Mauricio Kagel's Dressur (1977) has established a "viral" presence in the percussion community. "Viral", in this context, in no way connotes a pejorative relationship between the piece and the community. As an ultra-buzz word, "viral" is a work of media which has, for one reason or another, gained a significant footing on the internet. Evidence of Dressur's virality (not a word) abound online. YouTube posts of stellar performances by Yale (2 different performances!), Oberlin, Trio le Cercle (the dedicatees of the piece), and McGill have caused the piece to gain considerable notoriety since my first encounter with it in 2001 as part of a Percussion Group Cincinatti concert at Oberlin. Short of traveling to Europe in 1981 to see a performance of Jean Pierre Drouet and his colleagues on original instruments, seeing Allen Otte, Russell Burge, and Jim Culley (my teacher at the time) interpret Dressur was the best experience I could have had with the piece as an audience member. Their instruments are phenomenal, their deadpan stage presence is engrossing, and their execution of the deceptively difficult passages is remarkable; all from memory. Needless to say, the piece had a lasting impression on my future as a musician. I've performed the piece with two groups. First in 2005 with Fabio Oliveira and Justin DeHart as a part of a Fall Red Fish Blue Fish event. Then, in February of this year, Steve Schick took Fabio's part and performed it with Justin and me on the Monday Evening Concerts at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles.
Why has the piece become the potent, viral entity that it is? The piece offers interpretive problems that are provocative, fun, and quite formative for a musician. What is it about Kagel and this piece that enables such a perfect scenario for sublime interpretive decision making? Perhaps Kagel's most basic motivations as a composer will lend some clues:
“Music has also been a scenic event for a long time. In the 19th century people still enjoyed music also with their eyes, with all their senses. Only with the increasing dominance of the mechanical reproduction of music, through broadcasting and records, was this reduced to the purely acoustical dimension. What I want is to bring the audience back to an enjoyment of music with all senses. That’s why my music is a direct, exaggerated protest against the mechanical reproduction of music. My goal: a re-humanization of music-making (Heile 38).”
A few words stand out as particularly relevant to Dressur: "reduced to the purely acoustical dimension", "scenic event", "direct, exaggerated protest", and "re-humanization".
Kagel asserts that music has evolved in the 20th century towards a purely auditory experience (something unique to a post-Wagnerian western aesthetic) which deprives the audience of the visual experience that is inherent to music making. Dressur presents an exaggerated protest to that deprivation in two compelling ways:
1) He constructs a scenario in which music training is presented through the lens of horse training, reducing the performers to animal executants, expertly trained to do exactly what the trainer (the score) insists.
2) He allows absurdities and peculiarities to serve as his method of protest. He sets up a self-destructive environment in which dramatic relationships have no where to go but spectacle. The trained performers, obediently executing the prescribed tasks, descend into scenarios that highlight the dangers of blind obedience for the sake of auditory prudence.
In other words, the piece is a trap. A trap for the performers and a trap for the audience. Those who choose to interpret the piece sacrifice themselves in order to prove Kagel's point: western musicians interpret so dutifully that, when presented instructions that navigate the visual or theatrical realm, they can't help but demonstrate a lack of ability. Why would a percussionist ever want to perform such a piece? Because Kagel cleverly designs the score so that, in addition to its anti modernist polemic, it is a fabulous piece of chamber music that leaves the audience enthralled.
Kagel navigates the visual and theatrical realm with a very specific technique not unique to Dressur. Aware of the lack of theatrical training that percussionists (and musicians, generally) have, Kagel rarely gives explicit stage directions regarding dramatic relationships between performers or performers and their objects. Instead, Kagel exploits the skills that percussionists already have: the skill to dutifully read, understand, and interpret a set of instructions with high fidelity and attention to detail. In this way, with a few exceptions, Kagel allows drama and theatre to be the result of an accurate interpretation as opposed to an intention or motivation. Whereas in theatre, dramatic relationships between the actor and something else (another actor, a prop, or a thought) are the motivation for making specific interpretive decisions, Dressur allows them to be the result of a musical interpretation of tasks.
