Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (and Stanford alum) David Lang recently blogged on the Carnegie Hall site about his new work Death Speaks, slated to premiere at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on January 25.
“death speaks was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Stanford Lively Arts, specifically to go on a program with the little match girl passion. The opportunity came without many other parameters, so there were a lot of questions I had to answer. Would the new piece be for an existing ensemble or some group I would assemble for these performances only? Would it relate to little match girl, musically or emotionally, or would it start from its own place?” READ MORE
—Posted by Robert Cable, Public Relations Manager
Stanford composer Mark Applebaum recently performed his Aphasia, a piece for “hand gestures synchronized to prerecorded sound,” at CCRMA in December. The work, which Lively Arts premiered in February 2011, features the prerecorded voice of Nicholas Isherwood who took part in the initial performance.
Mark Applebaum writes:
“Aphasia, for performer and two-channel audio, consists of an idiosyncratic explosion of warped and mangled sounds. This audio is made up exclusively of vocal samples—all provided by Nicholas Isherwood and subsequently transformed digitally. Against the backdrop of this audio narrative, the live performer executes an elaborate set of hand gestures, an assiduously choreographed sign language of sorts. Each gesture is fastidiously synchronized to the audio in tight rhythmic coordination.
There is no gesture tracking technology employed in the performance. It is decidedly ‘old school’: the performer simply must memorize the entire score and learn the micro-timing of the rhythms so that a sense of visual mimesis results. The performance shown in the video is entirely unedited. And while a few of the timings could have been improved (and I made one mistake—that only I would notice) it does have the charm and spontaneity of being realized in one take.”
Aphasia from Mark Applebaum on Vimeo.
—Posted by Robert Cable, Public Relations Manager
Several recent Lively Arts-commissioned works were included in the 2012 GRAMMY Award nominations announced last night.
Music from Steven Mackey’s SLIDE (given its Bay Area premiere at Stanford with eighth blackbird in 2011) was nominated for three categories: “Best Engineered Album,” “Best Small Ensemble Performance,” and “Best Contemporary Composition.”
John Adams’ recording for Son of Chamber Symphony (given its world premiere at Stanford in 2007) and String Quartet (given its West Coast premiere at Stanford in 2009) with the St. Lawrence String Quartet was nominated in the “Producer of the Year” category.
Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet (U.S. premiere at Stanford in 2010) and Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension (world premiere at Stanford in 2008) were also nominated in the “Producer of the Year” category.
In addition, nominations went to the Pacifica Quartet’s recent Shostakovitch recording (seen earlier this season at Lively Arts) and to John Hollenbeck (seen last season at Lively Arts).
The 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on Feb. 12, 2012, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. See full list of nominees.
—Posted by Robert Cable, Public Relations Manager
Merce Cunningham’s technique and aesthetic are anything but a list of facts to be memorized the night before an exam, regurgitated for its duration, and quickly erased from memory. The tenets of his style and approach are more subtle and complex than a cram session could cover, but a handful of dance students were afforded an invaluable glimpse in a whirlwind weekend workshop.
Carol Teitelbaum, former Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) member and current faculty chair of the studio, led 17 students (including this recent alumna) in a workshop in conjunction with the company’s visit to Lively Arts, its final Bay Area performance before the company disbands at the end of the year. She spent four hours a day over four consecutive days giving technique class and teaching repertory.
Rather than attempting the impossible cram session, she selected bits of material from various finished works and wove them together to demonstrate the essence of Mercewhat Alastair Macaulay (chief dance critic, New York Times) dubbed “Merceness” in his commentary following the workshop showing.
To a body raised on ballet, trained for a few brief years in Graham technique, and versed to varying degrees in forms of modern, theater, jazz, and character dance, Cunningham proved an entirely new experience. Each day began with an hour and a half of technique class, inclusive of muscles not necessarily addressed in other disciplines, instigating, to be certain, an ache or two.
The notion of activating rotation even as one stands in parallel and acknowledging that certain muscles must be called upon in order to appear still while others move in opposition shed light on the physical principles of Merce’s technique. Such small realizations also indicated the wealth of information yet to be absorbed, both intellectually and physically.
Following technique class, the dancers plunged into snippets of repertory to be compiled into Event format, a method Cunningham himself used often to adapt portions of existing choreography and create performances fit for any amount of time or space. Ours, a miniature version, would be called a MinEvent.
To dance Merce, one needs to exercise—no less than the arms, legs, or torso—the brain. As Teitelbaum introduced what she called “the games” from Canfield (1969), I felt my mind filling with rules of play and intricacies of logic. In the skips section, for example: dancers must start the choreographed three-part phrase with a certain foot depending on which side of the stage they stand on; dancers must always begin from a corner on the first measure of a phrase, that is, unless they are joining another dancer arriving in their corner mid-phrase; and dancers may never travel across the front lip of the stage or begin by traveling downstage toward the audience.
Setting aside the skips game, we played three others. On each occasion, Teitelbaum taught material and then drew the map key that unlocked its use, a framework and guidelines that produced a unique outcome with every iteration. Needless to say, I left that first rehearsal with my mind still swimming, but giddy at the superbly organized chaos the games enabled.
Four technique classes and 10 hours of rehearsal later, 17 dancers had learned portions of Canfield, Un jour ou deux (1973), Roaratorio (1983), Doubletoss (1993), and Loosestrife (1991). We’d scanned four decades of work in four days, just barely skimming the surface of an opus of work spanning more than 60 years.
The next day, we assembled for the MinEvent, an informal open rehearsal open to the public. The evening included one run of the work as learned in silence, and one with a surprise soundtrack (one that most dancers had never heard before), as well as a post-show commentary by Teitelbaum and Macaulay. Dancers joined the audience for a guided tour through the “Merceness” of what we had just performed.
Macaulay and Teitelbaum pointed to the rhythms turned accompaniment created by the feet, and the addition of other sounds in the second run, demonstrating Cunningham’s idea that dance, music, and design are to coexist, oftentimes created separately and only united on the day of performance. They reflected on the vast diversity of movement types from quick runs and hops in the “jigs” from Roaratorio to the adagio qualities in Un jour ou deux and the mix of sharp and slow movement of Loosestrife. They touched on the slight variations in timing as a large group of dancers executed the same movement facing different directions, and explained Cunningham’s emphasis on the solo even when moving among others.
Teitelbaum and Macaulay visited aspects of “Merceness” that led audience members and dancers alike to debrief on an experience, be it a 40-minute viewing or a four-day workshop. Together, they provided food for thought to prepare us for MCDC’s only remaining appearance in the Bay Area and the final performance of Nearly 902, the last piece Cunningham created before his death.
