuned my A string so that we had a tri tone double stop in the middle which meant that when we made an ostinato there was this lovely, gritty, funereal air to it.
So. Closet, semi circle audience, hoisted up bass, ostinato.
We started in the closet with the door closed and me playing. This was very quiet through the door which was brilliant because it meant that the door squeaking open was audible. Then Louis (the choreographer) started processing out while I continued playing and Aaron began lifting up the bass, still behind the, now open, closet door so that the audience still couldn't really see what was happening. Then we began processing across the room, causing the audience to scramble out of the way when it became clear that we were headed straight for them. (The bass was at this point nearly parallel to the floor, my right shoulder got very tired from bowing at that angle- directly out in front of me) We walked through the rest of the room and then out into the hallway where we continued for another 10 seconds or so.
Barriers broken: physical barrier of the audience, barrier of the various doors, using a dancer as something other than a dancer, preconception of how the bass could be played, and if we're looking at the dramatic feeling of the piece- the barrier between life and death. So deep. Aren't we cool?
There was more, but I have errands to run so that is all you get for now.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
My IPE
I took my own sweet time writing about this one, huh? Thanks for your patience!
Basically- it went totally swimmingly. The three of us met up at 5:30 and took over the green room at Bishopsgate Institute to do some run throughs and basically just make sure that we knew what we were doing. I made sure we timed them all as well because I was massively paranoid that we were going to cut various sections short and end up with a 5 minute piece instead of 10. This was a totally valid fear as our first run clocked in at 6 minutes...
Fortunately we all relaxed and began to focus on things like dynamic change, the pace of the piece, and actually began listening to each other instead of just trying to remember what came next. We rehearsed for about an hour, brought all of the equipment downstairs, did a quick sound check to make sure that the balance between the instruments and the various amplification methods were working and then sat down to watch the start of the show.
There were six of us performing that evening. Kate, Jorge, Andreas, Heather, Nick, and myself. Kate's piece started off the evening and it was beautiful and well played and enjoyable to listen to. I had spent the whole day up until that point being really excited about the performance instead of nervous; but as soon as I heard Kate's piece I began to get nervous and stayed that way through most of the rest of the concert. Every one's pieces were interesting and engaging and it was a lovely concert.
During the intermission I went over and talked to Jo who said happy fourth of July and then did finger fireworks for me. She made the shapes with her hands and did a remarkably accurate vocal sound track to the fireworks. We decided our favorites were the swirly ones that have that really high pitched whine. I know this sounds weird, but it was totally cool and I left feeling like I really had seen a fireworks show. With all my favorite colors too.
Anyhow, back to the show- we were on last and I play the first notes of the piece. Thank god for vibrato- that way you can shake and not harm the music! It only took about 30 seconds to relax and start really enjoying what we were playing. By the penultimate section I was grinning hugely and putting my whole body into my playing.
We got a huge round of applause and I spent the rest of the night continuing to grin. Cos, Kate's bassist from her band The Rude Mechanicals came up afterwards and told me that my piece had been his favorite, that he was impressed with how well I managed to combine acoustic and electronic elements. I told him it was my first piece and he was shocked! Yay!!!
Unlike my Senior recital at Peabody where it took me months to be able to listen to the recording of my recital, I listened to this piece within 15 minutes of having played it. And then I listened to it again. And I've listened to it a couple of times since, because I still get a big kick out of it.
To celebrate I brought Dave and Gemma, and Jon and Ella back to our flat for some food where we then proceeded to play Boggle and Pit until 3:30 in the morning. It was super fun, and a verbal enough crowd that the competition in boggle was intense.
I am trying to figure out how to post the recording of the performance on the blog, but blogger doesn't host sound files, so I am exploring other hosts for that. In the meantime, if you would like to hear it, email me and I will see if I can get the file small enough to email back to you.
Basically- it went totally swimmingly. The three of us met up at 5:30 and took over the green room at Bishopsgate Institute to do some run throughs and basically just make sure that we knew what we were doing. I made sure we timed them all as well because I was massively paranoid that we were going to cut various sections short and end up with a 5 minute piece instead of 10. This was a totally valid fear as our first run clocked in at 6 minutes...
Fortunately we all relaxed and began to focus on things like dynamic change, the pace of the piece, and actually began listening to each other instead of just trying to remember what came next. We rehearsed for about an hour, brought all of the equipment downstairs, did a quick sound check to make sure that the balance between the instruments and the various amplification methods were working and then sat down to watch the start of the show.
There were six of us performing that evening. Kate, Jorge, Andreas, Heather, Nick, and myself. Kate's piece started off the evening and it was beautiful and well played and enjoyable to listen to. I had spent the whole day up until that point being really excited about the performance instead of nervous; but as soon as I heard Kate's piece I began to get nervous and stayed that way through most of the rest of the concert. Every one's pieces were interesting and engaging and it was a lovely concert.
During the intermission I went over and talked to Jo who said happy fourth of July and then did finger fireworks for me. She made the shapes with her hands and did a remarkably accurate vocal sound track to the fireworks. We decided our favorites were the swirly ones that have that really high pitched whine. I know this sounds weird, but it was totally cool and I left feeling like I really had seen a fireworks show. With all my favorite colors too.
Anyhow, back to the show- we were on last and I play the first notes of the piece. Thank god for vibrato- that way you can shake and not harm the music! It only took about 30 seconds to relax and start really enjoying what we were playing. By the penultimate section I was grinning hugely and putting my whole body into my playing.
