Game Time


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Recently I’ve been working on a series of 3-section text pieces for ensembles of 12 or more performers who may or may not be professional musicians. Each piece is laid out in a 16-page, playing card-sized, booklet.

The pieces are meant to be performed without rehearsals or read-throughs, so each page spread is sealed (with a tiny post-it) in order to ensure that the performers are seeing the score for the first time.

After the performers have gathered, a facilitator gives a short explanation of how to use the booklet. The performers then open the first page spread and begin to read and interpret the instructions. The instructions require each performer to carry out the same physical movements and/or audible actions. The participants are instructed not to speak unless they have to in order to complete each section. The instructions tell them when the piece is over.

The first iteration of ​Game Time​ was written as a companion to a performance of James Tenney’s​Inalarge, reverberant space t​hat​​ I was producing. Out of necessity ,the musicians were gathering only an hour or so before the performance and they didn’t all know one another. I wanted to see if it would be possible to create an instant feeling of community which would enhance the ensemble’s cohesiveness in order to better perform the Tenney. I also didn’t want to take away any rehearsal time from the Tenney. This first iteration of Game Time was a success and I found that observing a large group of people reading and understanding something in the same moment was an experience that I wanted to repeat.

I am interested in the idea of people gathering together and being able to connect with one another quickly through a shared experience. This kind of fast track to an “ensemble” feel would, in the performing arts world, take several rehearsals to achieve. I liken this to the concept of being stuck in an elevator, where, given a circumstance like the elevator stopping for no apparent reason, the people in the elevator quickly connect with one another.

These pieces are experimental in nature in that I am not attached to any particular outcome. Rather, I am interested in how individuals interpret words and translate those into actions. I tend to be very specific with my instructions in these pieces so that I can see the subtle variations in how they are interpreted by the participants. So far, I’ve adapted this piece for other presenters and facilitators in order to fit their specific needs. This includes, western-instrumental performers, untrained harmonica players, a communist social-activist community, a group of children ages 4-10, and an unsuspecting audience attending an experimental music concert. These adaptations are in line with my interest in sharing experiences with communities that are beyond my regular musician crowd.

As an experimental music composer I feel like I am always on the lookout for these fissures in the regular daily score of the world so that I can bring them to the foreground and examine them more closely. I see these opportunities as being like those moments on the street where you meet an oncoming person and you both zig and zag together as you try to pass. In the music world, we create communities through years of rehearsing and performing together. I want to see if it is possible to synthesize or facilitate this kind of connection through short group exercises. When people from disparate groups are able to form a community, they disrupt the status quo in a simple but powerful way.

8 Discussions on Progress

Concert at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans.

Concert at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans.

8 Discussions on Progress; Cassia Streb, 2014


This piece is created to mirror the construction of Yakich’s poem, Progress, in that the viola and violin pose questions or open discussions and then the field recordings offer two possible outcomes to these questions. In music, unlike poetry, we have the option of layering sounds so that we can experience both options at once.

Progress by Mark Yakich

There is
(a) seduction in the going toward and going away or
(b) dissatisfaction in progress.

You have the choice to
(a) mind yourself or
(b) mine everyone else.

It is only
(a) a lust in the mirror or
(b) the supposition of a bust.

There is
(a) a death which waits for us or
(b) one which does not.

That kisses
(a) kissed enough become stones or
(b) only break the seal.

You may
(a) not need this information now or
(b) want to go to bed.

What's left for you is
(a) the page of a book or
(b) the back of a heartthrob's head.

"When I don't know what you're thinking,
(a) I feel like I'm going blind or
(b) I am blind."

 

Drishti

The meditators performed with these clay rattles made by Patty Osborne.

The meditators performed with these clay rattles made by Patty Osborne.

This is a work for meditators and sustainers that I wrote for a performance at the MorYork Gallery in November of 2014. I was influenced by the Mindfulness Meditation classes I've been attending where you accept that the nature of the mind is to wander and when you become aware of the fact that your mind has wandered you return to the present moment, often by focusing on the breath.

The Dog Star Orchestra performed this piece at the Mission 356 gallery in June of 2015.

This piece consists of 3 audible layers. The first is a sustaining ensemble that generates a slowly moving sound landscape with gentle changes in pitch and timbre. The second is a speaker reading a poem at the rate of one word every 20 seconds, give or take. The words are long enough apart that the listener can't follow the poem in any real sense. The final layer is that of the meditators/percussionists who are divided into two sub-groups who are following one of the following instructions. 

either

When you perceive a shift in the general sound cluster, acknowledge this event by playing your instrument briefly and softly and then return your focus to the sound. 

or

Focus on the sound cluster as well as you can while accepting that your thoughts will wander to other places. When they do, gently steer them back to the present and re-focus your attention on the sound. Once your thoughts return to the collective present sound you will acknowledge this event by playing your instrument briefly and softly. 

Here is the poem by Mark Yakich

{On My Mother's Birthday}

My yoga master said
Draw all your attention
To the matt...

As with all things
Be present...
If you are cooking,
Cook...
f you are reading
A book, read...

And so when I
Visited her grave
I didn't bring flowers.

I got down among
The fire ants
And with car keys
Cut a pattern in
The grass
So that it looked
At the edges
Like frosting on a cake.

I stood in the center
And preteded to be one
Of 59 candles. 
The ants began to bite
The ankles...
Higher and higher
They climbed...
And I fed the flame.

 

Weaving

I wrote this piece for Singing by Numbers, an all female choir founded by Catherine Lamb and Laura Steenberge to perform choral music in alternative tuning systems. We performed this piece with a string trio at the wulf. as well as with harmonium at the Getty in Los Angeles. This work creates a sonic texture as the vocalist gently slide between the pitches played in the chord that sounds throughout nearly the entire piece. 

      

This is the image used for the score where the performers pick one vertical thread and follow it as they slowly raise and lower their pitches.

This is the image used for the score where the performers pick one vertical thread and follow it as they slowly raise and lower their pitches.

Singing by Numbers at the Getty in 2009. Singers left to right; Christine Tavares, Jessica Basta, Adrian Tenney, Jade Thacker and Christine Tavolacci. Cassia Streb on harmonium. 

Modular Tree

This piece consists of 2 layers of sound and some silence. The first sound layer is a recording of popcorn kernels dropping into a china teacup at random intervals. These recordings are played back through the violins, viola and cello with the use of small audio transducers that employ the body of the instrument as a speaker cabinet. The second layer of sound is that of the instruments being played live. The score the quartet reads is a drawing of a modular tree which is the pattern that many trees follow in nature as they grow with each branch being a smaller copy of the one that it preceded. The players explore a specific texture with each respective branch in order to reveal the structure of the tree.

About this recording,
This is a rough recording from a performance at the Last Bookstore in downtown LA from December 2014 with the Isaura string quartet. There was a lot going on that evening, including a Christmas party and people shopping for books, so there are plenty of other little sounds for you to enjoy.