As mentioned, there are exceptions in the score to theatre as a result. Three such exceptions present dramatic instructions that are the motivation for an action. The first is right away when player one is asked to "lift the chair above player two's head with a strong impulse - as if to attack." The word "attack" cannot be dissociated from a specific type of dramatic relationship between player one and player two. Furthermore, "attack" leaves room for interpretation from player one. Not musical interpretation; theatrical interpretation. In this moment the performer is presented with numerous problems not familiar to their skill set. What is player one's motivation? Why is he or she attacking? Is there anger towards player two? Is this a prank? So many of these questions cannot be resolved musically and are difficult to dismiss as an absurd theatrical result.
The second example comes from player two when he or she is circling the center podium. "Player II: as if a smuggler: walk with somewhat larger steps roguishly looking from left to right." This is an explicit theatrical stage direction with two charged words which require the performer to interpret in an extra-musical discipline: "smuggler" and "roguishly." To pretend to be a smuggler requires the performer to temporarily adopt a smuggler's persona. To do so roguishly requires the smuggler character to affect an attitude. Again, these words ask questions which cannot simply be answered with musical interpretation.
Player three's theatrical motivation is more congruent with Kagel's technique for the rest of the dramatic results. "The entries to bar 537 will hardly be heard in the hall. They serve mainly to clarify the behavior of player III ('infantile instinct')." If we rephrase this to achieve the same meaning, Kagel may have said, "the result of player II's inaudible actions until bar 537 achieve an infantile character." As these two phrases instruct in essentially the same way, they are consistent with Kagel's technique of allowing drama to result from musical instructions and tasks. However, by stating the desired effect of the result, he implicitly encourages the performer to work harder to achieve an infantile quality. This requires interpretation, again, outside the realm of chamber music.
These three examples puncture holes in a score which can otherwise be interpreted as a set of musical instructions or actions like any other chamber piece. To be clear, the other tasks, actions, and instructions in the piece have a theatrical result - the result of executing a set of tasks; something with which western musicians are extremely familiar. The performers need only draw on untrained skills when an instruction's syntax prioritizes drama as a motivation. (Such as in the above three examples)
As a performer, how is one to treat these moments? The answer to that question is paramount to local and global decisions in Dressur. If these moments are rules rather than exceptions, then the performers must employ dramatic intervention and motivation for every action and gesture; sonic and non-sonic. This requires adopting the norms and protocols of theatre, most importantly, hiring a director. If these three moments are exceptions, then the piece can be interpreted as twenty five minutes of chamber music tasks which sometimes result in dramatic relationships and other times do not. The performer can (and perhaps should) remain incognizant to these results. That is to say, by focusing so carefully on interpreting the tasks and instructions on the level of chamber music, the resulting drama and further resulting reaction from the audience can maintain an indeterminacy. Theatre, in Dressur, exists as a sum greater than its parts: rehearsed peculiarities which overlap and collide onstage in absurd, hilarious, and even tragic manifestations.
In light of this, Kagel's own instructions become much more meaningful:
"Such musical events as occur within the context of a scenic 'plot' require rigor and concentration. One must renounce to every kind of facial expressions and gestures which might be understood as a means of putting across a particular 'content'. Only a high degree of intensity in the performance can awaken in the listener the desired degree of humor and seriousness; therefore the acoustic-visual situations don't call for any kind of exaggerations." (taken from the score to Dressur. Peters Edition. 1977)
'Plot' and 'content', placed in emphasis quotes by Kagel, are not to be exaggerated by the performer. Humor and seriousness (effects of dramatic interplay) are to be 'awakened' via 'intense performance'. No clearer words could be used to indicate the passive relationship between the performers and drama which results from an intensely active relationship between the performers and the musical score.
As many of the participants of Roots and Rhizomes have performed and video documented Dressur, I am eager to see what discussion my opinions and interpretations may prompt.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Interview with Brian Archinal: Houston, TX to Geneva, CH
Ross: Can you describe the series of salient moments in your life that lead you from Houston, TX to Geneva, CH?
