Writer Stephen Osborne with Cassia Streb
I originally created this piece to be performed in my backyard in the fall of 2013 and summed it up as "a sound collage that includes spoken word, a low-pitched sustaining quartet, a percussion duet and two vocalists."
The Coincidence Problem is a 30-minute sound collage comprised of 4 layers. The first is a recording of the writer, Stephen Osborne, reading a prose piece that has been punctuated with moments of silence and echos of fragments of the text. The second layer is a low-pitched sustaining quartet of contra-bassoon, bass, bass clarinet and cello. The third is a percussion duet performing a version of the punctuation found in the written work. The final layer is two vocalists who read, sing and occasionally perform fragments from the text. All events within the piece have been chosen through combinations of chance procedures and personal choices. Throughout the event the audience is free to wander where they like in order to investigate the sounds that are the most interesting to them.
A smart phone in use at the Vancouver presentation of he Coincidence Problem.
We realized another version of this piece at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, Canada in November of 2013. In this performance there were only vocalists performing live and so I re-wrote the parts for a collection of small ensembles and a large vocal group featured at the centre of the show. The space was reverberant and created an entirely different sound than the outdoor version.
This piece is inspired by Stephen Osborne's work, The Coincidence Problem. Read the entire essay here
Video is from the LA presentation of The Coincidence Problem