We got a huge round of applause and I spent the rest of the night continuing to grin. Cos, Kate's bassist from her band The Rude Mechanicals came up afterwards and told me that my piece had been his favorite, that he was impressed with how well I managed to combine acoustic and electronic elements. I told him it was my first piece and he was shocked! Yay!!!
Unlike my Senior recital at Peabody where it took me months to be able to listen to the recording of my recital, I listened to this piece within 15 minutes of having played it. And then I listened to it again. And I've listened to it a couple of times since, because I still get a big kick out of it.
To celebrate I brought Dave and Gemma, and Jon and Ella back to our flat for some food where we then proceeded to play Boggle and Pit until 3:30 in the morning. It was super fun, and a verbal enough crowd that the competition in boggle was intense.
I am trying to figure out how to post the recording of the performance on the blog, but blogger doesn't host sound files, so I am exploring other hosts for that. In the meantime, if you would like to hear it, email me and I will see if I can get the file small enough to email back to you.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
City of London Festival
Heather's IPE piece
9lives- check out the electric! (I'm so hip.)
Emma's beautiful IPE song about the 1666 fire of London.9lives had a gig with the City of London festival yesterday. There is a bandstand in Finsbury Circus and we played for an hour in the early evening. We played the two songs that we have collaboratively written: Earth and "D" as well as a number of member's IPE (Independent Practice Enquiry) final project songs. The sound quality was a little weird because of the acoustics of the band stand and being outside- but man, we played well. Here are some pictures from the gig. No recording, sorry about that. But we are planning on getting into the recording studio at school early next year to do a demo and start up a myspace page for the band. Of course, that will mean that we need to have more than 20 minutes of music total....
Sunday, June 29, 2008
MapMaking at St. Luke's
St. Luke's is a converted church that the London Symphony Orchestra has turned into a fabulous (and high tech) concert and rehearsal space. It is where our Equator project will eventually be performed in October. On Friday we had our first "run through." Quotation marks are important because nearly all of the graphics are still drafts and the music is only beginning to be composed and so is also still in a nebulous stage. It was kind of silly to have such an intense showing day at this stage, but oh well. It was good to see where everyone has got to. Probably "everyone" should also be in quotes since a few artists refused to show their work.
In any case- more photos!
As a side note- I have spent the last month feeling awkward about how bad I have been sounding on the baroque bass- the sound quality has been just crap and it has been very difficult to get anything like a clear sound out of the instrument. Last night it occurred to me that I had my bow rehaired over spring break and probably it could use some rosin. The effect of the rosin was immediate and huge. Now I am embarrassed about how long it took me to figure that out...sheesh.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Storytelling
I spent the last week in rehearsals for various groups from the storytelling class. Storytelling is one of the 1st year actors' improvisation classes, and on Friday we had our showing for the other students and faculty in the drama department. There are two separate classes, each of whom split in to two for a total of four groups performing. They had spent the last two months choosing myths and then working on them with each other and musicians. Because of confusing scheduling I, at one point, was playing with three different groups. But then, because of more confusing scheduling, only ended up playing with two-which was probably a good thing.
It was fascinating watching them work together to develop the script, figure out casting, staging, and trying out various tactics to deal with difficult events in the stories- like how do you show a decapitation? A monkey jumping over an ocean? A baby born from a fire? A temple being built?
Over the course of the rehearsals they encountered the exact same issues with collaboration that we have been learning to deal with in the leadership course. Sometimes making all decisions democratically isn't the right way to go. How do you make sure that every one's ideas are voiced and heard as well as making sure that problems are being solved and work is being done? Not surprising that they faced the same issues, but still interesting to watch. Also some groups were much better at the beginning of the process and then flagged with the finishing touches, whereas others were ridiculously slow moving during the beginning rehearsals and then managed to pull of a marvelous performance.
Because of scheduling, the musicians were inconsistently available which meant that the music changed drastically at every rehearsal I went to because the personnel kept changing (you wouldn't approach dramatic music the same way with a bass and a drum that you would with a string quartet). All of the other musicians were part of the classical improvisation class and their professor came along to watch the rehearsals and offer suggestions. This was especially helpful one day when I was playing by myself- I was doing mostly sound effects and word painting and he was hollering out "something Major!" and then "heroic!" which pushed me then to create actual melodies which was a bit of an epiphany.
Anyhow- I took some pictures at the beginning of the show while everyone was finding seats and setting up. The performances took place in the gym where there are bars on the back of the room, a basketball hoop (oddly), and 5 ropes hanging from the ceiling. The circus class takes place there too, and I'm hoping to get involved with that class as well next year.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Our Ladys Primary School
Oddly- spelled correctly in the title, but not anywhere else the school has been mentioned.
Heather and I finished up our three week stint there on Monday and wow! That went much better than we expected! Last week the kids were extraordinarily difficult to manage/focus and I was more than a little concerned that we weren't going to be able to pull off having a performance with these kids. Arriving this week was an effort because various construction projects were jamming up the Northern line. A 15 minute journey took me nearly an hour. However, when I arrived at the school Heather was already warming them up and they were focused and engaged little angels.
We practiced the song and the hand motions, practiced the percussion bits, practiced various entrances and cutting off as a group. We asked them what order they thought the performance should be and then sent them off on their break.