Brian: First I have to answer the question “Why go to Geneva?”
I began my musical life playing piano at a modestly young age. An important part of my piano lessons were annual piano competitions. Collections of North-Houston area piano teachers would send their students to small, unassuming competitions in venues ranging from back rooms of music stores to larger churches. On one hand, competitions existed as a goal to work towards; offering direction and challenge to an otherwise unmotivated piano student. On the other hand, this was a way to discover more talented musicians and to give young students performance opportunities.
As I look backward, I find these situations to be of critical interest in my recent excursion. Eventually the opportunity to play in garage bands drew me away from playing something so “classical” (at the time this was my view of the piano). From here I began my percussion playing career as a “drummer.” I consider my first experiences with percussion to be drumset. Once the opportunity to participate in the music electives in secondary school and high school came about, the instruction given on percussion was in marching band and percussion ensembles. The orchestra was extremely small and rarely, if ever, included percussion. My private teachers, Andy Salmon and John Best, both graduated from The University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington, KY. I could tell that I really liked percussion and that I was not interested in, or had no talent for, other academic pursuits. I took a trip one summer for a college visit to see Jim Campbell, the professor at UK, and discovered I really liked the school, the teacher, the students, and the city/state. With luck, I was accepted and enrolled when I completed high school in 2004. My interests at all times in high school were primarily rudimental drumming with aims of participating in Drum Corps International (DCI); a sort of “Professional” marching band. Jim Campbell maintains strong ties to the activity DCI, in fact in 2008 he was elected to the DCI Hall of Fame. Eventually, after initial struggles, I spent two years with a drum corps, and actually placed first in 2006, a feat that is quite hard/rare to achieve. During my second year, I began to strongly disagree with the staff and teachers in the corps and came to notice a darker side of the activity, which I eventually left after the season. I had the opportunity to take on a leadership role with the corps for my final year, however, I simply could not continue with this kind of work and performance method.
I think attending the Bang On a Can Festival was an eye opening experience for me. This was the first time that I saw other musicians interested in generally new and compelling music. At UK the program was not really geared toward anything other than a classical music education. Any sort of modern, contemporary, or experimental music was completely absent from the required curriculum, except in the percussion department. To be fair, it is not a school to train these kind of musicians. UK exists as a place to give undergraduates a broad and general music education and the salient points that embody this approach. In particular, the percussion department does an extremely great job of educating percussion students in a well-rounded approach to basically, all aspects of percussion playing. However, Bang On a Can showed me that there is a dedicated and firmly developed community associated with bringing these new and interesting works to life, and to great critical acclaim. This gave me the confidence to continue with the kind of music I am interested in and perhaps make a career out of this aesthetic. BOaC showed me that in chamber music, every individual matters. There are no longer 8 or 9 other players who are there to mask your mistakes, or that your part is easily covered up by other musicians. The role of the individual artist clarifies.
Two final important moments came when I attended the “Roots and Rhizomes” conference at UCSD in 2007. Here it became evident that I was not alone in my ideas about percussion, and in fact, I was quite far behind in the development of my thoughts. Again, it became clear to me that there is a community of percussionists generally interested in this strain of music and thought. I was completely out of my element and it encouraged me to continue to grow and seek this path I was beginning to follow. The other important event also occurred on campus at UCSD. I attended a concert of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I and Gérard Grisey’s Le Noir De L’Etoile played by Red Fish Blue Fish. For me the Grisey completely changed my life. I had no idea that a piece of percussion music could fundamentally alter my perception of music, and maintain a devoted interest for well over an hour.
Ross: At what point in a Houston secondary percussion education must one "break the rules" in order to follow the path you have chosen?
