Category Archives: the performer

May11

reverberations

Posted on by

Last night’s Oliveros at 80 concert at the EMPAC performing arts center, part of Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, New York, was simply the most astonishing music performance I have ever experienced. Pauline and her collaborators – Stuart Dempster, Brian Perti, and a host of guest artists, created a transcendent sonic experience.

The concert hall had been altered to sound like  a two-million gallon, WWII-era water cistern with a 45-second reverb.  Oliveros used a 32-channel loudspeaker system to capture and process the sounds of each of the instruments (electronically enabled accordion, trombone, digeridu, conch, voice and Dungchen, the long Tibetan horn that sounds like singing elephants.)

The result was a sound that was completely immersive, a sound that resonated the bodies of the audience as well as the instruments themselves.  In the last piece, drummers from the school’s percussion ensemble were positioned around the balcony that surrounds the audience below.  The result was a wild hive of sound that rose and fell in waves and felt, to this listener, like a “soundbodygasm.”

This performance had an almost liturgical quality, a feeling of deep, embodied ritual that took us within ourselves and at the same time connected us to each other through reverberation, heart and an experience of sound as bliss.

Today I am noticing how much more deeply I am listening and I have the feeling that I have been physically re-calibrated by the sounds from last night.  As I was listening in the concert hall, I felt like my molecules were being directed to vibrate around my spine, as if I was being collected and spun.

If you have not experienced Pauline’s music live, you can find out more about upcoming events here.

 

SHARE & EMAIL
May9

pauline oliveros

Posted on by

Pauline Oliveros is celebrating her 80th birthday Thursday night with a concert at EMPAC at Renssalaer Polytechnic in Troy New York.   If there is any way for you to be there, do it.  It should be a brilliant celebration of an iconic artist.  The concert starts at 7:30 and is free, so get there early.

I have known Pauline for 22 years.  We first collaborated in 1990 on a dance performance called Skin.  For Skin, Pauline performed live with us using her Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed.  That was followed by the international project (Mexico and Russia) Ghostdance, for which she created the score. Our last project was Antigone’s Dream. More recently, I have been a part of her AUMI project:  an improvisational, adaptive use computer music system for profoundly disabled children that allows them to create sound and participate in music-making with other children.

Pauline is the fiercest artist I know.  At 80, she is gathering momentum when many are settling. She was recently awarded the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.  For decades, Pauline’s music has lived deep within the worlds of digital and electronic possibility.  She pushes boundaries, challenges assumptions, and is an untiring, uncompromising advocate for the improvisational arts and the under-served.  Pauline’s music is not for the faint of heart.  She will take you down the slot, into the wild heart of the moment.

See you there!

May4

travels with hazel

Posted on by

Hazel and Ryder with props of alpaca fur and guinea hen feathers under construction.

Yesterday Ryder Cooley and I went into New York City to meet with booking agent Jodi Kaplan.  Ryder takes the Hudson train and I take the Metro North so when we met at Sarahbeth’s  and Hazel (on the left) was also seated at the table, I knew it would be a different kind of day in the city.

Hazel is the taxidermied head of a black-bellied sheep* from Barbados.  At least that is what her mounting plaque said when Ryder found her.  Today she wears two  backpack-like straps at the base of her neck and is worn by Ryder in one of her performance art pieces.  Hazel had come to the city with Ryder in search of a bag so that Hazel could travel as a carry-on when they go to California to perform.

I suggested FEDEX, but Ryder felt that it would be strange to ship her collaborator.  I think it would be easier, but it is not my piece.

The real story is really what it is like to walk down the street in New York carrying the head of a sheep. I would have to say that I saw a greater range of human expression in those 25 minutes that I do in most months.  Puzzlement. Horror.  Fear.  Amusement.  Curiosity.  Confusion.  Anger.  Incredulity.  The list goes on.

And here is the really interesting part.  They all acted as if Hazel was actually alive.  Ryder carried her like a baby on her hip with a sling, so there was this disconcerting animating effect from her movement.  But people did not seem to see her as partial.  As just a head.  They spoke about her as if she were walking with us, or about to sprout legs and move on her own.

Except for dogs, people in New York are not really exposed to animals on the streets.  Hazel seemed to touch something – a kind of primal curiosity or yearning or fear that comes from seeing something entirely out of your context suddenly in it.  I like that.  It didn’t feel like walking with Hazel was exhibitionist or in-your-face.  Ryder is completely cool and easy with her taxidermied collaborators, and I think that is almost as disconcerting to people as the creature itself.

Apparently taxidermied animals are not on the forbidden list for the TSA.  I will keep you posted on Hazel’s progress to California.

*note:  I have since discovered that Hazel is actually a ram, perhaps Henry.  It may be that because both Ryder and I are doing performance work that challenges gender stereotypes, that s/he will remain Hazel.