Durham Arts Council

Third Friday Performance@Durham Arts Council   July 21st  7:15pm                          

Jan Ru Wan and Megan Bostic collaborated on the current DAG show entitled Reconstructing Existence: I Create Therefore I am which will run through August 12th at the Durham Arts Council. This coming Friday, July 21st, Jody Cassell will present a movement piece in response to their work. Jody will be accompanied by dejacusse’ new soundscape The Drone of Aggrievement along with improvisations by vocalist Shana Adams and Morgan Fleming on violin. The performance will run from 7:15 to 8ish.

The art that you will experience that evening arises from a deep grief that enveloped the artists following the loss of a parent. Jan Ru, Megan and Jody have discovered mediums, forms, textures, patterns and relationships through found and intermingled objects and movement to allow their grief a public expression. Each person’s journey with grief is a singularity that we can witness and resonate with. The graceful power of these expressions of grief invite the audience members to reflect on their own grieving.

This is the third collaboration for Jan Ru, Jody and I; and our second with Megan. The first was in 2013 in the Seimans Gallery at Durham Arts Council. Resolving the Disquiet was the raw stage of grief where the memories of the parent’s presence and the shock of their loss was felt. Then last October at VAE in Raleigh, Jan Ru Wan created Separation and in-between an installation that was about reflection and connections across time and space. Jody and I improvised movement and sound offerings for both of these exhibits. Here is a link to more about the VAE show:  http://wp.me/p5yJTY-fd

The DAC show focuses on a renewed existence through creativity. The grief remains but brings energy and muse in relation to “what is.” The show is beautifully curated and very sculptural.

For this exhibit, I was inspired to create a drone in a carnatic scale that begins on Bb. Bb is the tonal center of much of the natural world. Cricket and frog calls, cicada songs and other more drone-like nature sounds tend to resonate in B or Bb. The drone is made up of long tones from this scale in large interval relationships. The 11th Harmonic is worked in to help disrupt any stuck energy.  I chose voices that pull at the heart (woodwinds and strings) and created audio effect racks to destabilize and texturize the sound. Wind is a featured sound texture along with snipping scissors, keystrokes, and Jody’s voice reading bits of her performance piece  Walking to Nairobi.  Shana and Morgan will improvise along with and independently of the soundscape – all as accompaniment to Jody Cassell’s dance piece.

Please join us this Friday, July 21, at the Durham Arts Council DAG Gallery at 7:15 pm.

Tobacco Road Dance Productions: In Concert 2017

Very excited to once again be working on a soundscape for Tobacco Road Dance Production’s 2017 concert. Last year, Jody Cassell used iBoD‘s recording some kinda waltz for her Tobacco Road Dance performance I’mPossible. Jody both performed the piece and presented a dance film. This year I am working on a soundscape for Jade Poteat’s company.

A bit more about Tobacco Road Dance Productions: For the last three years, this company has brought together dancers and choreographers in a community process that is usually relegated to “the Academy”. This excerpt from their mission statement sums it up well:

Tobacco Road Dance Productions produces, supports, and encourages local dance in North Carolina’s Triangle region. Our annual concert provides area choreographers the opportunity to present their work in a fully produced and marketed performance. Each presenting choreographer works with a team of professionals to evaluate and improve their dance-making and writing skills. We provide networking and mentorship opportunities for emerging choreographers and dancers by involving established professionals in the adjudication and feedback process. Tobacco Road Dance Productions develops greater quality in local dance by engaging participants of all experience levels throughout the entire creative process. The presentation of a shared show creates performance opportunities that might otherwise reach beyond individuals’ financial and audience outreach capabilities and provides further incentive for young artists to remain in our growing artist community.

This is community alchemy – when we take what is right here, right now and create opportunities for as many artists as possible. Having witnessed much of the process last year through Jody’s involvement, it is an incredibly powerful and growthful experience. If you want to invest in the future – here is a good place to start: http://www.tobaccoroaddance.org

Unlike last year, I am coming into the process a bit later, attending my first rehearsal with Jade Poteat’s group in January. I met the dancers and witnessed what they have thus far created. I was inspired and impressed. They are working with the broad theme of “identity”. Jade’s dancers executed her choreography of movement tableaus of identity- with all the oddity, mimicry, earnestness and attitude that come with “identifying”.

We talked about soundscape, and Jade suggested each dancer have an identifying theme or motif. These could clash and harmonize and intermingle. And we agreed that the scape should move in and out of stretches of ambient silence. Jade had the idea of including the dancer’s voices in the soundscape. Part of the group’s process was to talk about dance, identity and what it all means to each of them. Jade recorded these interviews and gave me access to the interview files. I analyzed each dancer’s voice, locating the central tonality and common pitches within their inflection patterns. By isolating multiple moments of Dr. Diana Deutsch’s Speech-to-Song Illusion in each dancer’s voice (see http://wp.me/p4dp9b-e2  for an explanation of this phenomenon), I began sculpting a soundscape out of these lilting bits of speech. In order to capitalize on the melodic content, I created an Audio Effects rack that distorted the speech and amplified the harmonics.  The human voice is extremely personal, and a deep root of identity. Allowing their voices to be included in the soundtrack requires a great deal of vulnerability and self-acceptance on the part of the dancers.