Brian: It's not so much an act of rebellion or even a conscious choice, to quote from Joyce, it's simply “the reality of experience.” My teachers simply taught and exposed their students to what they knew of the world of percussion. Where I was educated, the marching band is the main source for music performance and social interaction, any other activities were either uninteresting to me, or not well exposed in the community. Of course, things like the Houston Symphony’s Youth Orchestra, and the school's Jazz Band did exist, but the primacy of those institutions never rivaled marching band. It's really just that the idea of percussion being experimental, or even a soloist, in the sense that we know it (i.e. Steven Schick, Gean Geoffroy, Christoph Caskel, Max Neuhaus), was simply unknown. Ignorance is the wrong word, it's just more unlettered or unaware.
However, achieving these few successes have been no easy task. It has required making connections that did not come as a natural bi-product of my educational environment.
Ross: Please order these events chronologically: Kentucky, Houston, San Diego, Roots and Rhizomes, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Lucerne, Geneva, DCI.
Brian: Houston, DCI (as an interest), Kentucky, DCI (as a participant), Roots and Rhizomes, Bang on a Can, San Diego, Lucerne, Geneve
Ross: Are there clear objective dangers represented by what one might experience as a high schooler studying percussion in the Houston public school system or a participant in the Geneva Percussion Competition?
Brian: Yes. However, in context, the dangers can only be seen in hindsight. Meaning, until you have experienced both, and have become partial to one, only then can you look at the other and decide it is dangerous. For example, if you want to become a solo artist, a rigorous technical foundation can lead you in a direction away from expressing a diverse set of organic gestures and put you at a loss for conceptual ideas (Geneva). However, someone looking for an extreme unity among a large group of diverse players can only achieve this through a blanket, structured, technical education and the formation of a unified mindset (Houston).
Ross: Knowing how much respect your former teacher, James Campbell, has for Steven Schick (and vice versa), do you feel that your education at UofK may have been a kind of perfect transition between your marching-centered beginning to your current experimentally dominated work?
Brian: My path has simply been the product of searching- constantly reinventing myself and the approach to my art. It's not that I knew what I was searching for with UCSD, but instead it's what I found that I did not want in the marching activity. Jim Campbell allowed me to continue doing what, at the time, I loved (rudimental drumming), while showing me different areas of the current percussive tradition. It was only after exploring the percussive traditions that I was able to arrive at the position I exist in today. UK has a number of successful percussionists in a variety of disciplines because Jim shares with all his students this unconditional education.
Ross: In a way, are you relieved that you did not win the competition because, if you did win, it would mean that you are capable of disingenuously adopting an aesthetic that was not based in your passion as an artist?
Brian: To some degree this is dramatizing the whole process. Certainly the prize winners are very talented artists interested in similar aesthetics. However, I have to partially agree. But care should be taken to appreciate the message sent by not awarding me with a performance in the finals: By this decision and most of the feedback I received, I conclude the opinion of, “We are not interested in the type of work you are doing/we don’t necessarily think this is percussion.” Again, to a degree, this is an exaggeration, but it also reinforces that I am headed in the right personal artistic direction.
Certainly, the ideals of competitions should not be taken as a doctrine for discourse. I believe that these competitions are a necessary evil in order to gain opportunities for funding, develop a career path, or in some cases, perform high profile concerts.
Ross's concluding remarks:
Thanks, Brian, for taking the time to answer my questions in such detail. I take great interest in your path thus far as a percussionist because I don't think you'll be the only one to bridge the gap between DCI and contemporary music. Furthermore, you are proof that the gap isn't insurmountable and that a little flexibility from both camps would probably benefit us all. Your words remind all percussionists that dogmatic doctrine will ensure the stagnation of our medium. Openness, awareness, and a constant effort to maintain the type of organic progression initiated by Antheil, Varese, and Cage are the essential ingredients for a meaningful practice.
Brian: First I have to answer the question “Why go to Geneva?”
I began my musical life playing piano at a modestly young age. An important part of my piano lessons were annual piano competitions. Collections of North-Houston area piano teachers would send their students to small, unassuming competitions in venues ranging from back rooms of music stores to larger churches. On one hand, competitions existed as a goal to work towards; offering direction and challenge to an otherwise unmotivated piano student. On the other hand, this was a way to discover more talented musicians and to give young students performance opportunities.