After break we set up in their cafeteria/gym/hall and the rest of the school tromped in. The kids were glorious, they sat quietly until they were meant to play, when they sang it was with full voices and they were better at hitting the notes than I was, they all hit the final note together without any stragglers and the audience even danced a bit in their seats.
Our year 3 kids really loved the song "kalele" which is an African welcome song so we decided to add that song to the performance as well, even though obviously the kids didn't write it themselves... but whatever- we chose a couple of kids to sing the lead parts, a couple of kids to do part of the drumming with me, and then Heather got the whole audience to sing along. It was incredibly successful.
So I'm converted now. I believe that having a performance aspect really *is* an important part of these workshops. There is something about the experience of performing in front of an audience that brings out qualities that aren't necessarily there without the audience and I'm so pleased the these year 3 kids got to experience that.
Heather and I finished up our three week stint there on Monday and wow! That went much better than we expected! Last week the kids were extraordinarily difficult to manage/focus and I was more than a little concerned that we weren't going to be able to pull off having a performance with these kids. Arriving this week was an effort because various construction projects were jamming up the Northern line. A 15 minute journey took me nearly an hour. However, when I arrived at the school Heather was already warming them up and they were focused and engaged little angels.
We practiced the song and the hand motions, practiced the percussion bits, practiced various entrances and cutting off as a group. We asked them what order they thought the performance should be and then sent them off on their break.
After break we set up in their cafeteria/gym/hall and the rest of the school tromped in. The kids were glorious, they sat quietly until they were meant to play, when they sang it was with full voices and they were better at hitting the notes than I was, they all hit the final note together without any stragglers and the audience even danced a bit in their seats.
Our year 3 kids really loved the song "kalele" which is an African welcome song so we decided to add that song to the performance as well, even though obviously the kids didn't write it themselves... but whatever- we chose a couple of kids to sing the lead parts, a couple of kids to do part of the drumming with me, and then Heather got the whole audience to sing along. It was incredibly successful.
So I'm converted now. I believe that having a performance aspect really *is* an important part of these workshops. There is something about the experience of performing in front of an audience that brings out qualities that aren't necessarily there without the audience and I'm so pleased the these year 3 kids got to experience that.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Loads of Projects: Workshops! Workshops everywhere!
The current round of workshops are through something called THAMES which is uh. Tower Hamlets... something something. Music Education Service? or something? Anyhow, each of us first years are paired up and sent off to one of the school to lead a three week long project. But there are so many of these set up that if we have extra time we can get paid to do others. So I'm doing three including the one I'm doing for school.
The one for my degree is the only one that has actually started so far. I am paired up with Heather which I just realized that you already know because I wrote about it four posts ago. The other two THAMES workshop I'm working with Glynn who was one of the people that the Masters degree was tested on three years ago. That makes it sound like it was some sort of medical trial, but really what it means is that he was in the first class of people to get a MMus Leadership. Like, in the whole wide world. Which is pretty cool, really. I don't know what we're doing yet because I haven't talked to him. (On list of things to do: talk to Glynn!)
This weekend was a CPD weekend (Continuing Professional Development) which is where some of the tutors come in and lead a workshop for people who either A: are at another school and want to know how this whole 'workshop' thing works B: are at another school and want to know how the Professional Development's outreach arm CONNECT works or C: are auditioning for the masters program or want to take the masters program but can't for whatever reason like scheduling. This was a CPD+ weekend which meant that in addition to the weekend workshop (and workshop leading skills) we also got a bunch of kids on their half term break to come in and participate in a four day workshop that we got to practice our leading in that then culminated in a short performance of collaboratively written pieces on Thursday.
This weekend there were eight of us. I was there because it is always nice to get more experience, Katey and Carey were there from the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama because they are the outreach dept. there, some other people were there for reasons that make my list of people too long because really I want to get to is: Paul was there because this school in America with a funny name wants to know what this CONNECT program and workshop thing is all about.
Paul Matthews was my theory teacher at Peabody my sophomore year and man-oh-man did it throw me for a loop walking into the Sundial Court music room and finding him there.
Name wise it got a bit confusing that weekend. The leaders/tutors were Paul and John. In the group we had another Paul and John and then a whole slew of C/K names including Carl, Chris, Carey, Katey and Casey. With British accents "Katey" and "Casey" are actually very similar names. The name confusion was not helped by the fact that Katey and I are about the same size, both wear glasses, and are both double bassists. She was cool.
One of the things that was really fun about the CPD+ weekend+ was the lunch time discussions. Lots of talk about how outreach differs from location to location and how schooling and education in general differ from location. I now have an invitation to come down to Cardiff to see what they are doing workshop wise there. (super exciting!) We were also of course talking about what we were learning each day and what we were working on in our own smaller groups sessions which meant that the vibe was quite a lot like university hallways right after a freshman class has let out during the first month of college.
I've obviously had a lot more of this specific type of training than anyone else in the group, but I was still learning buckets and really enjoying the fact that we got feedback immediately and all the time. In the mornings before the kids showed up we would talk about what we were planning to do that day, during lunch we would talk about how the morning sessions went, and in the afternoons we would talk about how the post lunch bits went and what we needed to think about and sort out for the next morning. Lots of really productive work and sketching done on the backs of envelopes in coffee shops.
The kids were also uniformly sweethearts. The age range was supposed to be something like 12-18, but a lot of younger siblings snuck in there so it was really something more like 10-16. They were so very giggly. And the height/developmental difference between 10 year olds and their 12/13 year old siblings?! Sheesh.
