by Jillián Robb
Daniel and Adam wrote another piece. That’s the short version, and it’s perpetually true.
Daniel and several dancers involved in “Bodies in Motion.”
Daniel and Adam wrote a piece of music for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, using orchestration for chamber orchestra, percussion, iPad, and Wii-mote, to be performed simultaneously by artists in three different countries. That’s only the beginning of the long version, and that’s the point where most people start to look at me funny.
by Jillián Robb
I’m sure many of you have been wondering what Adam has been up to in the land of sky scrapers and hellish traffic. That answer is multi-fold, but today we’re going to take a look at his work with Pioneers Go East Co. They’re putting on a multimedia theatre installation called S 16 Luna Nera, based on an early 20th century Italian novel, and they brought Adam on board to design the soundscape.
Now, I say “design the soundscape” instead of “write the music” because this project encompassed more than just musical phrases and ideas. The piece is about miners who are so isolated that some have never even seen the moon. As explained on S 16’s site, “the world is created with smoke, seen through plastic screens and mirrors, using live camera feeds projected on actors’ bodies to create an intimate experience of the desperation and psychological isolation of sulfur miners.”
Promo poster.
Well, that’s the same question we all asked when the posters first went up around Grand Valley’s campus back in April of 2010. You probably would, too, if you saw student recital posters that looked like the one on the right. All we knew was that this recital would probably be the answer to the question, “what the hell have Adam and Dan been up to, and why did the composition studio get to commandeer a practice room indefinitely?”On the surface, Sight/Sound is a recital series. Adam and Daniel get their pieces performed, their friends and colleagues get to perform new music, and everyone else is reminded that music continued after the Romantics. The progenitors of /S, however, cannot be satisfied by surface depth, which actually brings us to how and why /S began.
Much as we’d like to believe in “art for art’s sake,” the collegiate music experience prepares students for the business of orchestral music. That means setting up shop in a practice room and playing orchestral excerpts until face and/or fingers are numb, and playing said excerpts the “official” way that will win an audition. Sure, there’s artistry involved, especially on solos, but they still have a pretty set repertoire. Does that system work for some? Sure. Does it mean they get to live the dream of making a living playing incredible, timeless music? Certainly. Does it even hint at what’s happening in the world of new music? Not a chance.
On one hand, I could recreate the original Sight/Sound performance, how it started with Adam sitting down at the piano in the darkened dance studio and plunking out a not-quite-soothing but still-not-unpleasant melody, or when Dan fired up the remix about the up and coming “Detroit: City on the Move”, or how the closer was amazing and literally deafening, so much so that those of us in the front row only felt slightly guilty covering our ears.
But we’ll get there eventually.
Then again, it might be more informative to go back and talk about how musical higher education teaches us all to do the same things that everyone’s already done and play the same things and the same way everyone’ s played for hundreds of years, just because that’s what you do and that’s what higher music is, and if you’re trying something new or taking a chance then you’re doing it wrong and then we have the saxophone all over again.
But that would only explain what sight/sound is not.
I could talk about the day when I realized that Adam and Dan were really running with something. They told me about some of their ideas (“It’ll be the computer and two snare drums, plus the kickdrums on every huge hit- WHAM!”), showed me some works in progress (“…and this right here is going to be Mike just going crazy on apocalyptic sax for a full two minutes”), and it hit me that these guys had an honest-to-God vision.
But for now, I think I’m just gonna leave this here. You’ll understand later.