As I look backward, I find these situations to be of critical interest in my recent excursion. Eventually the opportunity to play in garage bands drew me away from playing something so “classical” (at the time this was my view of the piano). From here I began my percussion playing career as a “drummer.” I consider my first experiences with percussion to be drumset. Once the opportunity to participate in the music electives in secondary school and high school came about, the instruction given on percussion was in marching band and percussion ensembles. The orchestra was extremely small and rarely, if ever, included percussion. My private teachers, Andy Salmon and John Best, both graduated from The University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington, KY. I could tell that I really liked percussion and that I was not interested in, or had no talent for, other academic pursuits. I took a trip one summer for a college visit to see Jim Campbell, the professor at UK, and discovered I really liked the school, the teacher, the students, and the city/state. With luck, I was accepted and enrolled when I completed high school in 2004. My interests at all times in high school were primarily rudimental drumming with aims of participating in Drum Corps International (DCI); a sort of “Professional” marching band. Jim Campbell maintains strong ties to the activity DCI, in fact in 2008 he was elected to the DCI Hall of Fame. Eventually, after initial struggles, I spent two years with a drum corps, and actually placed first in 2006, a feat that is quite hard/rare to achieve. During my second year, I began to strongly disagree with the staff and teachers in the corps and came to notice a darker side of the activity, which I eventually left after the season. I had the opportunity to take on a leadership role with the corps for my final year, however, I simply could not continue with this kind of work and performance method.
In previous years Steven Schick appeared at PASIC and in the PAS magazine discussing his career with percussion works of contemporary composers. I think this is when I began to investigate this completely foreign (to me) world of percussion. When I got back to UK after the summer, a colleague of mine, Andy Bliss, had recently visited UCSD to meet and have a lesson with Steve Schick and with him, brought back a handful of new pieces and stories of a new mindset in percussion. In 2007 Steve and Red Fish Blue Fish hosted the first edition of Roots and Rhizomes. Andy had heard about this conference and decided we must go. It was here with Andy and Jim that I first became aware of the San Diego dogmas. The issues, community, and general bewilderment I experienced was something that resonated deeply inside of me. The next summer away from DCI I participated in the Bang On a Can Summer Festival. Its was clear and is clear now that this forever set me on the road I am currently traveling. Before this experience, I had never played in a chamber music setting with non-percussionist.
I returned for my junior year at UK and really began to bond with two other talented percussionists Jordan Munson and Colin Campbell. These two musicians were and still are, some of the most talented artists I have ever worked with. They served as mentors for me and my initial explorations of new experimental music and art. Together with some of their friends, we formed the Karate Jones Artists Collective as a front for us to gain notoriety around town and to function as an autonomous unit for exploration. Although this group didn’t last long (everyone eventually graduated and moved away), I continued to work with Jordan, creating possibly the most challenging piece of percussion I have ever played as well as new performances for Internet2 environments. It became clear that I could not continue on to the kind of graduate school many other percussionist gravitate toward (My interests lie outside of the kind of “well-rounded” approach PAS pedagogy suggests). I was playing the kind of repertoire most “advanced” graduate students play, and much of it was commissioned or performed by Steven Schick. I had always kept in touch with what was happening at UCSD, or at least with what the internet presence was. So I applied, and by some alignment in the stars, I was accepted.
At San Diego, there is a stronger presence of a European influence than in any other place I have been. I have also become aware of another kind of approach to repertoire and to performance that is uniquely Californian. When the opportunity in Geneva arose to perform for a completely new set of faces and aesthetics, I took very seriously the thought of competing. Everything I would play in the required portion of the competition was exactly what I had been preparing in the first year UCSD. With alumni and UCSD artists-in-residence like Aiyun Huang, Ivan Manzanilla, and Johannes Fischer achieving success at competitions, it was only in the UCSD tradition to aim for the first prize.
Ross: Which of the above moments would you describe as pivotal in your path between these distinct "regions" of percussion?
Brian: I think a main point for me was being fed up with the atmosphere of DCI. This includes the kind of physical and emotional treatment that so often goes hand in hand with this activity. It also includes the kind of music that is “made” in this activity. A member learns and memorizes an initial interpretation of music from a score, but shortly after is told every single thing about how to perform this music - the motion, the height of sticks, the placement on the drum, how your body looks, where you should be, what foot is moving, how those feet are moving, etc. There are really no decisions to be made by individuals other than, “Should I have a salad for snack, or a cookie?” From here I began to find an extreme pleasure in solo percussion. At the very least, it is a kind of playing that leaves every decision up to the player. No one, willingly, can decide where a performance will go besides the performer. Solo percussion, for me, allows the opportunity to discuss philosophical issues about why we do what we do; a chance to give real meaning to music performance.
Ross: Which of the above moments would you describe as pivotal in your path between these distinct "regions" of percussion?
Brian: I think a main point for me was being fed up with the atmosphere of DCI. This includes the kind of physical and emotional treatment that so often goes hand in hand with this activity. It also includes the kind of music that is “made” in this activity. A member learns and memorizes an initial interpretation of music from a score, but shortly after is told every single thing about how to perform this music - the motion, the height of sticks, the placement on the drum, how your body looks, where you should be, what foot is moving, how those feet are moving, etc. There are really no decisions to be made by individuals other than, “Should I have a salad for snack, or a cookie?” From here I began to find an extreme pleasure in solo percussion. At the very least, it is a kind of playing that leaves every decision up to the player. No one, willingly, can decide where a performance will go besides the performer. Solo percussion, for me, allows the opportunity to discuss philosophical issues about why we do what we do; a chance to give real meaning to music performance.
I think attending the Bang On a Can Festival was an eye opening experience for me. This was the first time that I saw other musicians interested in generally new and compelling music. At UK the program was not really geared toward anything other than a classical music education. Any sort of modern, contemporary, or experimental music was completely absent from the required curriculum, except in the percussion department. To be fair, it is not a school to train these kind of musicians. UK exists as a place to give undergraduates a broad and general music education and the salient points that embody this approach. In particular, the percussion department does an extremely great job of educating percussion students in a well-rounded approach to basically, all aspects of percussion playing. However, Bang On a Can showed me that there is a dedicated and firmly developed community associated with bringing these new and interesting works to life, and to great critical acclaim. This gave me the confidence to continue with the kind of music I am interested in and perhaps make a career out of this aesthetic. BOaC showed me that in chamber music, every individual matters. There are no longer 8 or 9 other players who are there to mask your mistakes, or that your part is easily covered up by other musicians. The role of the individual artist clarifies.
Two final important moments came when I attended the “Roots and Rhizomes” conference at UCSD in 2007. Here it became evident that I was not alone in my ideas about percussion, and in fact, I was quite far behind in the development of my thoughts. Again, it became clear to me that there is a community of percussionists generally interested in this strain of music and thought. I was completely out of my element and it encouraged me to continue to grow and seek this path I was beginning to follow. The other important event also occurred on campus at UCSD. I attended a concert of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I and Gérard Grisey’s Le Noir De L’Etoile played by Red Fish Blue Fish. For me the Grisey completely changed my life. I had no idea that a piece of percussion music could fundamentally alter my perception of music, and maintain a devoted interest for well over an hour.
Ross: At what point in a Houston secondary percussion education must one "break the rules" in order to follow the path you have chosen?
Brian: It's not so much an act of rebellion or even a conscious choice, to quote from Joyce, it's simply “the reality of experience.” My teachers simply taught and exposed their students to what they knew of the world of percussion. Where I was educated, the marching band is the main source for music performance and social interaction, any other activities were either uninteresting to me, or not well exposed in the community. Of course, things like the Houston Symphony’s Youth Orchestra, and the school's Jazz Band did exist, but the primacy of those institutions never rivaled marching band. It's really just that the idea of percussion being experimental, or even a soloist, in the sense that we know it (i.e. Steven Schick, Gean Geoffroy, Christoph Caskel, Max Neuhaus), was simply unknown. Ignorance is the wrong word, it's just more unlettered or unaware.