The one for my degree is the only one that has actually started so far. I am paired up with Heather which I just realized that you already know because I wrote about it four posts ago. The other two THAMES workshop I'm working with Glynn who was one of the people that the Masters degree was tested on three years ago. That makes it sound like it was some sort of medical trial, but really what it means is that he was in the first class of people to get a MMus Leadership. Like, in the whole wide world. Which is pretty cool, really. I don't know what we're doing yet because I haven't talked to him. (On list of things to do: talk to Glynn!)
This weekend was a CPD weekend (Continuing Professional Development) which is where some of the tutors come in and lead a workshop for people who either A: are at another school and want to know how this whole 'workshop' thing works B: are at another school and want to know how the Professional Development's outreach arm CONNECT works or C: are auditioning for the masters program or want to take the masters program but can't for whatever reason like scheduling. This was a CPD+ weekend which meant that in addition to the weekend workshop (and workshop leading skills) we also got a bunch of kids on their half term break to come in and participate in a four day workshop that we got to practice our leading in that then culminated in a short performance of collaboratively written pieces on Thursday.
This weekend there were eight of us. I was there because it is always nice to get more experience, Katey and Carey were there from the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama because they are the outreach dept. there, some other people were there for reasons that make my list of people too long because really I want to get to is: Paul was there because this school in America with a funny name wants to know what this CONNECT program and workshop thing is all about.
Paul Matthews was my theory teacher at Peabody my sophomore year and man-oh-man did it throw me for a loop walking into the Sundial Court music room and finding him there.
Name wise it got a bit confusing that weekend. The leaders/tutors were Paul and John. In the group we had another Paul and John and then a whole slew of C/K names including Carl, Chris, Carey, Katey and Casey. With British accents "Katey" and "Casey" are actually very similar names. The name confusion was not helped by the fact that Katey and I are about the same size, both wear glasses, and are both double bassists. She was cool.
One of the things that was really fun about the CPD+ weekend+ was the lunch time discussions. Lots of talk about how outreach differs from location to location and how schooling and education in general differ from location. I now have an invitation to come down to Cardiff to see what they are doing workshop wise there. (super exciting!) We were also of course talking about what we were learning each day and what we were working on in our own smaller groups sessions which meant that the vibe was quite a lot like university hallways right after a freshman class has let out during the first month of college.
I've obviously had a lot more of this specific type of training than anyone else in the group, but I was still learning buckets and really enjoying the fact that we got feedback immediately and all the time. In the mornings before the kids showed up we would talk about what we were planning to do that day, during lunch we would talk about how the morning sessions went, and in the afternoons we would talk about how the post lunch bits went and what we needed to think about and sort out for the next morning. Lots of really productive work and sketching done on the backs of envelopes in coffee shops.
The kids were also uniformly sweethearts. The age range was supposed to be something like 12-18, but a lot of younger siblings snuck in there so it was really something more like 10-16. They were so very giggly. And the height/developmental difference between 10 year olds and their 12/13 year old siblings?! Sheesh.
Loads of projects: MapMaking
MapMaking- the collaborative project with the Royal College of Art continues to be poorly scheduled. We tend to end up starting about an hour and a half late because A: people don't turn up on time and B: once we are there no one has a clear plan for what should happen and when (also where. Last week we made the room booking lady at the RCA tear a few hairs out because we were all over the building without having booked any of the rooms.) So I really want to get in the middle of all of this an reorganize so that things run more efficiently.
That being said work is finally getting done and I'm starting to get excited about the outcome. I am working solely in the Africa section (Quick recap: The theme is Climate Change as viewed through the lens of Equator Countries so we are divided up between the three equator continents [Indonesia, Africa, South America] to make pieces about how climate change is effecting them.) I am directly responsible for the music accompanying a piece by a Taiwanese girl named Kuku.
Kuku's work is simple and charming in what can be quite a hard hitting way. The piece that she showed at the beginning of this project to give us an idea of what her work is like was about growing up in a country that is sort of kind of, but really not, China. She works with pieces of clear plastic that she paints and then moves around either adding or taking away additional pieces according to what is happening in the narrative. The piece that we are working on for MapMaking involves a giraffe, a tree, some symbiotic insects, and humans- each of whom have their own little piece of clear plastic. Part of what happens in her film (Oh, did I say that part? These are films) is that the tree dies, she does this by dissolving the paint with paint remover on a Q-tip. You can see her hands while this is happening. It's a bit difficult to explain- but the point is that it is quirky and charming so I needed to make the music quirky and charming as well.
Thursday evening was creative ensemble. We didn't have CE last week because Nathan was mean to be leading it, but that Monday his wife Katja gave birth (congratulations!) so he was understandably not showing up. (Since Katja and Nathan are both tutors on the Leadership course this brings the full number of tutors with newborns up to 5.) But we were back again this week and I explored/composed with the group.
In order to keep the quirky/charming aspect and also in order to make the piece flexible enough to go with whatever the film ends up looking like-the narrative is going to change because currently it is not terribly clear. (The first time I watched it I thought she was trying to say that termites are killing giraffes. This is not the case nor the intent of the movie) I have assigned certain instruments certain characters/players in the movie. The tuba is the tree, the pair of cellos are the giraffe, the insects are the oboe, and the humans are silence. The graphics are very simple, so I wanted to keep the sound simple as well so the harmonies are all based on perfect intervals. The tuba line is moving the slowest. Jo has three notes to work with and the instruction to make the notes about one breath length. The cellos have an interval (perfect 5th) and parallel motion to work with. Their tempo is a bit faster- about one medium speed bow length. The oboe has three pairs of Major and minor seconds to work with. Her tempo is quite quick, she is an insect after all-she has to scurry. The effect is a little spooky and a little suspended.
At the RCA today we (I say "we" but you'll notice there isn't a bass part in this piece) played the rough draft that we worked out yesterday for the artists and the tutors. I worked with Emily (a composition fellow? tutor? I don't know- the important part is that her baby is due in August) in the afternoon and she gave me some good suggestions for a bit of harmonic movement so that it doesn't end up quite as static as it currently is- so I'm going to need to sit at a piano and play with that a bit before presenting it to the group next week at Creative Ensemble (also known as 9lives).
I think it is weird that I ended up writing (can I say writing? I feel like 'sculpting' is almost a better word...) a piece that is so harmonically driven considering that harmony is one of the area that I feel the weakest in musically. When I sat down with Emily this afternoon we wrote down in chordal form what I had asked people to play (the tonal center turns out to be sort of g minor-y) - but that isn't how I knew how think about it - I just knew what had been floating around in my head for the last couple of weeks and then tried to get them to play it.
That being said work is finally getting done and I'm starting to get excited about the outcome. I am working solely in the Africa section (Quick recap: The theme is Climate Change as viewed through the lens of Equator Countries so we are divided up between the three equator continents [Indonesia, Africa, South America] to make pieces about how climate change is effecting them.) I am directly responsible for the music accompanying a piece by a Taiwanese girl named Kuku.
Kuku's work is simple and charming in what can be quite a hard hitting way. The piece that she showed at the beginning of this project to give us an idea of what her work is like was about growing up in a country that is sort of kind of, but really not, China. She works with pieces of clear plastic that she paints and then moves around either adding or taking away additional pieces according to what is happening in the narrative. The piece that we are working on for MapMaking involves a giraffe, a tree, some symbiotic insects, and humans- each of whom have their own little piece of clear plastic. Part of what happens in her film (Oh, did I say that part? These are films) is that the tree dies, she does this by dissolving the paint with paint remover on a Q-tip. You can see her hands while this is happening. It's a bit difficult to explain- but the point is that it is quirky and charming so I needed to make the music quirky and charming as well.
Thursday evening was creative ensemble. We didn't have CE last week because Nathan was mean to be leading it, but that Monday his wife Katja gave birth (congratulations!) so he was understandably not showing up. (Since Katja and Nathan are both tutors on the Leadership course this brings the full number of tutors with newborns up to 5.) But we were back again this week and I explored/composed with the group.
In order to keep the quirky/charming aspect and also in order to make the piece flexible enough to go with whatever the film ends up looking like-the narrative is going to change because currently it is not terribly clear. (The first time I watched it I thought she was trying to say that termites are killing giraffes. This is not the case nor the intent of the movie) I have assigned certain instruments certain characters/players in the movie. The tuba is the tree, the pair of cellos are the giraffe, the insects are the oboe, and the humans are silence. The graphics are very simple, so I wanted to keep the sound simple as well so the harmonies are all based on perfect intervals. The tuba line is moving the slowest. Jo has three notes to work with and the instruction to make the notes about one breath length. The cellos have an interval (perfect 5th) and parallel motion to work with. Their tempo is a bit faster- about one medium speed bow length. The oboe has three pairs of Major and minor seconds to work with. Her tempo is quite quick, she is an insect after all-she has to scurry. The effect is a little spooky and a little suspended.
At the RCA today we (I say "we" but you'll notice there isn't a bass part in this piece) played the rough draft that we worked out yesterday for the artists and the tutors. I worked with Emily (a composition fellow? tutor? I don't know- the important part is that her baby is due in August) in the afternoon and she gave me some good suggestions for a bit of harmonic movement so that it doesn't end up quite as static as it currently is- so I'm going to need to sit at a piano and play with that a bit before presenting it to the group next week at Creative Ensemble (also known as 9lives).
I think it is weird that I ended up writing (can I say writing? I feel like 'sculpting' is almost a better word...) a piece that is so harmonically driven considering that harmony is one of the area that I feel the weakest in musically. When I sat down with Emily this afternoon we wrote down in chordal form what I had asked people to play (the tonal center turns out to be sort of g minor-y) - but that isn't how I knew how think about it - I just knew what had been floating around in my head for the last couple of weeks and then tried to get them to play it.
Loads of Projects
The school year is winding up, kinda. Winding up in that I know what all of my projects are and I am working on them but not in the 'yay, everything will be finished soon!' sort of way. Stressed isn't really the right word for it, concerned maybe? Busy? That being said, I am very excited about pretty much everything that I am working on at the moment.
Each of us on the Leadership course have to do what is called an IPE (Independent Practice Enquiry) which is basically an opportunity to do whatever we want in relation to the course. It is exciting because there is such a wide variety of things that are possible and that people do. Some are focusing more on the workshop side of things, some on composition, some on collaboration, etc. The second years have to have a 30 minute performance piece for their project and the first years have to have 10 minutes.
