"Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy. I wanted the text to connect to my instrument and also to the concept of artistic lineage, so I chose the first two sentences from Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree. Instead of a 3-dimensional cube I chose to work with 2-dimensional compass directions, a navigational system I am very comfortable with from extensive experience hiking and climbing. Like Trisha did for "Locus," I began my compositional process by translating a few sentences of text into locations in space. I was interested to see what new directions (please excuse the unavoidable pun!) a random, spatially-based external structure might push me in. Beyond just incorporating a random organizational structure, "Locus's" structure specifies where to move in space, something which is not often addressed directly in music. However, I am intrigued by the idea that a randomized structural system can be a vehicle for innovation, a concept that fueled Trisha's creation of "Locus" and many of her other works. I admit, I'm rather attached to my aesthetic sense governing my compositional process, and so I'm reluctant to leave too much up to chance. Two open-air microphones are used to pick up the sounds of bowing additional loose leaves.Īlthough I have studied music made through aleatoric processes, especially many of Cage's compositions, I have never really used a randomized system to generate or organize my own music. DD is amplified via hydrophones buried in the potting soil and contact microphones taped onto each of the four tree branches. The instrument is named DD, which is both an abbreviation for "dirt donut," and a reference to "didi," the Nepali word for older sister. Thus the leaves are required to be autumn leaves. In the spirit of haiku, I thought it would be fun to include a seasonal reference in my piece. Red, yellow, orange, and brown autumn leaves from a variety of trees are attached to the ends of twigs on each branch. Mounted into the dirt donut base are four tree branches, each approximately 4' tall, and positioned equidistant from each other. This inadvertently created another connection to "Child of Tree," as amplified cactus is one of the instruments specifically called for in Cage's score. Experimentation revealed that cactus mix is the best sounding potting soil, so that's what I employed. The base of the instrument is a donut-shaped container, 5-feet in overall diameter, which is made out of cardboard, lined with plastic, and filled with potting soil. I chose to have three strata in my instrument: dirt, tree branches, and autumn leaves. Incidentally, "Child of Tree" and "Locus" were both composed in 1975. Not only was Cage an important contemporary of Trisha Brown, but his work has had a huge influence on my musical development. I performed this piece once back in the mid-90s at a John Cage Festival at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. These ideas didn't make it into the first version of my piece "Asterisms," mainly because of time constraints, but I'd still like to explore them in future iterations.Īs for what exactly my instrument would be comprised of, I wanted to continue using natural materials, both because that's my preferred instrumentation these days, and as a nod to John Cage's piece "Child of Tree," in which the performers play plant materials as instruments and improvise within a randomly-generated time-based framework. #Cactus music aleatoric free#I also toyed with the idea of breaking free from this space at some point during my piece and either playing the outside of the instrument or leaving it behind completely and striking out into the audience, suddenly exploding and expanding my conception of the space. In order to explore performing with no "front" to my stage setup, I decided to build a 360-degree instrument I could sit inside and play, a little like the tabla tarang (in Indian classical music, a set of tuned drums arranged in arc around the performer), but completely encircling me. I wanted to use a spherical space, but that posed too many logistical difficulties so I went with a cylinder. Trisha's use of a 3-tiered cube interested me but was a bit too square for my tastes, which have been tempered by years of studying circular and spiraling movements in aikido. I began by defining the space within which I would work, and I knew this would take the form of a large musical instrument/sculpture that my "Locus"-inspired composition would be played upon. Below musician Cheryl Leonard reflects on her process of creating an instrument and a new piece of music, Asterisms, in response to Trisha Brown's Locus as part of Hope Mohr Dance's 2016 Bridge Project, "Ten Artists Respond to Locus."
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |