CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 17
Academia is exhausting! The day is dedicated to getting tonight's concert together. Rehearsal with an ad-hoc improvisation ensemble, soundchecks for all the pieces on the program. We spend a beautiful, warm, sunny day hidden away in U of L's Bird Hall, one of those academic recital/lecture halls that holds perhaps 150, without a raised stage but rather the chairs leading up, amphitheatre-style.
I have a brief respite of sorts while Krzysztof Wolek rehearses his piece Un Claro Del Tempo with Margaret (flute), Sally (voice), and Tony (piano). I get to mind his 11-month-old baby. We hang out in the garden of the planetarium. Everything is fascinating: the soil, the concrete, the way the stroller moves when she gets out and pushes it herself -- she's walking already. Part of the way I worked my way through grad school in The Hague was at an ex-pat daycare. I had a roomful of kids aged 15-30 months. I love kids! Motivations are so clear: hungry, thirsty, tired, need attention, need a diaper change, need to dance, or sing, or exhibit utter curiosity.
In the concert I am involved with three different works: my video Things You Cannot See is screened, I read a few texts from One is One: Preludes & Fugues, I perform a saxophone improvisation, and participate in the group improvisation. The other works, by Finnish composer Kaaija Saariaho, Krzystof, John Ritz and Zach Thomas, all feature Margaret Lancaster on flute. She is a brilliant performer, with an endless appetite for new music and an extraordinary command of extended technique. She is also an excellent improviser, and in the group improvisation she bounces rapidly between supportive and antagonistic roles.
The works by U of L faculty Krzysztof Wolek and John Ritz impress me. Even the brief solo flute piece by their ambitious student, Zach Thomas, is strong. John's piece, The Umbilicus of Limbo is for flutes, soprano, viola, tympani, and electronics. It should not work but it does, it does, the sounds absolutely matched and complementary. Where the structure of John's work plays, perhaps, with discomfort, Krzysztof's work is completely balanced. I'm always struck by the fluidity with which he writes complex music. We talk after the concert about how a strength can become a weakness. It's possible for us to paint ourselves into a corner and when we get good at something it's not a bad idea to set new challenges.
The texts I read from my book are pointedly chosen. One of them deliberately mixes up snippets of text referencing American war crimes in Iraq, criticism of the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli human rights activist Tanya Renhart, civil disobedience, and the choice of Jews persecuted during World War II of whether to assert their beliefs or hide them. It occassional uses the tenor of combatitive tv news panels like "Crossfire". It centers on a news story from several years ago about a US soldier in Iraq whose "buddy" was hit in the nose with a rock by a kid on the other side of a barbed wire fence. The soldier "knelt down, said a prayer, stood up" and shot down the boy who threw the rock. It is a convoluted piece and I have never performed it before. I felt that in Kentucky, as close as I have been to the epicenter of the twin fundamentalisms of American Imperialism and pseudo-Christianity, I needed to address these without being rude to my hosts. What is the goal of something like this? I want people to understand that things as morally unambiguous for them as the horror of Nazi persecution of Jews and the evil of the SS cast an incriminating light on American treatment of Muslims (at home and abroad), Israeli treatment of Palestinians, Judeo-Christian exceptionalism, and imperialism in general.
I honestly don't know if it worked. But the audience loved my solo saxophone performance, and I think the combination of the energy I put into it and the energy they gave back -- and the fabulous performances the notated works had just received -- breathed fire into the group improvisation at the end of the concert. Mercifully, we played with a sense of humor.
I have a brief respite of sorts while Krzysztof Wolek rehearses his piece Un Claro Del Tempo with Margaret (flute), Sally (voice), and Tony (piano). I get to mind his 11-month-old baby. We hang out in the garden of the planetarium. Everything is fascinating: the soil, the concrete, the way the stroller moves when she gets out and pushes it herself -- she's walking already. Part of the way I worked my way through grad school in The Hague was at an ex-pat daycare. I had a roomful of kids aged 15-30 months. I love kids! Motivations are so clear: hungry, thirsty, tired, need attention, need a diaper change, need to dance, or sing, or exhibit utter curiosity.
In the concert I am involved with three different works: my video Things You Cannot See is screened, I read a few texts from One is One: Preludes & Fugues, I perform a saxophone improvisation, and participate in the group improvisation. The other works, by Finnish composer Kaaija Saariaho, Krzystof, John Ritz and Zach Thomas, all feature Margaret Lancaster on flute. She is a brilliant performer, with an endless appetite for new music and an extraordinary command of extended technique. She is also an excellent improviser, and in the group improvisation she bounces rapidly between supportive and antagonistic roles.
The works by U of L faculty Krzysztof Wolek and John Ritz impress me. Even the brief solo flute piece by their ambitious student, Zach Thomas, is strong. John's piece, The Umbilicus of Limbo is for flutes, soprano, viola, tympani, and electronics. It should not work but it does, it does, the sounds absolutely matched and complementary. Where the structure of John's work plays, perhaps, with discomfort, Krzysztof's work is completely balanced. I'm always struck by the fluidity with which he writes complex music. We talk after the concert about how a strength can become a weakness. It's possible for us to paint ourselves into a corner and when we get good at something it's not a bad idea to set new challenges.
The texts I read from my book are pointedly chosen. One of them deliberately mixes up snippets of text referencing American war crimes in Iraq, criticism of the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli human rights activist Tanya Renhart, civil disobedience, and the choice of Jews persecuted during World War II of whether to assert their beliefs or hide them. It occassional uses the tenor of combatitive tv news panels like "Crossfire". It centers on a news story from several years ago about a US soldier in Iraq whose "buddy" was hit in the nose with a rock by a kid on the other side of a barbed wire fence. The soldier "knelt down, said a prayer, stood up" and shot down the boy who threw the rock. It is a convoluted piece and I have never performed it before. I felt that in Kentucky, as close as I have been to the epicenter of the twin fundamentalisms of American Imperialism and pseudo-Christianity, I needed to address these without being rude to my hosts. What is the goal of something like this? I want people to understand that things as morally unambiguous for them as the horror of Nazi persecution of Jews and the evil of the SS cast an incriminating light on American treatment of Muslims (at home and abroad), Israeli treatment of Palestinians, Judeo-Christian exceptionalism, and imperialism in general.
I honestly don't know if it worked. But the audience loved my solo saxophone performance, and I think the combination of the energy I put into it and the energy they gave back -- and the fabulous performances the notated works had just received -- breathed fire into the group improvisation at the end of the concert. Mercifully, we played with a sense of humor.
Labels: academia, children, Conquistadors, improvisation, Iraq, Israel, music, One is One, war
posted by Keir at 4:32 PM
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