Mine is about collaborative, cross-arts improvisation. (Look at all those buzz words!) 'What do you mean by that, Casey?' you might ask...'Well' I would reply (and I've been getting good at this because I'm trying to convince people that they want to work with me and spend a bunch of time on this) I'm putting together a group of people to explore improvisation in performing arts contexts. For instance, so far I have contacted and (sort of vaguely) committed (we can talk about the *joys* of scheduling in a minute) a pair of actors, a classical trombonist with composition and songwriting background, a jazz singer, a recorder player with a lot of folk music experience, a jazz/pop singer who plays classical flute and has acting improvisation experience, and I'm hoping to get a contemporary dancer though getting contact information for that has been troublesome, and myself. Basically there are tons of different improvisation techniques floating around various disciplines and I want to see what will happen when we get together and try out different exercises/games/setups. Also I'm hoping to create an environment where everyone can feel free to make comments and participate even if they don't have any formal training in that area. Dancers and actors? Please make musical suggestions, and vice versa.
The people that I have been asking to participate have been uniformly enthusiastic which is really encouraging and makes me feel like I am tapping into, if not a need, then at least a pretty strong desire amongst the people I would like to work with. The problem is that I probably maybe should have definitely started scheduling this two weeks ago. The performance time/space that I am currently signed up for is on July 1st (which I found out today doesn't work for the actors, and they are kind of key if this is going to be cross-arts) with my dress rehearsal in the performing space on June 11th (which is practically tomorrow AND doesn't work for half of the group. Cool.)
So I'm thinking about a plan B which involves changing my performance date, getting rid of multiple rehearsal dates, getting everyone I can into that space on the 11th (maybe 2nd year actors? None of whom I know?) and working for 3 hours to explore a short exercise/game from as many disciplines as I can (singing drone game, a couple of acting games, a movement to a piece of music exercise, and something else? If there is time?) and then spending the last 45 minutes of that time setting up the structure for an improvised piece that we do on the performance day....which would be scary as all get out but might be what I need to do.
Anyhow, the good thing is that this is not a one time opportunity and most of the people I am talking to and whom are interested in my concept are going to be if not at Guildhall next year, then at least still in the London area so as long as *something* happens this year it will be enough to get the ball rolling for this to become more solid and real next year. Learning curve and all.
This entry is getting long, so on to the next one for my other projects that make up the "loads" of the title.
Each of us on the Leadership course have to do what is called an IPE (Independent Practice Enquiry) which is basically an opportunity to do whatever we want in relation to the course. It is exciting because there is such a wide variety of things that are possible and that people do. Some are focusing more on the workshop side of things, some on composition, some on collaboration, etc. The second years have to have a 30 minute performance piece for their project and the first years have to have 10 minutes.
Mine is about collaborative, cross-arts improvisation. (Look at all those buzz words!) 'What do you mean by that, Casey?' you might ask...'Well' I would reply (and I've been getting good at this because I'm trying to convince people that they want to work with me and spend a bunch of time on this) I'm putting together a group of people to explore improvisation in performing arts contexts. For instance, so far I have contacted and (sort of vaguely) committed (we can talk about the *joys* of scheduling in a minute) a pair of actors, a classical trombonist with composition and songwriting background, a jazz singer, a recorder player with a lot of folk music experience, a jazz/pop singer who plays classical flute and has acting improvisation experience, and I'm hoping to get a contemporary dancer though getting contact information for that has been troublesome, and myself. Basically there are tons of different improvisation techniques floating around various disciplines and I want to see what will happen when we get together and try out different exercises/games/setups. Also I'm hoping to create an environment where everyone can feel free to make comments and participate even if they don't have any formal training in that area. Dancers and actors? Please make musical suggestions, and vice versa.
The people that I have been asking to participate have been uniformly enthusiastic which is really encouraging and makes me feel like I am tapping into, if not a need, then at least a pretty strong desire amongst the people I would like to work with. The problem is that I probably maybe should have definitely started scheduling this two weeks ago. The performance time/space that I am currently signed up for is on July 1st (which I found out today doesn't work for the actors, and they are kind of key if this is going to be cross-arts) with my dress rehearsal in the performing space on June 11th (which is practically tomorrow AND doesn't work for half of the group. Cool.)
So I'm thinking about a plan B which involves changing my performance date, getting rid of multiple rehearsal dates, getting everyone I can into that space on the 11th (maybe 2nd year actors? None of whom I know?) and working for 3 hours to explore a short exercise/game from as many disciplines as I can (singing drone game, a couple of acting games, a movement to a piece of music exercise, and something else? If there is time?) and then spending the last 45 minutes of that time setting up the structure for an improvised piece that we do on the performance day....which would be scary as all get out but might be what I need to do.
Anyhow, the good thing is that this is not a one time opportunity and most of the people I am talking to and whom are interested in my concept are going to be if not at Guildhall next year, then at least still in the London area so as long as *something* happens this year it will be enough to get the ball rolling for this to become more solid and real next year. Learning curve and all.
This entry is getting long, so on to the next one for my other projects that make up the "loads" of the title.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Catch up time
I've written a little list of recent happenings that I have been meaning to tell you about. I'm waiting for a meeting right now and have a handy computer in front of me- so it seems like a good time to tackle that list, don't you think? These are in no particular order, and I forget mostly when they happened...some time within the last two weeks.
*Gamelan at LSO St. Lukes: St. Lukes is a church about three blocks away from Sundial Court that the London Symphony took over a number of years ago and turned in to a very cool state of the art re-configurable concert space. We're going to use it in October for the performance of the MapMaking project. But last Friday we were there because they have a Balinese Gamelan and we had a session booked to play it a bit. SO MUCH FUN! A Gamelan (this is going to be a piteously poor description, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan for more information) is a set of tuned metal percussion instruments that are traditionally owned by a village so they are a community musical instrument. They play very complicated interlocking rhythms and are hugely important in the history of Western 20th century music from Debussy on. The LSO's Gamelan is in the basement of St. Lukes (we are forever destined to have all of our classes in basements. Without windows...) You have to take your shoes off when entering the room as a sign of respect to the instruments. The instruments themselves are gold and red and ornately decorated. There are different sizes of sort of xylophone like sets, a bunch of giant gongs, and these upside down bowl instruments- oh- and a drum. My favorite was the gongs. You could smack them hard and then they reverberate for forever. It was pretty awesome.
*Kate's album launch. The Rude Mechanicals made an album and they had their launch um. last week sometime? It was at a club that is basically inside the London Bridge station. The place is made from an old cellar or something? I'm not really sure- there were lots of old brick arches and in order to get to the stage(s) where the show was you had to walk down long, dimly lit, vaguely scary hallways. It was made a bit creepier because halfway down this long corridor (where is the stage?!) there were 12 red spotlights and soft, ambient, constantly changing music. It took me quite a while to get to the stage because I spent so much time with the red spotlights. It turned out that the music was controlled by the spotlights so if you walked over
them or made a shadow to block the light you activated that pitch. John- a visiting musician from Colombia- and I figured out how to play chords by standing in the middle of three spotlights and blocking two lights with out hands and one with our heads or feet or whatever was handy. The sounds morphed over time as well so we weren't always working with the same sustain or reverb or tone. Am I a bit nerdy? You betcha. But Kate's gig went really well too and all of us leadershippers danced away in the front of the crowd. They were doing so well that they had to play an encore. Yay Kate!
*Medieval Concert- most of the early music instrumentalists at Guildhall were involved in this concert that took place at St. Magnus the Martyr which is by the Thames. It turned out that those directions were not really complete enough for me to be able to find that church....after numerous phone calls I eventually made it there minutes before the concert began. Which was good because there were only about 5 audience members and a good 10 people performing. What lovely music it was. And again I was reminded of the reasons that I am so impressed with Guildhall students, everyone does multiple things and that is seen as a good, worthy, and even necessary thing. There were some lovely medieval choral pieces as well as numerous arrangements of secular and dance pieces. Most of the instrumentalists sang as well and played multiple instruments- not even necessarily the same instrument families either. Emily, the recorder player who organized the whole thing sang, played various recorders, and the vielle which was totally impressive.
*Kate's album launch. The Rude Mechanicals made an album and they had their launch um. last week sometime? It was at a club that is basically inside the London Bridge station. The place is made from an old cellar or something? I'm not really sure- there were lots of old brick arches and in order to get to the stage(s) where the show was you had to walk down long, dimly lit, vaguely scary hallways. It was made a bit creepier because halfway down this long corridor (where is the stage?!) there were 12 red spotlights and soft, ambient, constantly changing music. It took me quite a while to get to the stage because I spent so much time with the red spotlights. It turned out that the music was controlled by the spotlights so if you walked over
them or made a shadow to block the light you activated that pitch. John- a visiting musician from Colombia- and I figured out how to play chords by standing in the middle of three spotlights and blocking two lights with out hands and one with our heads or feet or whatever was handy. The sounds morphed over time as well so we weren't always working with the same sustain or reverb or tone. Am I a bit nerdy? You betcha. But Kate's gig went really well too and all of us leadershippers danced away in the front of the crowd. They were doing so well that they had to play an encore. Yay Kate!
*Medieval Concert- most of the early music instrumentalists at Guildhall were involved in this concert that took place at St. Magnus the Martyr which is by the Thames. It turned out that those directions were not really complete enough for me to be able to find that church....after numerous phone calls I eventually made it there minutes before the concert began. Which was good because there were only about 5 audience members and a good 10 people performing. What lovely music it was. And again I was reminded of the reasons that I am so impressed with Guildhall students, everyone does multiple things and that is seen as a good, worthy, and even necessary thing. There were some lovely medieval choral pieces as well as numerous arrangements of secular and dance pieces. Most of the instrumentalists sang as well and played multiple instruments- not even necessarily the same instrument families either. Emily, the recorder player who organized the whole thing sang, played various recorders, and the vielle which was totally impressive.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Our Ladies Primary School
Heather and I had our first workshop session on our own today. We are working with a class of year 3 students at Our Ladies primary school in the Canary Wharf area. They have had next to no music education so far (year 3 is 8 year olds), and while they very much enjoy singing- they haven't had any instrumental experience at all.
We started them out with singing "kalele" which is a welcoming song from South Africa (?) and then started working on they rhythmic base for our piece (bananas and mangoes is how it goes). They eventually got it pretty well and we put it on our lovely rag-tag bunch of random hand percussion. Ooo, that was a fun part. We gave them each an instrument (a stick with bells, maracas, tambourines, a chair with a couple of sticks) and had them figure out how to make four different sounds. That part was fun. And loud. "bang it on your head! How about the floor? How quiet a sound can you make? How short? How long? How loud?" So cool to watch them experimenting with the instruments. If you have no preconceptions about how an instrument should be played- there are all sorts of interesting things you can come up with. We played with dynamics and starting and stopping the sounds as well as the rhythm itself. They're good kids, they did really well.
After break we worked on our song. Heather and I wanted to base the workshop at least loosely on our trip to the Gambia. In The Gambia greetings are very important and can take up to five minutes just to say hello, so we decided to brainstorm as many ways of greeting your friends as possible and wrote them up on the board. We ended up with a bunch of different languages and my personal favorite: 'yo!' We then had them choose three that they thought would go well together for a line and made four stanzas if you will of those. Example: hello, hola, bonjour. Heather had written a bass line so she started playing that on the cello while the kids mumbled tunes under their breath. That was what was really amazing- that was exactly what we wanted them to do and they just went ahead without any prompting at all- it was just their natural reaction to being presented with some words and a bit of music. How neat is that?
We're going to need to do a bit of tweaking because with the bass line and their tune it ended up sounding quite minor and lackluster which is not really the emotion of the sound world we were trying to get to, so I think that Heather and I will need to change the pitches a little bit in order to make the song a bit peppier.
The kids are, for the most part, very well behaved. There are of course a couple of squirrely ones and a couple that aren't terribly interested, but all of them were excited at the end of the lesson when they got to have a go on Heather's cello, my djembe, and the school's keyboard. There was a teaching assistant helping the class today too, and I forget what his name is, but Heather and I were impressed with his singing voice during the welcome song. It turns out he is having his West End debut later this week (tomorrow?) as one of the hyenas in The Lion King...he was having a great time with our workshop!
I was very impressed with Heather's manner towards the kids. She is very good at validating them (even when we're looking for greeting words and they keep coming up with various words for food items in Spanish) and guiding their attention without making it seem like she is doing so. She was really not feeling well though, which makes it even more impressive how well she was conducting herself with the kids. I kept forgetting she was sick until the kids had a break and then she basically collapsed. Then the kids came back and she was totally on again.
They have mid-term break next week, so we don't see them for another two weeks. I'll keep you posted!
We started them out with singing "kalele" which is a welcoming song from South Africa (?) and then started working on they rhythmic base for our piece (bananas and mangoes is how it goes). They eventually got it pretty well and we put it on our lovely rag-tag bunch of random hand percussion. Ooo, that was a fun part. We gave them each an instrument (a stick with bells, maracas, tambourines, a chair with a couple of sticks) and had them figure out how to make four different sounds. That part was fun. And loud. "bang it on your head! How about the floor? How quiet a sound can you make? How short? How long? How loud?" So cool to watch them experimenting with the instruments. If you have no preconceptions about how an instrument should be played- there are all sorts of interesting things you can come up with. We played with dynamics and starting and stopping the sounds as well as the rhythm itself. They're good kids, they did really well.
After break we worked on our song. Heather and I wanted to base the workshop at least loosely on our trip to the Gambia. In The Gambia greetings are very important and can take up to five minutes just to say hello, so we decided to brainstorm as many ways of greeting your friends as possible and wrote them up on the board. We ended up with a bunch of different languages and my personal favorite: 'yo!' We then had them choose three that they thought would go well together for a line and made four stanzas if you will of those. Example: hello, hola, bonjour. Heather had written a bass line so she started playing that on the cello while the kids mumbled tunes under their breath. That was what was really amazing- that was exactly what we wanted them to do and they just went ahead without any prompting at all- it was just their natural reaction to being presented with some words and a bit of music. How neat is that?
We're going to need to do a bit of tweaking because with the bass line and their tune it ended up sounding quite minor and lackluster which is not really the emotion of the sound world we were trying to get to, so I think that Heather and I will need to change the pitches a little bit in order to make the song a bit peppier.
The kids are, for the most part, very well behaved. There are of course a couple of squirrely ones and a couple that aren't terribly interested, but all of them were excited at the end of the lesson when they got to have a go on Heather's cello, my djembe, and the school's keyboard. There was a teaching assistant helping the class today too, and I forget what his name is, but Heather and I were impressed with his singing voice during the welcome song. It turns out he is having his West End debut later this week (tomorrow?) as one of the hyenas in The Lion King...he was having a great time with our workshop!
I was very impressed with Heather's manner towards the kids. She is very good at validating them (even when we're looking for greeting words and they keep coming up with various words for food items in Spanish) and guiding their attention without making it seem like she is doing so. She was really not feeling well though, which makes it even more impressive how well she was conducting herself with the kids. I kept forgetting she was sick until the kids had a break and then she basically collapsed. Then the kids came back and she was totally on again.
They have mid-term break next week, so we don't see them for another two weeks. I'll keep you posted!
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The Wollof Boys
This is how awesome the Wollof boys are. The four in the front were our teachers. This video was taken at their compound on one of the last days of the trip when they performed for us. The two on the left and the one on the farthest right are brothers and the brightly colored guy in the middle is their uncle.
And they all dance!
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Pictures of Njawara
My hut, I slept on the Right
The Chickens! I loved the chickens! They circled around the camp all the time and the little ones would suddenly realize they were behind and then scamper to catch up. I took far far far too many pictures of the chickens.
The beautiful trees and the entrance gate to the Njawara cultural camp. This makes the camp look a bit bigger than it really was. I took this from the food area.
Some of the kids from the village.
Mamadou, his Kora, and his little amplifier.I forgot to write about the mangos- there were mango trees all over the place and we would eat them all the time. Everyone would eat them all the time, you bite the skin, peel it with your teeth and then gnaw on the fruit until you get to the pit/seed. We went through our entire supply of floss in four days. The mangos would fall onto the aluminum roof with a collosal bang and startle us.
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