If a group of students arrived at “Actual Music: Process” just a minute late, they would have been greeted by an audience intently observing an empty stage with a lone microphone wrapped in brown paper. This is not in fact a “Dada happening,” but the first piece of a three-work performance by The Composers of Wesleyan that took place Tuesday night at the CFA cinema.
The piece, “Micro 1” by Takehisa Kosugi, subverts the idea of a performance by diminishing the human role to a simple process. The performer covered a live microphone with a large sheet of paper, which was a noisy affair by itself. The paper was then left on the microphone for another five minutes. The sonic results produced by this curious arrangement were mostly pops and crackles, produced by the paper expanding back outward after being crumpled around the microphone. Most of the sonic activity was concentrated in the first few seconds of the piece, leaving the audience to sit in anticipation of the next wrinkle springing back and its sonic counterpart.
This piece is just one of Kosugi’s offbeat creations; a score of another of his pieces, entitled “music for a revolution,” involves scooping out one’s eyes in five year intervals. It has not been performed to date.
“String Quartet Describing the Motions of Large Real Bodies” by Robert Ashley followed. This piece moves at an almost excruciatingly slow pace, composed of sounds that could be likened to a sporadically creaking chair. The piece is performed by a string quartet putting intense pressure on their bows and moving them one bow length over the course of a half hour. The resulting creaks are then run through a complicated network of signal processing, replicated in this case with Supercollider programming by Wesleyan graduate student Jonathan Zorn. This complex and delicate system produced a loud spike of feedback during the performance that, though not intentional, provided a jarring reminder that music outside the comfort zone of most listeners was the intent of this concert.
“I felt more focused before [the noise],” said Joe Mariglio ’07. “Afterward I was listening in fear of it happening again.”
This piece is physically difficult for the performers and requires intense concentration. Sounding a string in the conventional sense would be akin to playing a wrong note, so the performer’s constant focus is required.
“My hand fell asleep because of having to constantly put pressure on the bow,” said Brendan O’Connell ’08.
The last piece was “Mazunte” by Hiram Navarrete, performed by Kyle Brenderson on clarinet. The most serene of the three pieces, it consisted of a series of slow drawn out glissandi, or constantly changing tones. The piece was named for a beach in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the sounds of air between the slowly bending notes were indeed reminiscent of a quiet seaside.
More challenges to the understanding of art are to follow, as this performance was only the first in a six part series focusing on live electronic music. Next up is “GOD” and “English,” using modulated feedback turntables and re-purposed consumer electronics respectively. Entitled “Actual Music 2: Baltimore/New York/Portland/Seoul,” it will be performed on Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. in the CFA Cinema.
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