Several weeks later, I have created a dozen sound sketches around Speech-to-Song Illusions in the dancer’s interviews. Some sketches have multiple voices as an underpinning, some have an individual voice as the harmonic and/or rhythmic driver of the sketch. Then I have interwoven some strings, piano, drums and vibes to create a melodic framework for the voices. Here are examples with multiple voices:

Here are sketches with one voice:

Jade has selected the sketches she wants to use and asked me to build some clear 8 count rhythms into a couple of them. And she has recorded herself and the dancers reading Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, which will end the piece. At tomorrow’s rehearsal we will record the soundtrack along with the dance to get the timings of the sound and silence.

Now we have a soundtrack for the dance. I am doing the final mix and mastering passes to the audio. (Interestingly, the opening of the piece is a pulsating current of the dancers’ processed voices, while the end is their distinct voices articulating the poem.) So excited to hear this piece filling the theatre while the dancers execute Jade’s evocative choreography.  Please come see/hear I am Deliberate – part of Tobacco Road Dance Productions: In Concert 2017.

Composing/Scripting/Playing the Soundscape: Part 1

With all of the Universal Juiciness that is going on right now, I am drawn more deeply into this sounding world. Still highly under the influence of Caverna Magica. (Wow, I just noticed that influen-ce and influen-za have a lot of letters in common. Infected by Caverna Magica? Hmmmm…) There are four primary pieces that have my attention right now and they are:

A performance for Jim Kellough’s show Warmed Over Sue Realism will be an “opera” woven by myself, June Merlino and Jim. This soundscape is really raw right now, but forming. (March 7 – Tea Time @ The Scrap)

“New Music 4Trudie” is a present for Trudie where I attempt to capture what she loves in the song “New Music” from the musical, Ragtime. I presented her with these two themes for Valentine’s Day. (Perhaps a performance for next Valentine’s?) Here they are:

Soundscape for All Hallows Eve for Allie Mullin’s Halloween-inspired photography exhibit, where I will create a multi-facted, creepy, yet inviting sonic vibe. I am really interested in spreading the sound around The Makery via small, wired together speakers units. I have some small speaker units from recycled TVs and I think they could be wired together and run along the floor for effect. (Anyone reading who knows how to do this, please contact me. I could use the help. This is for the end of October, 2015.)

“VolleySunds” (after Caverna Magica) still has me interested in further development. I want to get together with Susanne and Eleanor Mills to work on ways of shaping it. I added a new section to it this week.

As more Ableton projects get started, left behind and returned to, I am beginning to have a “Hope Chest” of ideas to use as starters or as extenders for larger pieces I am working on. This is an example of a phenomenon of synchronicity that I have been observing lately. I call it “planting seeds for your future self.” Those moments when you commit to a project, or buy a book, or make a call for no sensible reason. You are just compelled to do it and you do. Afterward, you think “what was THAT about?” Six months, 3 years, 15 years later, you realize that THAT moment has manifested into this present one, and you, alone on your own, could NEVER have planned this out. So very important to adknowledge and appreciate the Divine WoW in action.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I want to pay closer attention to the process that is involved in creating soundscapes. As questions arise, ways to explore those questions must be created. I want to create flexible templates for composing and performing soundscapes. In order to do this, I am taking some time to look back and take note of the various methods as they are evolving.

I found notes from the very first soundscape I performed at the Durham Arts Council, Far Afield (A Response to the Art of Nancy Tuttle May). NTM sent me the images for her show and I spent time with each image while the soundscape was being created. I really love her work and was very excited by the images. They were profound and whimsical at the same time. I worked with the ideas of mystery, playfulness, whimsy and an exotic universality. At that point the process was to flesh out my responses to her art work, select voices for the piece based on those responses, and proceed from there. A concept, some voices and we’re off!

The next layer is harmonics. Modes and scales are of particular interest to me. They are like Lego blocks that you can use to create all manner of sound textures and feelings. I chose to begin Far Afield with a watery, wavering sonorous Dorian-stepped scale, repeating over and over in an urgent appeal. From there, we moved through vast, prolonged pad synth lines in counter-harmony with the original Dorian wash of tones. There was a sort of Latin tinged movement in there, ending with a Native American flute loop created by Susanne Romey. When I performed it, I added in vocals and percussion. The most recent recording of the entire piece that can be heard on Soundcloud does include the vocal and percussion parts.

I am very fond of this soundscape and enjoy listening to it myself. When I performed it at the opening reception, I invited people to listen to it as they looked deeply at NTM’s art. Very few people did this, mostly people chatted with each other, which added a dimension of sound that I had not taken into account when preparing to play it live. Certain nuances could not be heard, while other parts swept through the space, riding on the voices. Here is a 30 second video of the event that gives a feel for what I am talking about: (Thanks to Eleanor Mills for this!)

Friends in attendance that night were upset that people were not listening. While I had not planned for people to give me their rapt attention, I had hoped they would engage in the process of looking at the art with the soundscape accompaniment. Since this did not happen, I realized I had to rethink how I would go about presenting soundscapes in a public social forum. (Luckily, in this case, the soundscape played in the gallery for the run of the show, so people could go and hear it while looking at the art that inspired it.)

Since then I have had three more soundscaping experiences, and each one has reshaped my intention and process.

To be continued.