The Riley Project

About a year ago, Steve Schick proposed a radical project to me. He proposed that we collaborate on an audio-visual document of a piece of music. The piece in itself, Terry Riley's In C, isn't that radical. It fits right in with the rest of the repertoire Steve and Red Fish Blue Fish program. The idea of making an audio visual documentation of a performance isn't that radical. The crazy part comes in the fact that we'll record the piece, little-by-little, over the next twenty years. Each year we'll take one day to audio and video record Steve playing the drone and cells of In C on various percussion instruments. By the last session, in 2029, we'll have the whole piece ready for post-production assembly. On the periphery of the recording sessions will be conversations about percussion, music, art, and education. What we hope is that, in addition to recording an incredible piece of music, we'll also track the evolution of countless things. Steve will age, I will age, technology will advance, at least three presidents will be elected, percussion equipment will advance and deteriorate, percussion repertoire will accumulate, and the discourse surrounding percussion will change. Embedded here is a 9 minute video excerpt of a 3 hour conversation between Steve and me. We talked about a number of things that concern or excite us. The views aren't supposed to be that of the entire percussion, music, or art communities but rather our personal views; views that are shaped by those communities. Many of the topics will be very familiar to those who attended either Roots and Rhizomes 2007 in San Diego, CA or R&R 2009 in Banff, Can.