However, achieving these few successes have been no easy task. It has required making connections that did not come as a natural bi-product of my educational environment.
Ross: Please order these events chronologically: Kentucky, Houston, San Diego, Roots and Rhizomes, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Lucerne, Geneva, DCI.
Brian: Houston, DCI (as an interest), Kentucky, DCI (as a participant), Roots and Rhizomes, Bang on a Can, San Diego, Lucerne, Geneve
Ross: Are there clear objective dangers represented by what one might experience as a high schooler studying percussion in the Houston public school system or a participant in the Geneva Percussion Competition?
Brian: Yes. However, in context, the dangers can only be seen in hindsight. Meaning, until you have experienced both, and have become partial to one, only then can you look at the other and decide it is dangerous. For example, if you want to become a solo artist, a rigorous technical foundation can lead you in a direction away from expressing a diverse set of organic gestures and put you at a loss for conceptual ideas (Geneva). However, someone looking for an extreme unity among a large group of diverse players can only achieve this through a blanket, structured, technical education and the formation of a unified mindset (Houston).
Ross: Knowing how much respect your former teacher, James Campbell, has for Steven Schick (and vice versa), do you feel that your education at UofK may have been a kind of perfect transition between your marching-centered beginning to your current experimentally dominated work?
Brian: My path has simply been the product of searching- constantly reinventing myself and the approach to my art. It's not that I knew what I was searching for with UCSD, but instead it's what I found that I did not want in the marching activity. Jim Campbell allowed me to continue doing what, at the time, I loved (rudimental drumming), while showing me different areas of the current percussive tradition. It was only after exploring the percussive traditions that I was able to arrive at the position I exist in today. UK has a number of successful percussionists in a variety of disciplines because Jim shares with all his students this unconditional education.
Ross: In a way, are you relieved that you did not win the competition because, if you did win, it would mean that you are capable of disingenuously adopting an aesthetic that was not based in your passion as an artist?
Brian: To some degree this is dramatizing the whole process. Certainly the prize winners are very talented artists interested in similar aesthetics. However, I have to partially agree. But care should be taken to appreciate the message sent by not awarding me with a performance in the finals: By this decision and most of the feedback I received, I conclude the opinion of, “We are not interested in the type of work you are doing/we don’t necessarily think this is percussion.” Again, to a degree, this is an exaggeration, but it also reinforces that I am headed in the right personal artistic direction.
Certainly, the ideals of competitions should not be taken as a doctrine for discourse. I believe that these competitions are a necessary evil in order to gain opportunities for funding, develop a career path, or in some cases, perform high profile concerts.
Ross's concluding remarks:
Thanks, Brian, for taking the time to answer my questions in such detail. I take great interest in your path thus far as a percussionist because I don't think you'll be the only one to bridge the gap between DCI and contemporary music. Furthermore, you are proof that the gap isn't insurmountable and that a little flexibility from both camps would probably benefit us all. Your words remind all percussionists that dogmatic doctrine will ensure the stagnation of our medium. Openness, awareness, and a constant effort to maintain the type of organic progression initiated by Antheil, Varese, and Cage are the essential ingredients for a meaningful practice.
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.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Four Comments from Boulez
Here are four thoughts from Pierre Boulez about percussion that he made in 1978 in the forward to James Holland's book about writing for percussion.
1: In the last 30 years the role of percussion in the orchestra, like that of chamber music, has completely changed: once percussion played an episodic part in music, now it is often an essential force. Proliferation abounds there at the risk of anarchy.
2: ...the standards of their manufacture still vary from country to country. This lack of uniformity has given rise to unforseeable and mysterious variations in the last decades, the reasons for which defy logic.
3: Modern percussion is far more than an exotic and primitive display, creating merely the surprise and delights of a walk in a crowded bazaar.
4: No weird collection of sounds can take the place of serious thought. We are in a period where the principle hazards are dispersion and superficiality, and what is needed, as an essential first step, is an investigation into the techniques of such instruments and consequently their reason to be.
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